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Chapter 11 Institutional Control There is no more serious accusation in a rules violations investigation by the NCAA Infractions Committee concerning intercollegiate athletics than a conclusion that the university has lost “institutional control” of its athletics program. But there is also perhaps no accusation more frequently misunderstood by the media, the public, and even the accused institution. To both the coach and the players, institutional control implies that the coach is firmly in control of the program. The athletic director would similarly claim the authority to control the athletic programs . At some level this is both appropriate and understandable, particularly since these would be the first heads to roll in the event of a serious incident. But institutional control refers to something beyond simply the coach’s discipline or the athletic director’s authority. It is a process, a system, and a set of values and expectations within the institution . It is very similar to the system of audit controls governing a major corporation. The idea is to make certain that violations do not happen in the first place, rather than to place the blame after the fact. And, as we have noted, the key to this system lies in the recognition that in the end, the president is ultimately responsible for the integrity of college sports. Nevertheless, an array of forces, some structural, some commercial, some adolescent, some obsessed, and some simply foolish, all act to undermine efforts to control intercollegiate athletics. In this chapter, we will consider several of the powerful forces threatening the university’s ability to control intercollegiate athletics : the competitive culture of coaches and athletic directors, the obsession that many members of the public have with college 231 sports, and the influence of professional athletics. Yet a century of failures to control or reform intercollegiate athletics suggests that lack of adequate institutional control of college sports lies within the academy itself, with the abdication by the faculty of its role in governing intercollegiate athletics, the failure of most governing boards to recognize just how damaging big-time college sports can be to their institutions, and the reluctance of most university presidents to risk challenging the ever more commercial and exploitative character of intercollegiate athletics. An Early Case Study: Steamrolling the President In his book Unsportsmanlike Conduct Walter Byers, director of the NCAA for over thirty years, points to an event that occurred at the University of Michigan shortly after the turn of the century as key in the evolution of college sports.1 In 1906, the legendary Michigan football coach Fielding Yost managed to defeat the equally legendary Michigan president James Burrill Angell in his efforts to restrain the growth and restore the integrity of college sports. Concerned about the growing professionalism of football, Angell had persuaded several midwestern college presidents to form the Western Athletic Conference, later to become the Big Ten, which would develop and adopt rules to keep football within reasonable bounds. The presidents intended to limit the season to five games, restrict eligibility to three years and to undergraduate students, cap student ticket prices, and prohibit special training tables and training quarters. The presidents added one additional restriction: the football coach had to be a full-time employee of the university. And it was this condition that triggered Yost’s resistance, since he had substantial outside business interests. Although Yost technically reported to President Angell, the founding father of Michigan football executed a perfect end run on these issues and took his complaints instead to the university’s board of regents and asked them to withdraw Michigan from the newly formed conference. Efforts by the Western Conference presidents to accommodate Yost were unsuccessful, the regents voted to overrule Angell and 232 • INTERCOLLEGIATE ATHLETICS AND THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY withdraw Michigan from the Western Conference, and Coach Yost and his Wolverines were allowed to continue unchecked. Byers writes, “Angell could move a whole conference, but where football was concerned, he could not convince his own coach and his own board. Michigan did not rejoin the Big Ten until November 1917. This act of a coach steamrolling his college president had historic significance although the lesson had to be relearned time and again by succeeding generations of college chief executives.” Byers concludes that “this showdown was more significant in charting the course of college athletics than the founding of the NCAA in that same year.”2 Things have not changed much during the past century. It is not uncommon for powerful coaches and athletic...

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