In December, Ohio State University suspended five of its football players for violating the rules governing intercollegiate athletics by exchanging their Buckeye memorabilia for various forms of payment, including the handiwork of a local Columbus tattoo parlor. Over the next few months, the digging of media outlets near and far pried open a capacious vault of misdeeds: the “gear scheme,” as it came to be called, involved not just a few players during a single season, but dozens of players over the better part of a decade; in that time, a number of scholarship athletes had also received sweetheart deals at a local auto outlet; and head coach Jim Tressel had hidden incriminating evidence of these transgressions from his superiors for more than eight months.
Punishment ensued. Ohio State, a perennial power in college football for more than half a century, forfeited its entire 2010 Sugar Bowl championship season; Tressel, regarded by many as a paragon of coaching integrity, was forced to resign; and Terrelle Pryor, the team’s star quarterback who was at the center of the scandal, abruptly left school to try his luck in the National Football League.
In many ways, the chaos in Columbus is just the latest in a seemingly endless series of scandals in big-time college sports. Over the last three decades, investigative sports reporters have excavated dozens of episodes of rule-breaking in football and men’s basketball programs, from Southern Methodist University’s “Ponygate” affair in the 1980s to the pay-for-play shenanigans at the University of Washington in the 1990s to agent tampering at the University of Southern California in the aughts. As this issue went to press, Yahoo Sports blew the lid off the latest installment, at the University of Miami, which, based on initial reports, may eclipse all other scandals in terms of scale and audacity. Off-field trouble, once a side project of the beat, has become the defining story of college athletics. Anyone who doubts it need only scan the header of espn.com’s homepage, which on many days reads like the abstract of a criminal indictment.
The cumulative reportage of a relatively small group of sports journalists on what might be called the Scandal Beat constitutes a compelling case for the unenforceability of the NCAA’s bylaws. In the process of building that case, these reporters have delivered an impressive perp walk of bogeymen: scurrilous agents, meddling boosters, selfish teenage athletes, badly behaved coaches. In many ways it has been a wildly successful display of watchdog journalism, and it helped establish the idea that sports is something that can and should be subjected to the same journalistic scrutiny as other institutions in our society—and that the sports desk could be more than just the “Toy Department,” as it had been derisively tagged by newsroom colleagues.
But the success of this work also belies a deeper problem with the coverage of college sports. The Scandal Beat exists as a kind of closed loop: a report of rules violations, an investigation, sanctions, dismissals, vows to do better, and then on to the next case of corruption where the cycle is repeated. The reporting, intentionally or not, promotes the idea that the corruption that plagues the NCAA is the problem, rather than merely a symptom of a system that is fundamentally broken. The Scandal Beat, with its drama and spectacular falls from grace, is much less adept at managing the next step: a robust discussion, prominently and persistently conducted, of why these scandals keep happening and what can be done to prevent them.
On the subject of watchdog journalism, Bob Gibson, Executive Director of the University of Virginia’s Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership, recently said: “If we don’t have a watchdog function, then we have a lapdog function, and that doesn’t serve the voter very well. We need journalism that goes out and challenges what is being given reporters as the facts. We need to look behind the facts and find out where they’re coming from, and what the interests are of the people who are giving us those facts. Local government and state government and the federal government today are even more than ever in the news business themselves. They are putting out news as if it was the entire package and expecting people to buy it and I think Americans have to be a little bit skeptical and have to look behind where those governments are putting out facts.” (Gibson appeared on the Charlottesville, VA, interview program Politics Matters with host Jan Paynter discussing journalism http://bit.ly/pm-gibson)
#1 Posted by Politics Matters, CJR on Tue 13 Sep 2011 at 01:25 PM
I believe you incorrectly characterized the Ohio State investigation. There were allegations of sweetheart auto deals, but they were disproven. Most of Dohrmann's supposed allegations of more players being involved were directly refuted, with Dohrmann clinging to an anonymous source that wouldn't even talk to the NCAA. Since when is one anonymous source without corroboration sufficient to verify a story that drags people through the mud?
Your story here is part of the problem. One media outlet just repeats what another says without fact checking of their own, and false allegations become the accepted "truth" of the situation. Everybody is so anxious to get a scoop that nobody seems to care if it is actually true. Web site hits and copies sold have replaced journalistic ethics.
#2 Posted by Brian, CJR on Tue 13 Sep 2011 at 05:42 PM
The University of Wisconsin football "program" has always congratulated itself on developing its own players but this fall the Badgers' starting quarterback is a 22-year-old college graduate and professional baseball player who was developed somewhere else. Russell Wilson bailed out at North Carolina State University, where he starred for three years and earned a baccalaureate degree, with one year of football eligibility left. Effectively a free agent, he was hotly recruited by both Auburn and Wisconsin, which got the nod largely because Wilson was awed by its imposing offensive line. The Wilson situation is a breath-taking example of the cynicism and hypocrisy of big-time college football but since it involves no infraction of NCAA rules, not an eyebrow has been raised by the sports press in Madison--or anywhere else, for that matter. It may be true that the Scandal Beat reporters you write about focus on crumbs and ignore the muffin, as Rick Telander puts it, but an even bigger problem is that the football-crazy public in general and alumni fans in particular think the muffin is finger-lickin' good. The commercialization and corporatization of college sports, the huge amounts of money involved and the slick marketing campaigns have made athletic departments bigger than the schools they represent. The tail is wagging the dog and except for a few spoilsport jounalists hardly anyone sees anything wrong with that. Just win, baby! Wisconsin's hired gun from North Carolina will play only one season in Madison but if he takes his fellow "student athletes" to a big bowl game or, who knows, a national championship, he'll go down as the greatest Badger athlete who never set foot in a UW undergraduate classroom.
#3 Posted by Jim Doherty, CJR on Wed 14 Sep 2011 at 03:06 PM
I have known several world-class musicians who have been recruited to university music schools with offers of full scholarship plus expenses (essentially the same deal that scholarship varsity athletes receive).
These young musicians are not only allowed, but encouraged, to take as many outside, paid performance jobs as they can handle. Indeed, I knew some who played in the local symphony, at full wages, while they were in school.
Why is it acceptable for an oboe player but not a football, basketball or tennis player, who is not allowed any outside income, even unrelated to the sport, while making considerable income for the university?
Never made any sense to me.
Why is it alright for the oboe player to
#4 Posted by efgoldman, CJR on Sat 17 Sep 2011 at 10:26 PM
Thank you for questioning Dohrmann and his ridiculous reporting. SI treats him like Woodward and Bernstein when in reality he totally misses the real story.
#5 Posted by Richard verbit, CJR on Tue 20 Sep 2011 at 07:41 PM
Well this wasn't the first coincidence of scandals in football history. Just lately we had the president and head coach of a school get fired for something as such. It makes you think twice about putting on their football uniforms.
#6 Posted by Kelly, CJR on Tue 3 Jan 2012 at 12:25 PM