More Corruption in College Sports Exposed

"I will never forget the first time I paid a player," begins former sports agent Josh Luchs in his cover story for the October 18^th issue of Sports Illustrated. Luchs goes on to detail how he doled out thousands of dollars in cash and gifts to popular Division I athletes, with hopes that these players would eventually sign with him as an agent."There are moments you will always remember, like your first kiss or your first home run or the day you met your wife,” he says. “For me, the first time I broke an NCAA rule to try to land a client is just as indelible."

The story is turning heads: It's rare to hear anyone speak so openly about the sordid role agents can play in college sports, and Luchs goes so far as to name around 30 former college football players who violated NCAA rules by taking money and/or gifts from NFL agents.

Luch’s story arrives in the wake of the NCAA barring three University of North Carolina football players from the rest of the season for taking benefits from agents. ESPN reported that one of the players, defensive end Robert Quinn, accepted “two black diamond watches, a pair of matching earrings and travel accommodations to Miami.” As more stories like Luchs’s and Quinn’s surface, they suggest that these dealings between agents and players constitute a shady status quo among popular Division I athletes.

Though recent activity is drawing attention to the issue, agents and runners (non-agents, often students, who are hired by agents to contact and befriend college athletes) have been hanging around college athletes for a long time. In his expose, Luchs rationalizes that, “If they didn’t take [Luchs or his colleague’s] money, they would take it from one of the dozens of other agents opening their wallets. Agents have been giving kids money for decades.”

The NCAA says it is revitalizing its efforts to investigate the relations between agents and athletes, but hasn’t signaled any significant change in its approach to regulating how agents and athletes interact. This is not to mention that the NCAA has no control over the agents themselves—that falls under the jurisdiction of states, and player’s associations. Forty states have laws that prohibit agents and runners from offering benefits to athletes, but rarely do states investigate college athlete-agent relations. In this manner, the buck gets passed, and problems with agent-athlete interactions persist.

Agents aren’t exclusively to blame for the issue, nor are all agents a part of the problem. Colleges and coaches play a crucial role in informing their student athletes, and encouraging them to make wise decisions. And ultimately, it’s the athletes themselves who are responsible for breaking NCAA bylaws and accepting gifts and money from agents.

But can you blame them?

Take the case of former USC receiver R. Jay Soward, one of the players Josh Luchs mentions in his Sports Illustrated piece. When Sports Illustrated asked Soward if Luchs’s allegations were true (the magazine asked all of the parties that Luchs mentioned in his story and prints their responses along with the article), Soward said he took payments because his scholarship didn’t provide enough money for rent and food. “I would do it again,” he said.

Even in cases where students aren’t in any particular financial need, the fact is that the benefits they receive from agents pale in comparison to the profits that the college sports industry makes off of a star football or basketball player. USA Today estimated last spring that at least 42 Division IA coaches made more than $1 million in 2005 -- not including perks and benefits that are built into most contracts (such as subsidized housing). Meanwhile, CBS and Turner broadcasting agreed in April to pay $10.8 billion to carry  the NCAA men’s basketball tournament for the next 14 seasons—that comes out to $771 million in revenue for the NCAA each year.

With out a doubt, the NCAA needs to do a better job regulating agents and their contact with players. So do colleges, and other regulating organizations, such as state governments and the NFL players association. But college athletics programs and the NCAA also need to take a long, hard look at themselves and their own relationships with student athletes. If these organizations want integrity from their players, they need to have some themselves -- and that includes not exploiting unpaid college athletes for profit, or for glory. It includes reeling in spending on college sports, and not paying coaches three times as much as tenured professors. Finally, and most important, it includes supporting student athletes so they can earn meaningful college degrees that will help them succeed in the workforce when their careers as athletes come to an end – which for most is sooner rather than later. If college athletics programs get their priorities back in line, perhaps players will, too.