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So I might have told this story on this website before? If so, please forgive me, I’ve been doing this for a minute.
But before I became a reporter, I worked as an elementary school teacher. One method for improving classroom management that many administrators recommended to me was giving students a say in the classroom rules and punishments. If that process felt more democratic, the students would be more inclined to take those rules seriously. Or so the conventional wisdom went.
That’s exactly what I did. And lo and behold, my 4th graders actually suggested relatively strict rules. They would tell me that they believed that following classroom procedure was important, that they cared about learning, and that students who were disrespectful to each other (by calling them hurtful names like Atlanta Falcons fans) should be punished.
So I wrote all those rules down in marker, hung it up in our classroom for everybody to see…and then tried to enforce those rules.
You guys aren’t going to believe this, but what my students believed in the abstract did not line up with what they believed once they did something wrong. The second the rules were enforced on them, well, then they were illegitimate and didn’t matter. Pencils were still thrown, names were still called, snacks still eaten despite the “NO SNACKS” clearly written on the whiteboard and everything. My attempt at enlightened democracy for 4th graders was a failure.
I find myself thinking about this all the time in my current job as a college sports business reporter.
Looking at other headlines this week, it’s easy to see how we’re all heading towards another big showdown over the legality and practicality of college sports regulatory policy. The College Sports Commission, the entity born out of the House Settlement to enforce an agreement that all the P4 conferences suggested, is heading towards a legal battle. SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey is suggesting that maybe the SEC will “need to go alone” and decide their own rules and regulations. And the Big Ten is writing letters to the NCAA, asking to not enforce existing rules until new rules are written.
All of these developments certainly sound like things that should be of great interest to a college sports business publication. But you know what, friends?
I don’t care!
I don’t care because my entire sports writing career has been covering one Serious Professional Roundtable Commission after another, usually featuring some configuration of the same 30 people, shuffled around again and again. And those professionals hem and haw over the lawlessness of college athletics, maybe come up with a PDF and a new regulatory framework and an assurance that This Time Will Be Different…and then all of that goes out the window the second the reporters leave the room.
Everybody says they want rules and regulations and GUARDRAILS until it’s time to have those rules enforced on you. Then the rules are legally unenforceable, biased, or worse.
If the folks involved fundamentally don’t want to take responsibility for their actions, I struggle to see how this next round of negotiations will be different. If the same people in the same suits and the same job titles have tried and failed to come up with a system that holds up to legal scrutiny and political pressure, why should I believe that their 7th attempt will be different?
It reminds me a bit of something my pal Noah Henderson wrote a few weeks ago, about honor. At some point, I think it’s reasonable to expect individuals who helped create a set of rules to try and follow those rules, even if legal remedies may exist to allow them to skirt out of those responsibilities. If nobody involved in an enterprise feels any sense of constraint beyond what a judge or the state might enforce, well, it’ll be awfully difficult to come up with the perfect set of rules.
I don’t know a way to force college athletics administrators and coaches to follow a higher code than the NCAA compliance manual, especially when those coaches are often paid north of $7 million a year to win, bylaws be damned. That is a question perhaps better suited for the priests and philosophers who read Extra Points.
But I know enough to know what you call an AD who decides to put his own athletic department at a short-term competitive disadvantage in the name of compliance and fair play.
A consultant. Because that dude got his ass fired last year.
And until you fix that, the latest round of saber rattling feels hollow and not worth my time or intellectual investment.
When college sports leaders are ready to walk their talk, then I’ll pay attention. Otherwise, just send me the press release when the latest round of lawsuits ends.
Here are a few things that I didn’t write, but think are worth your time:
The Louisiana Illuminator, along with WAFB-TV and TigerRag, is suing LSU in an effort to force the school to disclose how it is paying college athletes. I strongly support the efforts of anybody in any state suing schools over this information. If the financial details for virtually every other contractor/vendor agreement with a university are a public record, I think it’s silly that college athlete payments should be some special exception, particularly given how important that information could be for Title IX compliance. I donated to the Illuminator yesterday, and if you'd like to join me in supporting their non-profit mission, you can do so here.
The Atlantic gave McKay Coppins $10K bet on sports. Here, he chronicles his journey from never betting on sports at all, to chasing that dopamine at the expense of his family and church commitments...and while losing thousands of dollars in the process. I think we’re all continuing to see how letting almost all of America bet on anything, at any time, right from their phone…might have some negative social consequences.
FOIABall sent out dozens of FOIAs to learn how much money everybody is spending on fireworks at football games. I wish I had thought of this story first! The leading school is….not who I would have predicted.
Oh! And a quick reminder. We’ll be running another bracket challenge here on Extra Points, sponsored by our pals at Short Courts. Look for the info on Monday morning!
And here are things I did write that you might have missed:
Thanks to our own open records efforts, we obtained the FY25 operating budgets for over 170 D1 baseball teams. We broke down who spent the most, what you need to spend to be in the conversation for an at-large bid, and where your favorite public school stacks up.
In a world where every school is looking for every extra dollar they can find…could producing content for Twitch be a potential answer? Thanks to TheLinkU, many schools (and athletes) are about to find out.
Amid the national conversation about Miami (OH)’s basketball schedule, here’s an explainer on how teams actually schedule games in real life. This includes how the Quant system works, how (and why) buy games operate, and why finding the right dates is so challenging.
I can find time to file hundreds of FOIAs (and categorize them into something that’s actually useful), write all of these newsletters and update our games becausenewsletters, of your subscription support. Without premium subscriptions, this business doesn’t work.
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We’ve got a big week next week. Enjoy the Madness, and we’ll see you on the internet.
