What the Nebraska textbook violations mean for student-athletes

Compared to Ohio State’s tattoos, cover-ups and firings and Oregon’s scouting, recruiting and sneaker issues, Nebraska’s self-reported textbook violations haven’t received much attention by comparison.

From a perspective of what they’ll mean to the program, that’s fair; these don’t seem likely to cause much harm to the Huskers, and their fans have more important things to worry about this summer, such as gearing up for their first season in the Big Ten. However, the Nebraska textbook issues raise uncomfortable questions for the NCAA about student-athlete compensation, which may prove to be a more important debate down the road than any of this year’s scandals.

At their core, the Nebraska textbook violations are simple. NCAA athletic scholarships include tuition, board and textbooks. However, they don’t include the “recommended” textbooks for each class, only the “required” ones. The Nebraska bookstore staff apparently didn’t realize this, doling out $27,869.47 in “recommended” textbooks to 248 student-athletes between the spring of 2007 and the fall of 2010.

According to the university, 181 athletes received $100 or less in benefits, so the remaining 57 received an average of at least $171 in extra textbook benefits, which adds up quickly. In response to the issues, which Nebraska found on its own, the university will be donating $28,000 to charity; the affected players also had to repay the value of the extra benefits received, with the 57 who received over $100 in extra benefits also having to apply for reinstatement by the NCAA.

Chip Patterson of CBS‘ Eye On College Football said the way the school revealed the issue itself is positive for Huskers’ fans, though.

“I think, if anything, Nebraska fans should be encouraged that their compliance department has decided to take such a proactive approach in identifying and beating the media to these violations,” Patterson said. “One sentiment in this new violation-crazy NCAA landscape is the ‘responsibility’ some people feel to uncover ‘the corruption’. When the school tells on themselves, there will be less blowback and make the institution look more innocent. As athletic director Tom Osborne said, ‘it’s embarrassing,’ but outside of embarrassment, I would not be too concerned about this issue.”

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As Patterson said, on the surface, this doesn’t seem like a major problem. Although the NCAA could add additional penalties for the athletic department or delay or decline athletes’ reinstatement, neither appears all that likely. We’re talking about reasonably small extra benefits that seem to have been given out through an honest misunderstanding, and benefits that actually have educational usage (unlike, say, Ohio State’s tattoos). However, it’s that last item, the educational applicability, that makes this case potentially notable on a wider front. Patterson said the lines on what constitutes appropriate educational assistance are blurry, and there’s a strong argument that schools should be providing more resources to help players academically, including perhaps paying for some recommended books.

“The current system leaves a lot of room for grey areas, which is where Nebraska found their problem,” Patterson said. “Getting athletic departments and academic offices to get along can be difficult sometimes, but if there are ‘recommended’ materials that are realistically required for academic success the athletes should receive them. Either more definition from the professors or some dollar amount that can define what is a ‘provided recommended material’.”

Patterson said getting athletes to succeed academically takes more than just textbooks, though.

“Scholarship athletes’ disadvantage academically mostly comes from athletic situations that pull them out of the classroom,” he said. “The same people who scream about academic help centers and NCAA-approved tutors often forget that these athletes (when in season) will miss several classes due to travel or other commitment. The in-class experience can be more valuable than any textbook, required or recommended, and I think that communication with the professors, tutors, and athletes will help determine whether materials are recommended or actually needed in order to help the student-athlete succeed.”

From the financial perspective, keep in mind that while many athletic departments as a whole may have profitability issues, there’s a lot of revenue coming in from college sports. That’s particularly true in the area of media rights, and it’s especially notable for powerful conferences such as the Big Ten and the Pac-12. The Big Ten reportedly hauls in around $252 million annually from media rights, and distributes more money to its schools than any other conference.

Much of that media rights revenue the conference is hauling in comes from its athletes, especially the football players, who risk serious injury (and potential long-term effects that may haunt them and their families for years to come) every week to perform for captivated audiences around the U.S. In return, they receive athletic scholarships, but that’s it; they don’t get a penny from the sales of jerseys with their name and number, the tickets they help to sell, or the broadcasting revenues they bring in.

Meanwhile, as this case shows, their schools aren’t even allowed to give them extra textbooks. That’s led to discussions on if players should be paid or not, or even receive just some form of cost-of-living subsidy, and the eventually-determined answers to that could drastically affect NCAA sports as we know them.

Ross Binder of Iowa Hawkeyes’ blog Black Heart Gold Pants said the Big Ten and its fellow power conferences would maintain that money’s needed to maintain their programs, so it shouldn’t be distributed to athletes. While there may be a grain of truth there, though, it means that the people most responsible for the product aren’t seeing the benefits of its success.

“The party line is that all this big fat television money is necessary to keep the wheels turning and keep all the current plates in the air spinning,” Binder said. “There’s probably some truth to that – I certainly don’t have access to the books of all (or any) college athletic department to determine what their fiscal situations are. On the other hand, it does seem increasingly absurd that the money being made off college athletics continues to skyrocket, while the people who make it worth watching in the first place – the student-athletes themselves – don’t see a dime beyond their scholarships. So, yes, I would say it would be nice to see some of the windfall money conferences are receiving from television networks funnelled back to student-athletes.”

Binder said a combination of providing textbooks and a cost-of-living subsidy would make the most sense from a perspective of what’s best for student-athletes.

“It seems slightly absurd that existing scholarships wouldn’t be sufficient to cover the cost of textbooks (what good is having the cost of tuition covered if you can’t afford a textbook?) and some sort of cost-of-living stipend seems eminently reasonable, too,” he said. “Given the reality of the schedule of a student-athlete (not to mention other rules already in place), most student athletes can’t have a part-time job and make a little money that way, so giving them spending money to cover expenses beyond those covered by their scholarships seems perfectly acceptable.”

It won’t be easy to talk schools into giving up some of their athletics revenue, though, and Patterson said any cost-of-living subsidy would likely go well beyond the cost of recommended textbooks. While stipends or even just those recommended materials could help athletes, any additional costs could have notable impacts on schools in smaller conferences, which don’t rake in as much money as the big ones.

“I think when you look at Nebraska’s textbook situation, the cost of the materials makes it a very small crumb in the pie of cost-of-living discussions,” Patterson said. “One of the arguments in the stipend conversation that makes the most sense has to do with the time spent by athletes involved in their sport. Along with academics, there are just not enough hours in the day for student-athletes to have an opportunity to support themselves financially. Recommended materials do not run up a high bill, but the divide between what SEC commissioner Mike Slive would want to give players and what Conference USA can afford is what people fear.”

Patterson said he thinks limited benefits for athletes are more a function of the NCAA’s unwieldiness and the different financial situations of member schools than a genuine desire to hypocritically rake in money on the backs of athletes. However, that doesn’t mean change isn’t needed.

“It is hypocritical for the NCAA to think that so many different schools will have uniform academic policies,” he said. “Unfortunately, there are no easy solutions to figuring out a set of regulations that will fit so many different colleges and universities. The NCAA’s issues can be read as hypocrisy, but I prefer to view them as an unwillingness to investigate change. Until the decision-makers are ready to engage in some open-minded and honest discussions about adjusting to a new era in college athletics, the problems will only continue to build.”

Minda Haas, a blogger and journalist who graduated from Nebraska earlier this year, said even if payments or cost-of-living subsidies are shot down, it would be an improvement to just allow student-athletes to work part-time jobs like any other student and bring in a little spending cash.

“At the very least, the NCAA should allow its athletes to have jobs if they want to,” she said. “If a person can handle going to school, playing a sport, and working a few hours a week, why forbid that? If nothing else, I feel like that would allow for a tiny shred of accountability when an athlete has giant diamond stud earrings or every new generation of iPhone or a fancy car.”

Haas said any payment setup could be complicated, as schools would have to try and figure out if certain athletes should get more or if they all should be treated equally. That’s not a particularly easy decision.

“On one hand, I do feel that weighting scholarships makes sense,” Haas said. “A swimmer on scholarship isn’t as important to the athletic department as a football or even volleyball player is, so why should the former get all the same benefits as the latter two? On the other hand, weighting scholarships would add to the frustration of those who already feel that too much money gets pumped into the major sports. It would create an unbreakable cycle of ever more money going to football while other sports suffer because they don’t bring in 86,000 fans every week. Although, how awesome would it be to see 86,000 fans at a bowling match or a track meet? Those are good teams, dammit!”

Binder said the ideal solution, and also the one most likely to be implemented (as it wouldn’t cause Title IX concerns) would be coming up with some additional benefits that could be given across sports.

“In the interests of equality, I’d probably just distribute additional benefits equally to all student-athletes,” he said. “There’s definitely a certain appeal to distributing them based on who generates the most revenue, but that also seems destined to create problems and lead to divisions. I think we’re more likely to see the creation of an additional benefit stipend that’s equally distributed to all student-athletes, too.”

Binder said the easy solution would be a NCAA-wide approach, but that might not work given the vastly different financial situations of big and small schools.

“The simplest solution would probably be to have the NCAA mandate a certain level of student-athlete compensation which would apply to all schools,” he said. “One of the potential risks of allowing schools or conferences to set the standards themselves on this issue is that it could give an unfair advantage to monied schools (i.e., Texas, Ohio State, Notre Dame, etc.) or conferences (i.e., Big Ten, SEC). On the other hand, they already have certain unfair advantages over other schools/conferences now as it is and so long as the 85-scholarship limit is in place, it’s going to be impossible for them to sweep up all the talent in the nation. Also, the problem with the NCAA mandating a certain level of student-athlete compensation is that not all schools/conferences may be able to meet it; the windfall of television money has greatly benefited many leagues, but it hasn’t done much for leagues like the WAC or the Sun Belt. A student-athlete benefit that may be a drop in the bucket to a Big Ten team could be incredibly onerous for a Sun Belt team.”

Binder said the best possible solution might be to allow schools that want to offer extra compensation. It’s not a perfect plan, as it could increase the existing disparity in college sports, but it might help student-athletes.

“If I was [NCAA president] Mark Emmert, I’d give schools and conferences the freedom to create their additional compensation packages, but I don’t think I would make it mandatory, if only to avoid doing undue harm to the schools that genuinely can’t afford to provide additional compensation,” Binder said. “Would this be unfair? Yes. Would it widen the gap between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’? Yeah, probably. Unfortunately, there’s no way to devise a truly equitable system; this would at least sand off some of the rough corners in the existing system.”

None of these solutions are easy, and even supplying recommended texts the way Nebraska did isn’t necessarily all that helpful to athletes. Haas said those recommended textbooks weren’t all that valuable during her classes at the university.

“Every once in a while, I would buy a recommended text, but most of them stayed on my bookshelf, but I should add the disclaimer that many of my required texts suffered the same fate,” she said. “I can’t speak for other majors, but in my college, the recommended texts were never necessary to succeed in a class.”

Haas said all recommended texts shouldn’t necessarily be included in athletic scholarships, but if they were, it wouldn’t be all that bad.

“I don’t think athletic scholarships should necessarily include non-required texts,” she said. “There’s no reason for someone else to have to pay for extra books for athletes that they don’t need and may not ever even use. However, I wouldn’t show up with a torch and pitchfork at the athletic offices if they decided to include those expenses in scholarships.”

For now, it looks like Nebraska fans don’t have a lot to worry about. During a summer that’s laid countless other programs low for questionable practices, they can’t complain much about offering student-athletes more educational resources. Although the NCAA bylaws may frown on the practice, Haas said she wasn’t particularly upset to hear Nebraska was breaking that particular rule.

“Honestly, I’m glad it wasn’t an embarrassing violation,” she said. “I’m okay with getting ‘busted’ for giving athletes extra education, as opposed to extra cars, extra tattoos, or any other ‘extras’ that other programs are getting in trouble for. It’s not the worst reason in the world to see my school on the news.”

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