D14 EZ SU THE WASHINGTON POST.FRIDAY, AUGUST 23 , 2019
isn’t enough money to pay
athletes?
The first one I tried was
Mullens because he is chair of the
committee. Mullens’s base salary
at Oregon is $717,500, and then
there are his performance and
retention bonuses, which will pay
him another $100,000 and
$200,000 in 2019-20.
He did not respond to an
email.
The second email went to
Scott, the Pac-12 commissioner.
After all, Scott sits on the
“management committee” that
oversees the business affairs of
the College Football Playoff, and
in 2018 he testified in an ongoing
NCAA antitrust case that paying
student-athletes would taint the
“purity” of college sports and
“create significant consumer
confusion.” Scott’s compensation
is $5.3 million.
Scott declined to respond. A
conference spokesperson wrote,
“Thanks for reaching out but we
will defer to the CFP for
comment.”
I directed similar questions to
Mississippi State President Mark
Keenum, chair of the board of
managers. No response.
The only response came from
Bill Hancock, the much-
respected longtime
administrator who serves as the
executive director of the College
Football Playoff and who frankly
deserves a raise for his
willingness to be the public face
for these cringers. Hancock
defended the Ritz visit as “a
detailed and extensive meeting
that helps us get ready for the
season, informing every member
so they are familiar with the
heavy amount of work required.”
He cited the amount of data and
statistics members are expected
to review and the fact that,
although unpaid, the members
“are expected to put in
significant time for work and
travel this fall.”
Fair enough. But that still left
some unanswered questions.
Such as what it cost and whether
similar future meetings this have
been planned. And if so where?
Bal Harbour? Kapalua?
Which leaves me to form my
own answers. The College
Football Playoff generates so
much money that these
administrators don’t know what
to spend it on. They mean to
spend it somehow — on
everything but the athletes.
[email protected]For more by Sally Jenkins, visit
washingtonpost.com/jenkins.workweeks. They face a yawning
gap between what they create
and what is withheld from them
by the NCAA’s antiquated rules,
and change is needed.
Legislation such as California’s
proposed “Fair Pay to Play” act
seeks to rectify the injustice.
How entitled must these
athletic directors be that they
would go on a spree to the Ritz in
this climate? Think about what it
must have cost — 13 people for
multiple days, plus meeting
rooms and meals, plus the flights.
The spa in the hotel, which hangs
over the famed Dana Point beach,
charges $245 for a 60-minute
massage, and the restaurant
menus are so elegant they do not
list prices. However, the donor-
couple — who said the CFP folks
stayed for three days — helped
me out with what they paid at the
resort’s steakhouse. A salad,
signature cut and one side dish,
with no alcohol, coffee or dessert,
cost $158.
You know what they say about
menus without prices: If you
have to ask, you must not be a
member of the College Football
Playoff committee.
“It just on face value seemed so
wrong,” the donor wrote. “Seeing
this group in action brings home
the point that it’s really all about
money — their money. I wanted
to scream at them, but of course
didn’t. Athletes deserve better.”
Who is in charge of oversight
and approved such largesse, you
might ask? Well, that would be
the College Football Playoff ’s
board of managers and
management committee:
11 university presidents and
chancellors, including Greg
Fenves of Texas and John Jenkins
of Notre Dame, and
10 conference commissioners,
such as Jim Delany of the Big Ten
and Larry Scott of the Pac-12.
In other words, the same old
overstuffed suits who have been
jacking athletes for years,
hoarding the revenue for
themselves and cronies, while
enjoying fruits of free labor.
I wrote to some of them to ask
what was accomplished at the
meeting that could not have been
handled in a conference call or
email chain? And how do they
justify such expense, given that
the committee won’t issue its first
playoff rankings until after Week
10 of the season? And how do
they square a stay at the Ritz with
the arguments made by some of
these same administrators, such
as Castiglione, whose annual
compensation is more than $1
million a year, that there simplyTech, Gary Barta of Iowa and
Terry Mohajir of Arkansas State
— justify this summer
convocation at the Ritz, you
might ask? According to the CFP
press office, the committee
“reviewed the schedule for its
weekly rankings, went over its
protocol, and finalized the list of
members who will be recused”
from voting on certain schools.
They also went over how to use
their electronics and video.
Now, look. The schedule for
weekly rankings is this: They
come out every Tuesday. They
always come out every Tuesday.
As for the “protocol,” it was
written in 2012 and has not
changed. And recusal is pretty
simple: You can’t vote for your
own school.
But for some reason these
matters required deep thought
on the beach at Dana Point.
What Mullens and his
colleagues could not have known
was that they were being
watched with mounting disgust
by a couple of major collegiate
donors vacationing at the same
hotel. These two folks, a married
couple who estimate they have
sponsored 100 or so scholarships
at their Big Ten alma mater,
wrote me a description of what
they saw because they were so
“appalled” by it and believe the
scene “captures what’s wrong
with collegiate athletics.”
“Meals on the terrace
overlooking the ocean,” they
wrote. “Meetings rooms with
ocean views.”
No one can dispute the need
for the College Football Playoff
selection committee to meet —
they certainly need to review
their duties and introduce new
members to their protocols. And
they are certainly entitled to do
so at a decent hotel, given that
they are not paid to sit on the
committee and some of their
members are not employed by
athletic departments, such as
former Army chief of staff Ray
Odierno and Pro Football Hall of
Famer Ronnie Lott.
But the Ritz?
This offends the senses — and
it shows a telling carelessness if
not a callousness toward athletes.
The colossal billion-dollar
revenue of the College Football
Playoff is driven by the players —
not administrators — and yet the
system feeds everyone to excess
except for them. Anybody with a
conscience understands that
scholarships are hardly decent
recompense for their brutalJENKINS FROM D1SALLY JENKINSNCAA exploitation on full display at Ritz
Retropolis
S0129-3x.75Stories of the past, rediscovered.washingtonpost.com/retropolisBY JACOB BOGAGEsouth williamsport, pa. —
Justin Lee, the pitching star of the
Little League World Series, is
12 years old. He uses resistance
bands to stretch out before a
game. He prays during the nation-
al anthem. And during his first
at-bat, he likes to look out at the
pitcher, take a deep breath and
relax.
But his first at-bat here in South
Williamsport?
“I couldn’t breathe,” said Lee, a
pitcher, catcher and first baseman
from South Riding. “There’s a lot
of pressure on you.”
Beyond the picture-perfect
field at historic Howard J. Lamade
Stadium, thousands of fans posi-
tioned lawn chairs on the hill over-
looking the diamond. Behind
them, children slid down the slope
on cardboard scraps. Even further
back, the peaks of the Appalachian
Mountains stare down.
And when Lee left the ballpark
after his team’s first game, a com-
bined no-hitter against Rhode Is-
land, many baseball fans already
knew his name. The buzz grew
after a second no-hitter two days
later, one he completed in
52 pitches on national TV.
The players from the Loudoun
South American Little League
team were the boys of summer
here, emerging as a contender on
the U.S. side of the bracket before
they were eliminated, 10-0,
against Southwest Region cham-
pion Louisiana on Thursday
night. For a group of 11- and 12-
year-olds, that’s exciting and
stressful.
The games are broadcast na-
tionally on ABC and ESPN. Chil-
dren and adults seek players’ auto-
graphs and ask for selfies. ESPN’s
“SportsCenter” erects a set just
outside the stadium and inter-
views the tournament’s stars with
equal billing to Major League
Baseball highlights and news
from NFL training camps.
“You’re like in celebrity status,”
Lee said.
The teams that qualify for the
tournament needed to win play-
offs in their district and state,
games played in front of a few
dozen or at most a few hundred
spectators on local fields. State
champions advance to regional
tournaments, which in the United
States are televised on ESPN+, the
network’s subscription streaming
service, until the late-round
games are shown on traditional
television.
Upon winning that tourna-
ment, as players pile atop one an-
other in celebration and coaches
hug and parents cry, staff from
Little League International shuf-
fle parents into a room and try to
convey a simple a message: For the
next couple of weeks, life is about
to change for you and your kids.
“They said: ‘It’s going to be
whirlwind. Get ready,’ ” said Bill
Thyen, father of pitcher and cen-
ter fielder Liam Thyen. “They laidout everything, down to the fact
that our boys were going to be
signing autographs left and right
and there’s going to be girls trying
to get pictures with them.
“You’re scrambling to book ho-
tels, to get Virginia state champi-
onship shirts made. You’re scram-
bling to get work situated, to get
cat sitters, to get people to water
your plants and then to take care
of your other children.”
Said Dave Obstgarten, whose
son Chase bats leadoff, pitches
and plays shortstop: “They were
trying to give us all these details
about hotels and recommenda-
tions, but I don’t know how many
people really absorbed all those
details because we were all like,
‘Holy eff, that happened.’ ”
It leaves parents and coaches
grasping how to prepare their pre-teens for a game in which failure is
common — and you’re on display
for tens of thousands of spectators
and millions more watching on
TV.
While a player during a regular
Little League season enjoys rela-
tive privacy to grapple with the
emotional development involved
in youth sports, players at the Lit-
tle League World Series experi-
ence those lessons while television
programmers package the game
to look like a professional sport.
Coaches can challenge umpires’
calls on video replay. Commenta-
tors can dissect plays in slow mo-
tion. The scores count.
Off the field, once players leave
the dormitory areas from where
the media and public are barred,
they can’t escape the eye of camer-
as and fans.“[Coach] said, ‘There’s a camera
on you at all times,’ ” Liam Thyen
said, reflecting on the conversa-
tion Loudoun South Manager
Alan Bowden had with the team
when it arrived. “That’s okay. I
don’t say anything bad. I just felt
motivated.”
Little League deploys profes-
sional and volunteer staff all over
its 75-acre complex to give players
a refuge from all the attention.
Each team is assigned two volun-
teer “hosts” who act as liaisons
between media members and
coaches. Players and coaches are
free to skip postgame news confer-
ences, and media members can’t
interview players without a coach
or staffer present.
Photographers aren’t allowed
to capture images of the losing
team’s dugout after a game, andbroadcasters try to nimbly deflect
errors on the field into lessons on
the game’s fundamentals.
“When one of the shortstops
out here has it go through his legs
or one of the left fielders has it go
over his head, it’s like, ‘Okay, well
that just happened, and here goes
the runner around first and sec-
ond,’ ” ESPN play-by-play an-
nouncer Karl Ravech said.
After games, players meet with
parents for 30 minutes before
heading back to their dorms, but
parents often want to know as
much about what’s happening off
the field — are you sleeping, eating
well, making friends, playing kids
from other countries in table ten-
nis, Liam Thyen said his mother
asked — as much as talking about
the competition.
Thyen said when his mom
called the next morning to check
in, he sheepishly said he had to go
to a team breakfast so he could get
off the phone.
And in those interactions, men-
tal health experts say it’s incum-
bent upon parents and coaches to
stay positive about the tourna-
ment experience, especially when
things don’t go well on the field.
“That’s up to the coach and the
parents to frame it as, ‘We’re here
to learn. We’re here to play and
give it our best effort,’ ” said Shari
Young Kuchenbecker, a child de-
velopment research psychologist
in California. “Make every situa-
tion a learning opportunity. That’s
where it gets dicey because par-
ents and coaches don’t always un-
derstand that.
“It can be a dynamic, life-chang-
ing, positive experience for these
kids, but that depends on the par-
ents and the team and the coach-
es.”
While concerns are in the back
of his mind, Bill Thyen sees this
experience as one of huge growth
for his son.
“We’re so happy for Liam be-
cause we’re trying to create an
independent person,” he said. “I’m
trying to get him ready for college
and to take care of himself. It’s a
great steppingstone for him to be-
come an independent adult.”
[email protected]Little League, big-time fame: Virginia kids savor the ride
GENE J. PUSKAR/ASSOCIATED PRESS
“I couldn’t breathe. There’s a lot of pressure on you,” Virginia’s Justin Lee, center, said of his first at-bat in the Little League World Series.$10 TICKETS
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