job or a reduction in the amount of donations. It doesn’t take
a rocket scientist to figure out which one gives first. In the
article “College Sports” published by U.S.News & World Report,
the authors, Gordon Witken and Jodi Schneider, state that the
system’s toughest problems arise from commercialization. In
the same article, Maureen Devlin of the Knight Commission
says, “The analogy is that money is an arms race that nobody
will win and that we need multilateral disarmament.” In other
words, every institution has to give up the money and play by
the same rules or violations will continue. How likely is that
to happen? You decide.
At the opening business session on
January 8 of the 2005 NCAA Conven-
tion in Dallas, Myles Brand delivered
a wide-ranging speech in which he
forthrightly discussed the status of
money and winning on institutions’
and coaches’ motivations for recruit-
ing. He revealed his disappointment
after he repeated a quote from a
coach, “I was hired to win; I wasn’t
hired to graduate student athletes.”
He went on to say, “in fact the
security of his future employment is
based on winning...”
Why is winning so important?
Because, as Brand went on to explain,
the money that is used to fund invest-
ments for new building on campus is “paid by projected future
athletics-generated revenues.” This means that the more they
win, the more money should pour in, which “has resulted in
Understanding the Recruiting Process 9
3
The
Tr uT h Is
A significant
minority of college
coaches violate the
NCAA recruiting
rules and
regulations in
order to stay
competitive—and
in order to keep
their jobs.