Unsportsmanlike Conduct: Exploiting College Athletes

Sporting News, The, Nov 6, 1995 by Steve Gietschier

No one ever accused Walter Byers, executive director of the NCAA from until his retirement in 1986, of subtlety in words or deeds. So it should not surprise anyone familiar with Byers' style that his memoir is hard-hitting, outspoken and downright blunt. To sum up the case he tries to make, college athletics, steered by the organization he headed, has run aground on the jagged rocks of hypocrisy and exploitation. And the only current that can liberate the athletes trapped in this system is a tidal wave of serious and profound federal legislation.

When Byers went to work for the NCAA, the organization that employed his services half-time shared a paltry three-room office with the Big Ten in a Chicago hotel. College athletics was governed by the Sanity Code of 1948, a modest attempt to regulate the practice of awarding athletes financial aid, often funded by alumni associations or boosters, based on how well they played.

When seven schools openly violated the Sanity Code in 1950 and were pointedly not disciplined by the membership, the stage was set for a widened NCAA presence led Byers, suddenly elevated to fulltime employment. Commanded to level the playing field and restore purity, he was, over the next 3 1/2 decades, intimately involved in every phase of college athletics governance. He started the enforcement program, pioneered the athletic grant-in-aid (ironically as an aboveboard way to evict boosters from the system) and negotiated more than 50 television contracts.

Now, having reflected on the maze of regulations and procedures he helped create and on the flow of money he helped generate, he finds himself thoroughly disgusted.

This is not an easy book to read. It is closely argued and full of detailed "I said, he said" recollections. And no one in sound mind has ever suggested that NCAA political warfare is any less convoluted than the Bosnian situation.

Nevertheless, Byers' main points are clarion clear: He believes that every reform effort, beginning with his initial agenda and continuing through more recent presidential initiatives, has been "overun by the pervasive influence of big money, national publicity, and entertainment excitement." And he is convinced that athletes, exploited for vast revenues and simultaneously restrained by a ridiculous definition amateurism, deserve economic freedom through federal deregulation.

Readers may not agree with Byers' diagnosis or his prescription. They might not even agree with him that the patient is sick. But no one interested in college athletics can ignore this book. It will be required reading for a long time to come.