Corruption IN Collegiate Sports

Internal Auditor, April, 2000 by Joseph T. Wells, Richard B. Carozza

"Jennifer Morrison" agrees. A former internal auditor, Morrison currently serves as an NCAA compliance officer for a Division I-A university. Her experience is unusual in that most of her counterparts have legal backgrounds or are former coaches or athletic department staff employees. "The changing and growing number of NCAA regulations often makes my job challenging," she says. For example, Morrison relates the story of a coach who inadvertently broke a rule by visiting too long with a prospective player while on a recruiting trip without first consulting with the school's administrators. In another case, she says that a basketball team booster used his plane to ferry a possible recruit. "If he had only documented the trip, there wouldn't have been an infraction," notes Morrison.

Still, it behooves the university--and the audit staff--to remain alert to potential rules infractions. "If the NCAA punishes a school, it risks losing athletic grants and financial aid," Ford says, "but far worse than the financial impact is the potential damage to the school's reputation. Big schools have big stakes in their reputations, and this is an area where internal auditors can make a huge impact. If the internal auditors can identify potential noncompliance areas and weak controls; fix these areas of weakness; and, as a result, prevent a major rules violation, they've done their college or university a great favor."

MANAGEMENT BUY-IN

"I think first and foremost, to have any kind of positive impact in this arena, the internal auditors need to have 'buy-in' from management throughout the university, up to and including the president, who is a voting member of the NCAA," says Little. In the past, her audit department investigated athletic department cases and presented evidence of rules infractions, but in some instances the administration refused to take any action. "An internal auditor can spend a lot of time and effort gathering data and putting together a report, and then administrators sweep all that work under the carpet--as if the fraud didn't even exist," she says.

Attitudes at her school changed, however, when fraud in the athletic department found its way into the media and the university came close to losing a national sports title. "After that, management became much more conscientious about making every effort to follow the rules," says Little.

Unfortunately, it's often the shame of media attention and the threat to reputation that sparks action. "Any administrator of any school that's been publicly accused of an NCAA rules violation will tell you that it creates a media frenzy," says Ford. The details of the situation rarely matter. Sometimes university management chooses to ignore known illicit activities; or someone-an administrator, a president, a faculty athletics representative-appreciates a particular player's or team s accomplishments and looks away from activities that seem a little unusual. Even when administrators react, there's often counterpressure to take actions of limited effectiveness. Too often, it's not until the matter becomes public and the media gets involved, that real indictments are handed down.