Who Pays the Penalties?

The focus on the UNC women’s basketball program by the media is a troubling feature of the Notice of Allegations from the NCAA.

Only about 10 percent of the findings mention women’s basketball, but perhaps the numerous findings involving Jan Boxill’s advising relationships with the women’s team raises its visibility.

How convenient that a 20 year scandal, involving hundreds of enrollments in fake classes by men’s football and basketball players, may result in women’s basketball paying the most severe public penalties.

Does anyone believe that UNC’s fraudulent system would have come into being in order to support the women’s basketball program?

The incentives to cheat are most apparent in the revenue sports of football and men’s basketball.

For the small number of universities fortunate enough to earn a profit on their athletics programs, so they do not have to subsidize heavily their efforts at Big Time sports, the incentives to coaches and administrators to keep players eligible are huge.  For the vast majority of universities that operate their athletics program at a loss, the incentives to keep players eligible are likely even greater, because any revenue linked to the success of their teams serves as a modest tourniquet on the the hemorrhage of money.

The women’s teams are free riders, apparently taking advantage of a system of deception, but neither motivating nor funding it.

There are a few explanations for why the women’s basketball program has become the current focus.

First, in contrast to the women’s programs, there are many more layers of bureaucracy in the men’s revenue sports, each layer enhancing plausible deniability.

Second, conflicts of interest between generating revenue through maintaining eligibility on the one hand, and assuring a true education on the other, are substantial in football and men’s basketball, creating disincentives to engage in the kinds of overt communication reflected for the women’s basketball program.

There should be penalties for any of the athletics programs that benefited from eligibility resulting from fraud, including the women’s basketball program.

It would be sad, indeed, however, if the women’s program became a scapegoat for the widespread sins.