BREAKING: Organization with a reputation for bone-headed decisions makes yet another bone-headed decision.
The NCAA’s intractability as it relates to the Braxton Beverly situation is actually instructive into how the organization works and provides an insight into the organization’s line of thinking in the UNC case as well as weightier issues such as whether players should be paid.
In case you missed it, Beverly is a freshman basketball player at NC State. He originally committed to Ohio State and enrolled in summer classes after apparently being assured Buckeyes coach Thad Matta’s job was secure. Well, Matta was fired in June and Beverly sought and was granted a release to follow his high school coach A.W. Hamilton who was named a new assistant coach at NC State. The system worked exactly as it should. Matta’s situation changed and the school granted Beverly an unconditional release to go wherever he wanted
The problem is, under NCAA rules, because Beverly began taking classes at tOSU, he is considered a transfer student and is subject to NCAA transfer rules, meaning he has to sit out this year. Beverly and NC State, with the support of both Matta and tOSU, went through the NCAA waiver process but that waiver was denied, a decision announced at the same time the NCAA’s decision on the UNC situation was announced, providing plenty of fodder for jokes about how Beverly went to class and is ineligible but dozens of UNC players didn’t go to class and the NCAA says that’s fine. It was later announced that the NCAA had denied Beverly’s appeal of the ruling and it appears he must sit this season, though he can practice with the Wolfpack and will have four years of eligibility remaining.
First things first: the NCAA’s decision on Beverly’s eligibility is silly. There is absolutely no reason to deny Beverly the chance to play at State this year. Most NCAA rules are reactionary; that is, they are passed in response to a situation rather than trying to prevent one. Transfer rules are typically designed to keep it from being an open, free-agent season and to keep schools from poaching players already on a roster. That was clearly not the case here. Beverly committed to Ohio State, but more important he committed to Thad Matta. When Matta was fired way outside the typical time for coaching moves, Beverly chose to leave. There was no competitive advantage gained for NC State and no disadvantage to Ohio State. Matta and tOSU supported Beverly’s transfer, and Matta even wrote the NCAA on Beverly’s behalf. It would seem to be a no-brainer to let the kid play.
Only there’s one problem: there does not appear to be a mechanism under NCAA bylaws by which the residency requirement can be waived. NCAA Bylaw 14.7.2 defines the four situations under which this can happen, and unfortunately common sense isn’t among them. They all do with either health or NCAA sanction or loss of eligibility, none of which apply to Beverly. I am not a compliance expert, but by my reading of NCAA bylaws, there does not appear to be a process within NCAA rules for Beverly to be eligible to play in Raleigh this year despite tweets from Debbie Yow or impassioned pleas from Beverly himself.
While it makes for low-hanging fruit for jokes and biting commentary about the NCAA’s inaction in the UNC academic scandal versus penalizing a kid for going to class, there is a crucial difference in the two situations: there is an actual NCAA rule regarding what defines a transfer and what happens in a transfer situation. Like it or not, there was no specific bylaw the NCAA Committee on Infractions could attach to the situation at Carolina. That was the primary rationale behind the third notice of allegations and the trumped-up charge of improper benefits, so that there was a specific bylaw violation with which to charge UNC. Then again, in instances where the NCAA has pushed the boundaries of allegations, like the Penn State case, it hasn’t gone well for the organization. Whether or not the NCAA heeded the lessons of Penn State or was cowed into inaction by UNC’s thinly veiled threats of protracted legal action, without a specific bylaw violation, it was hard to the NCAA to prosecute a case against Carolina.
On the other hand, in instances where there is a specific violation, the NCAA is notorious for not only sticking to its guns but even bordering on the ridiculous. In the original UNC football issues from 2010, Deunta Williams and Kendric Burney were declared ineligible and held out of games for improper benefits because the NCAA assigned a cash value to crashing at a former teammate’s house and getting a ride to the airport. And this list of things that were all self-reported as violations of NCAA rules is pretty funny (and pretty ridiculous). The point is, when there is a rule in the book, it is likely the NCAA will throw the 414-page book at an offender. It is the NCAA’s slavish adherence to the rule book in the absence of common sense that burnishes the organization’s reputation as bungling, inept, and nonsensical ( I guess we will soon find out if Josh Pastner and Georgia Tech come to the same conclusion).
The other main tenet of dealing with the NCAA that I learned from my five years working at the college level is that the NCAA is not interested in justice, but equity. Again, much of what is in the NCAA manual is a reaction to something that was done at some point and was then legislated against. By removing much of the wiggle room in enforcement and rule interpretation, the NCAA can provide equity for its member institutions, while making justice irrelevant. Justice would be allowing Braxton Beverly to play this year; but then next year, when a player transfers after summer school before his freshman year but without the coach leaving, what should the outcome be? Rather than the NCAA dealing with each case individually, it is just easier for the NCAA to hide behind bylaws. Equal outcomes are the goal, not doing what is right.
It is this NCAA drive for equity that is a significant restrainer to paying college athletes. The NCAA mindset is equity, so any situation that involves player compensation would likely require compensation to be equal among players on a team and among teams in all sports. In other words, the NCAA would require that Walker Miller be compensated the same as Joel Berry and that a player that received $5,000 at Campbell gets $5,000 at California, or Creighton, or Columbia. It doesn’t matter that $5,000 goes a lot further in Buies Creek than it does in Berkeley, Omaha, or Manhattan. It’s very unlikely that, in its current form, the NCAA will ever come up with a method of paying players, and this institutional commitment to equity will be a major barrier.
Hopefully the NCAA will make the correct call and declare Braxton Beverly eligible to play this season. But given their devotion to the rules and to equity rather than justice, Karl Hess has a better chance of seeing the PNC Arena floor than Beverly this season.
