CRO POV: A Full-Court Press on Athletics Ethics

The move for corporate responsibility in big-time college sports.

By Jay Whitehead

Finally, March Madness is here. I admit that as an alum of perennial basketball powerhouse UCLA, I am a bit loony about the men’s National Collegiate Athletic Association, or NCAA, hoop tourney. This year, the tournament will generate an estimated $1.2 billion in bets, another $1 billion in lost worker productivity (while the workers watch their teams online during work hours), $132.6 million in revenues for the schools (participating schools get a cut of TV, gate and sponsorship revenues) and tens of millions of potential career earnings for the star players (when they turn pro).

That’s a lot of green. The big money has occasionally caused schools to cheat in recruiting top players from high school and from other colleges. When caught, the schools have suffered scandal, fines and an occasional ban from future competition. But a recent piece in The New York Times highlighted how the threat of death-by-disgrace has spawned an industry of firms who defend their client schools from cheating accusations.

Lawyers such as Michael Glazier of Bond, Schoeneck & King and Robin Green Harris and Mark Jones of Ice Miller in Indianapolis are cashing in on the corporate responsibility trend among colleges with big-time sports programs. The schools are hiring these experienced firms to manage their affairs before the NCAA, and often to keep them on the straight-and-narrow before any NCAA action can take place.

The money is often well spent. Like corporations who hire specialty firms in compliance, governance, training, corporate social responsibility (CSR), investor relations, and ethics, these large schools have a vested interest in protecting their brands. An NCAA infraction can invalidate a school’s sports scholarship programs, disqualify them from lucrative tournaments, and tell star recruits to go somewhere else. Some cynics protest schools’ abilities to defend their brands from the impact of bad behavior by coaches, recruiters or players. But I just see it as another facet of the fast-growing corporate responsibility movement.