E-mail a friendMyles Brand
airdate February 5, 2008
In '01, Myles Brand became president of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, vowing to refocus attention on the education of student-athletes. Since, he's changed the national dialogue on college sports. Brand was previously president of Indiana University and the University of Oregon and has held several academic administrative posts. He holds a Ph.D. in philosophy and has written extensively on various topics in higher education, including tenure and undergraduate education.
Myles Brand
Tavis: Dr. Myles Brand is the president of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, the organization that oversees all college athletics in this country. Prior to his current post at the NCAA, he served as president of Indiana University. During his time at IU, "Time" magazine named IU college of the year. Dr. Brand, nice to have you here on the West Coast.
Dr. Myles Brand: Thank you, pleasure.
Tavis: How you been?
Brand: I've been terrific, thank you, Tavis.
Tavis: It's good to see you. Let me start by asking - we're headed toward March Madness, as we all know, so the madness of this election season isn't the only madness we're focusing on around here. Tell me, if you could, in short order what the state of the NCAA is.
Brand: I think we're in good shape, more so than in the past. The context for college sports is higher education, and one of the things I've been stressing since I've been in this post for about five years is to make sure our student athletes get a good education at our great colleges and universities and do well, and get an education and graduate. So few become professional athletes, it's the education of all of them, and we're doing a lot better in that regard.
Tavis: When you said, "We're doing better," tell me what you mean by that, because I think there are still a lot of people, with all due respect to the work the NCAA does, that think first about athletics. It's not student athlete, it's athlete, then student.
Brand: There's no question that that's the general perception, you're absolutely right. But what most people don't understand, and you just have to look at the data, student athletes graduate at higher rates than the general student body, and that's true in every demographic category.
Tavis: Say that again: student athletes, in fact, graduate at higher rates?
Brand: Yes, they have, for the last eight to 10 years. They've been graduating at higher rates. And women graduate higher than men in general student body, as well as student athletes. But the young men graduate, as well, and what's really important is it's in every demographic category.
So for example, this past year African American males in the division one area graduated at 37 percent. African American male basketball players, who we always pick on but in fact are doing very well graduated 4 percent higher than the general African American male student body, and African American male football players graduated 13 percent higher than the general African American male student body. Now I don't want to say that that's perfect -
Tavis: Yeah, as an African American male, I ain't jumping up and down about that, pardon my English. But that said, what's driving - I hear the point you're making. What's driving (unintelligible)?
Brand: But I want to add something, that we shouldn't take too much solace in that, because African American males aren't graduating at a high enough rate to begin with.
Tavis: Exactly.
Brand: So while the student athletes are doing better, there's still a lot of room for success. What's changing it? I think it's a bunch of things. First of all, they're coming prepared better (unintelligible) school days, because they know that they have to be prepared in order to participate. So they're doing a little better in preparation.
Also the coaches and the support staff help motivate them. And mostly, I think, it's the young men themselves and the young women themselves. Student athletes are highly motivated individuals, they want to succeed. And if you create an environment in which they can succeed, they will.
Tavis: You've hit a couple of them in a roundabout way - there's some perennial issues that I suspect anyone who's the head of the NCAA has to deal with. In no particular order, I want to throw a few of them out there. One of them is the issues of coaches. This is an issue that you've taken head-on, but there is still a concern - I won't say a growing concern, but a concern that there are not enough coaches of color, namely, African Americans, certainly, and others. What do we do about that issue?
Brand: Well, it's interesting. In basketball, there is a critical mass, and we're well-represented, African American male basketball players. And let me talk about division one, because those are the games that most people pay attention to. In college football in division one, it is nothing short than a dramatic embarrassment.
It's just not acceptable. The number of African American male head football coaches is less than 10 out of 120, despite the fact that African American males make up about 50 percent of the football players. It's just intolerable.
Tavis: In professional football, we just saw, of course, the Super Bowl days ago. In professional football, they have this thing, you well know, called the Rooney Rule, and for those who know sports, this is the rule established by the owner of the Steelers that put in place that you have to interview African Americans as head coaches if, in fact, there is an opening in the NFL. Is there a similar rule in the NCAA? What power do you have or not have to impact that number?
Brand: Well, a couple of points there. First of all, I don't have the authority to do it. Professional sports is a league of owners. I'm head of a membership organization, so I don't have the power, but I don't think that's where we should look for the solution, in any case. It turns out that over one-third of the final interviewees for head coaching positions in division 1A are African American coaches, and that's information provided by the Black Coaches Association.
That's reliable information. The problem is not the interviews. The problem is they're not getting the jobs. These are excellent coaches. These coaches have come up through the ranks, they've been what we call coordinators, offensive, defensive coordinators, and they're still not getting the jobs.
Tavis: So what does the NCAA attribute that reality to? If they're getting the interviews and still not being hired but they're qualified, what's the?
Brand: You have to look at where the hiring takes place and who does the hiring. I think the athletic directors have a major role to play. I was the university president of two major universities, and I listened very carefully when my athletic director made a recommendation about who the next coach should be. So we have to get more to the athletic directors.
And the good news is that we're finally being able to break through that. Again, the Black Coaches Association's been helpful. Actually, the NFL has been very helpful. We've been working with key NFL coaches, including Tony Dungy, to help identify where the opportunities are, and to help people understand the quality of our candidates.
Tavis: One of the other perennial issues that you deal with in the NCAA office I suspect is that very issue, speaking of the NFL, college players making the transition to the pro leagues. You have one rule for basketball players turning pro, and another rule for football players turning pro. Describe the difference and tell me where you're making progress on that.
Brand: Yeah, that's not our rule. It's -
Tavis: It's the NFL rule, actually, exactly.
Brand: It's the NFL rule or the NBA rule.
Tavis: And the NBA rule - the other way around, precisely.
Brand: These are age limitations, and that's actually an anti-trust problem. And the only way you can get around that anti-trust problem to get an exemption to that law is to have labor personnel, labor management agreements. So the labor management agreements is between the union of the NBA player's association and the NBA and football, it's an agreement between the player's association and the NFL.
And those players' associations and management have reached those agreements, so until recently you can go directly from high school into the NBA; now it's one year, which I think is an improvement. We can talk about that, too. The NFL requires three years. I think actually major league baseball may have the best idea.
What you have to do is in a high school, when you're a high school junior or senior, you say, "I'm going to either go directly to the pros," which means you go into the minor leagues for baseball, or, "I'm going to go to college." And if you go to college, you're committed for a minimum of three years. And many of the students realize after three years they're (unintelligible) professional players, but they're so far down the road (unintelligible) for football players that they do go on and get their degrees.
Tavis: I said it backwards; I'm glad you corrected me. It is the professional league's rule, not your rule. What I wanted to get at, though, is what the NCAA thinks of those rules. It certainly impacts your players.
Brand: They certainly impact our players. I don't even get consulted on this, but it doesn't mean I don't have an opinion.
Tavis: Well, you're consulted tonight. If nobody else asks your opinion, I ask you. So go ahead, yeah.
Brand: Listen, I appreciate that. I think I like the NFL and the major league baseball players. We don't want to spoil anyone's dreams to go to the pros but there's nothing more important, even for someone who's going to be a professional athlete, than getting an education. I think that's absolutely critical. So I want to make sure they have every opportunity to get an education, and I'd like to see them stay in school three years, minimum.
And by then, you understand whether you're going to be a pro or not, and the vast majority, of course, young men aren't going to be pros. But then they will go on and get an education and get their degree. The NBA has improved, and I know the NBA itself would like to go from one year to two-year rules. Two years is better than one, one's better than zero.
I think it is good for the young men. Let me give you an example. Greg Oden, who is a big star recently, went pro after one year. He played at Ohio State. I understand from the athletic director at Ohio State that he's now taken an apartment in Columbus, Ohio, so that when he's off-season he can go back to school. Now that's terrific, and if he didn't have an opportunity to play one year, he wouldn't be able to do that, as well.
Tavis: Your example of Greg Oden raises another issue. So they leave early, many of them; those who can, of course, to go pro, to make the money - the money that they cannot make while they're playing in the NCAA, although they generate a whole lot of income for Ohio State, Indiana, all these institutions. What say the NCAA these days about that issue of pay that keeps coming up?
Brand: It keeps coming up, but remember, I mentioned before that the context for college sports is higher education. The context for professional sports is the entertainment industry. So we just went through a wonderful Super Bowl. I know it was a very exciting Super Bowl.
Tavis: For the last five minutes, at least.
Brand: Yeah.
Tavis: Another issue, though. Go ahead.
Brand: Well, we would have gotten there if it wasn't for the earlier part.
Tavis: Fair enough. (Laughter)
Brand: I like the outcome, but we could argue about that some other place. (Laughter) But the key point is that that was really an entertainment extravaganza. It was a week in town; it was promotions on Fox for a long time. It was an enormous entertainment - that's not what happens in college sports, because those who participate in college sports are students.
A few of them will turn professional, obviously, but very few. The numbers here are startling. There are 500,000 young men playing high school basketball at any one time. Five thousand of those - the most elite 1 percent - ever get a chance to play division one men's basketball. One percent of those, 50, ever get a chance for a tryout in the NBA.
So 1 percent of 1 percent ever gets a tryout in the NBA. We can't shape our program around that 1 percent of 1 percent. We have to really look at what's going on for the vast majority of students.
Tavis: The critics, though, if they were here, Dr. Brand, would see it a little bit differently, and they would see it this way, and you've heard this argument many times before. The argument is essentially this, that it is about entertainment for the NCAA. They're not building these massive stadiums and coaches signing these massive contracts to promote gear, etc., etc., because they care about the education of these kids, first and foremost.
This is entertainment, and it is big business for the NCAA, and there are those who then argue that if it's going to be big business for the NCAA and for these institutions, these member organizations, then why not give these kids a stipend or something beyond what they get?
Brand: Well, they get a full education and those who are in need get all their expenses paid. There's nothing left over. So the fact of the matter is, they are getting an education which right now in some institutions could be a couple hundred thousand dollars before they're finished, not to mention all the coaching. And if they are potential professional athletes, they get a lot of free publicity as well as great coaching.
So there is some of that going on, but why don't we just pay them? You've got to understand the context, again, of higher education. College sports provides educational value for those who participate. This is the key, and I'm going to come back to the special athletes in a second. Anyone who thinks that college is only about the library, the lecture hall, and the laboratory really doesn't understand what happens in college.
What happens in college is a maturation process where young people come, often from an environment that isn't as enriched as the one at the university, and they mature and they become leaders and they become wonderful citizens. That's what happens in college. And only some of that happens in the classroom. So the value that athletics has, along with other opportunities such as music and working for the student newspaper and so on is an important part of a college education. Therefore, we want to increase the number of students who have that privilege of playing sports, not just basketball and football.
So we'll have, at a major university, 600, 800 or more students playing, even though a men's basketball team only has 13. So what happens is that the revenue that comes in from football and basketball, the CBS contract that you were referring to, the billions of dollars, that money goes back to the athletic department to help support the other students, young men and women, in order to get that educational value.
Tavis: I wonder - let me take you back to the point you made a moment ago, Dr. Brand - I wonder whether or not you think that college athletics still represents all that goodness, for lack of a better term, that you referenced a moment ago. I think of Earl Warren, the former chief justice of the United States, Supreme Court and former governor of California.
Earl Warren once said that when he woke up in the morning, he would read the sports pages first because it told of man's accomplishment. I'm glad he's not around here today, because when you read the sports pages these days it's not always about accomplishment, it's about the drama and the hell that these people are wreaking as individuals on the lives of other people.
Not everybody, of course, but there's too much of that in the sports pages. I raise that only because I want to bring you back to the question of whether or not you think that college athletics still represents all that goodness, as opposed to cheating and I haven't got any steroids, and other issues I want to come to in just a second.
Brand: I'm an advocate, not an apologist, for college sports. There is a lot that's wrong with college sports, and some of it is even getting worse, rather than better, so there are problems. By and large, I think it does a better job than the sports media gives it credit. The vast majority of student athletes - there are almost 400,000 student athletes right now in the NCAA, and yes, some of them get on the wrong pages of the newspaper, and there are problems in some cases, and we have to try and fix those problems.
And there are systemic problems, as well as individuals. I agree with all that. Being an advocate, I want to fix those problems and make it better. So it's not perfect, but it is good.
Tavis: Steroids, I mentioned a moment ago. We know the story far too well with baseball. Now there's talk about testing in golf and every other major professional sports league. What's your sense of whether or not it's an issue as yet in college sports, how do you stay ahead of the curve, as opposed to being behind the curve, like baseball, no pun intended?
Brand: Right. We started testing in '86. We have the strictest testing rules out there, including the professional leagues. You're caught once, you're out for a year. You're caught twice, you can't participate in college sports ever again. We test year-round, every sport, unannounced. We'll knock on your door and test not only at championships but also during the season as well as off-season.
We follow the World Anti-Doping Association rules, which are the toughest rules around, the same as the Olympics, tougher than any of the professional leagues. We use an independent testing group, the UCLA group, which is the same one that the Olympics use. I wouldn't say we're perfect. I'm not going to argue that we're perfect, but the fact is we don't have a systemic problem because we're really working it hard. In addition to all that, we have systematic education that every student athlete must participate in in all three divisions now.
Tavis: Vegas a couple of days ago made a whole lot of money, I would suspect, on the outcome of that game. I could be wrong about that, but I don't think I am. Of course whatever the outcome is, Vegas always makes money one way or the other. So I know they made money, that's what they're designed to do. Vegas made a bunch of money at the Super Bowl game the other day.
The NBA, we were talking about earlier, David Stern jumped on it as quickly as he could with that whole point-shaving scandal with some of the referees. Your sense of how comfortable you are with your referees and with that story never becoming a story in NCAA?
Brand: Frightens me. It really does. There's very little that is as threatening to sports as gambling. Because what happens when you're engaged in a gambling scandal is that whether it's professional or college, people think the games are rigged, they aren't fair. And once that happens, no one's interested anymore. You turn college sports into professional wrestling.
That's the worst thing that could possibly happen. And there have been, in the past, gambling scandals involving high school and college basketball. In New York City, for example, there were famous scandals in the fifties. Recently, we haven't seen one - or at least no major ones - but we watch that very carefully. As far as we know, the referees are okay, but we don't know that for sure. In fact, we're starting to work with the NBA, who has a very good program for trying to elicit from referees what their positions are on this.
And so we'll follow that through, but gambling is always something you have to watch out for in sports. It could be the ruination of sports.
Tavis: I raised one health issue earlier, the issue of steroids, of course. I see that as a health issue, first and foremost, even more so than cheating. And the issue of obesity. I think for those of who are sports fans, my friend Bryant Gumbel on Real Sports on HBO did a wonderful piece I think this last season about these high school football players who are doing every - you probably saw it.
Brand: Yeah, I have.
Tavis: Everything they can to bulk up in every way they possibly can imagine so that they have a better chance at getting a scholarship to play college football with the hopes, of course, of going pro. So you're getting these kids who are well over 300 pounds coming to college trying to play. And every now and then we read a story of some college athlete who we thought was in decent shape dying on the field. But what do you make of this obesity issue with these high school kids trying to get into college football?
Brand: I think it's absolutely horrendous. It's very dangerous for them, and it's a terrible precedent to set. It's not going to help them, frankly, on the football field. If you watch the Super Bowl, one of the things I noticed is that the Super Bowl players, the best players are getting thinner and in better shape.
Tavis: Strahan's a good example of that.
Brand: He's a super example of that. For example, so it isn't just how big you are, it's clearly a health issue. It's so short-sighted of those parents - and that's who I blame, not the young kids as much - parents and the coaches, those high school coaches or junior high school coaches, I blame them. So short-sighted that the only thing that counts is winning. Your health counts, your integrity counts.
To ruin your life so that you'll have a chance to play division one football just doesn't make any sense in the world, and I'm glad those kinds of stories are coming out. We need to shine some light on those stories, because there are bad practices out there. Again, I'm not an apologist, I'm an advocate, which means we've got some real problems that we have to fix, and that's just another one of them.
Tavis: Let's talk about Title IX and how we're doing with Title IX. Certainly women's sports, I raise this issue in the context of a year ago, the story about the Rutgers women's basketball team. The story, of course, was about Don Imus, who's now back on the radio. That was a huge story. What did not get covered enough for me in the context of that story was that C Vivian Stringer finally got the pay that she deserved as a women's basketball coach, as compared to the male coaches at Rutgers.
And so that story didn't get talked about very much, we focused on Imus. But talk to me about Title IX and the women athletes, and for that matter, women coaches.
Brand: Right. Title IX is one of the success stories. Again, we're not all the way there, but there are six times as many women now playing college sports than there were in 1972, when it was first passed. It turns out that women coaches, first of all, are a threatened breed. The fact of the matter is that we're seeing fewer and fewer women coaches, even in women's basketball, than we've seen in the past.
In fact, there's a decline since 1972 to now. We've gone from about 50 percent all the way down to 20 percent in the last decade. What's going on? Why aren't the women now participating as coaches now that women's athletics is becoming more interesting to the general public? That's a problem. There are differences in pay, and we've seen some lawsuits that are beginning to rectify the problem, but not enough yet. We do have exceptions like Pat Summit, who is making a good dollar, but by and large, there's a problem there.
Tavis: I'm not an expert here, but it sounds to me like you have an issue with some of these ADs, because the ADs are the guys - male and female, mostly males - the ADs pick all the coaches for men's basketball, for women's basketball, for football. What kind of relationship does the NCAA have with ADs?
Brand: The ADs I know, and I know a number of them who are very good and committed to the student athletes, committed to the coaches, they struggle a little. The ADs actually have the hardest job, I think, right now in college sports. They're caught in the middle. On the one hand, they're trying to create enough revenue. All but six universities lose money on college sports, if you can believe that, because they have to support all those other teams besides football and basketball.
And the fact of the matter is that they're stuck in the middle. They're trying to raise more revenue and they're trying to I think serve the needs of higher education. They have the hardest job to do. Doesn't mean they do everything right, either, and we can help them in the NCAA, in terms of regulation and best practices. But many of them try very hard.
Tavis: I've only got a minute to go here right quick. I mentioned earlier you were former president of IU, my alma mater, Indiana University. Go, Hoosiers.
Brand: Yeah. (Laughter)
Tavis: Not a bad basketball team this year, in fact. But in 45 seconds, you're the first president, if my facts are right, and if not the first, certainly the first in a long time to come not from athletics but from being the president of an institution to heading the NCAA, yes?
Brand: First and only
Tavis: First and only, all right, so I was right about that.
Brand: Yes, you are.
Tavis: So what do you bring, mostly? What are you benefited by, having been a college president and now running the NCAA?
Brand: I think I understand better and try and really enforce the idea that we are part of higher education. That this is all about the students, and it's their academic success that matters most to me. Yes, I enjoy athletics, and part of my job is to make sure it runs well. But the fact of the matter, if those students don't succeed in the classroom as well as on the field of play, it's not working. So I'm very much concerned, really, to make sure that they get a good education.
Tavis: A lot of madness around these primary elections right about now, but in just a few weeks from now the madness will switch to college basketball and Myles Brand, of course, the head of the NCAA. Nice to have you on the program, enjoyed the conversation.
Brand: Pleasure.
Tavis: Dr. Brand, good to see you.
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