College Football Rules Violations: NCAA Can Help Prevent Player-Agent Misconduct

If you log onto the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s website and take a quick peak, you will see all of the information that is available to student-athletes and prospective student-athletes. And there indeed is some good stuff.

You will find subheadings such as “Student-Athlete Experience,” and “Student-Athlete Well Being.”

These things are good.

There’s information about drug and alcohol abuse, nutrition, depression, how to balance school and athletics, and how to prevent hazing.

Fantastic.

But I have to ask a simple question: Where can student-athletes go for help with the one issue that has been tainting college football programs for years, most notably this year?

That issue, of course, is the interaction between student-athletes and agents.

USC received a loss of scholarships and a two-year bowl ban this past summer due to infractions on behalf of former Trojan and current New Orleans Saint running back Reggie Bush.

North Carolina holds its breath while the NCAA continues to conduct an investigation into illegal contact between a number of its players and an agent, a situation that looks just as messy, if not more so, as USC’s.

Georgia wide receiver A.J. Green will sit out the first four games of his team’s season because he sold one of his jerseys to a man who the NCAA later declared as an agent.

Those are three examples, but there have been many more.

And for what?

It’s partly because the NCAA has been more concerned with playing watchdog than helping guardian when it comes to college athletes and their respective football programs interacting with interested agents.

The NCAA would rather divvy up the responsibility to others and then hide in the weeds until it’s time to pounce on a case and levy a sanction.

In a question and answer transcript on the NCAA’s website, Rachel Newman, the director of Agent, Gambling and Amateurism Activities, says that professional leagues and players’ associations must be more involved.

Since neither the NCAA nor schools have jurisdiction over agents, Newman says, there is only so much they can do.

Newman makes a valid point, but the problem is that it doesn’t answer the question of whether or not the NCAA is doing all it can do to help bridge the gap between players and agents. 

The Uniform Athlete Agents Act

There has been attempts to regulate agents alone.

The Uniform Athlete Agents Act is a model state law that attempts to regulate agents by making them register with a state authority, usually the Secretary of State.

The UAAA seems like a nice attempt at policing college sports, but it drowns in its own leaks.

For one, the laws regulating agents are not the same in every state and of the 40 states that have adopted the UAAA, some make provisions to “meet the specific needs of that state.”

Three of the states that have not adopted the UAAA—California, Michigan, and Ohio—happen to be hotbeds for recruiting and home to three of America’s most prestigious college football programs.

Instead of having one governing body that everyone adheres to, the NCAA sits back and feeds the Committee on Infractions a piece of new meat from time to time.

And how does the committee determine who should be sanctioned and who shouldn’t?

It’s not all that clear.

According to the NCAA, a school “must either have known or should have known or had culpability” in order to receive a penalty.

Um, some clarification please? How do we define “should?”

And that’s the problem.

What happens between players and agents is mostly guesswork on behalf of the NCAA until someone fesses up.

Either way, it doesn’t prevent the NCAA from throwing around its presence as the overseer of everything right and good with college athletics.

The NCAA doesn’t need a great reason to hit you with a sanction. It just needs to feel like it’s being walked on by the "offender." 

How Can the NCAA Help?

I’m not sure that there’s any great and surefire solution to these issues because, when it comes down to it, agents don’t work for the NCAA and college-aged kids will have a hard time turning away from free gifts and cash.

But what the NCAA needs to try to do is create a department that facilitates interaction between college athletes and agents.

Agents are out there competing like every other business in America. If they find a loophole, they are going to exploit it.

Conversely, it shouldn’t be wrong for kids who have excelled at their sports in college to have exposure to those who may represent them at the professional level.

Technically, under the NCAA’s rules, it’s not. 

Players can meet with agents, they just can’t accept anything for free.

But we know that’s ridiculous.

The NCAA isn’t concerned with preventing such things as much as it is with punishing people for them. 

There needs to be a way for agents and players to come together through the NCAA. 

No, the NCAA can’t control what agents do, but it can control how its players interact with them. 

Agents should have to set up meetings with players through a department, and players should have to keep a log of conversations that they have with agents.

Any compliance office could at least do that much.

Will it stop all agents from creeping around at night and supplying players with free trips, cars, and other benefits? Probably not.

But if it decreases that type of shady conduct a little bit, then it’s a win.

“It’s going to take a collective effort with the leagues and the players’ associations, the coaches, the student-athletes themselves, to find out what the real tools are that we can use,” new NCAA president Mark Emmert told The Associated Press. “The NCAA’s role is pulling all of the parties together.”

That’s the most encouraging news we have heard to date.

Now it’s up to the NCAA to act on it and do everything it can to help athletes intelligently interact with agents, not just punish them for it.

Follow Teddy Mitrosilis on Twitter. You can reach him at [e-mail].