More On the NCAA

As the NCAA approached its 75th anniversary last year, problems within college football's high-pressured, big-money environment continued to mount. Recruiting violations became extensive; the percentage of college football players actually receiving degrees was atrociously low at many schools; and, falsified grade transcripts from rinky-dink junior colleges became the new vogue for athletes to satisfy academic eligibility requirements.

Two weeks ago, the NCAA called a special convention of its top football schools (those classified Division 1-A, including the Ivy League) to respond to a threat by the College Football Association (CFA), a splinter group composed of 61 leading Division 1-A members. Originally formed to tighten recruiting rules and academic standards within the NCAA, the CFA has been bucking for greater control of college football's destiny, most prominently in the area of television contracts.

Specifically, the CFA threatened to go against NCAA rules by signing a television contract for its member schools with the National Broadcasting Company, which has not televised college football since 1964. The NCAA recently signed a $263.5-million agreement with the Columbia Broadcasting System and the American Broadcasting Company giving these two networks sole permission to televise college football until 1985. Oklahoma and Texas, the leading spokesmen for the CFA, have filed a lawsuit against the NCAA, maintaining that the televising of a school's games was a right belonging solely to the individual school. The CFA schools asked last week to join the lawsuit. A victory for the CFA would threaten what positive regulatory influence the NCAA currently does have over college sports.

Rather than lose the CFA schools--and their tremendous television appeal--entirely, the NCAA provided for a compromise solution at the special convention. The organization offered a restructuring of Division 1-A that would guarantee the CFA schools a majority in the division, to presumably run their football businesses as they please.

As a result, the Ivy League and nearly 40 other schools--those the CFA saw as obstructing its path to power--have been left out in the cold, forced to drop down to the less-distinguished Division 1-AA.

In one sense, the NCAA's compromise was its only alternative and the decision to freeze out the smaller schools kept the organization intact. On Monday, the NCAA temporarily won the television battle, as the CFA broke its agreement with NBC. For now the CFA has been sufficiently pacified by the move to restructure Division 1-A, and will adhere to contracts negotiated by the NCAA.

If the NCAA had taken a hard line with the CFA, and the college football powers had gone through with their threat to act independently of the parent organization, the NCAA would have lost any remaining control over the CFA in all areas, including recruiting and academic standards. By making the compromise the NCAA has retained jurisdiction over its most frequent offenders.

But in another sense, by giving in to the CFA, the NCAA has compromised its principles, which in the past have been to reward those who adhered to their standards, academic and otherwise, and to punish those who did not.