SportsLetter

In California, things just got a little clearer for high school recruits

The Chronicle of Higher Education is reporting that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed into law the Student-Athletes’ Right to Know Act.

From the Chronicle of Higher Education:

The new law requires coaches who recruit in California to disclose, among other things, institutional and NCAA policies on medical expenses, scholarship renewals, and transfers for athletes. Supporters of the measure say it will help athletes and their families better understand the implications of accepting an athletics scholarship—and will hold universities accountable for the promises their coaches make.

Building character through sports ... starts at home

Rivalry week came a bit early for one Michigan State University football player.  The Detroit News reports that sophomore tight end Dion Sims is among 10 men charged in a scheme to steal and sell 104 Detroit Public Schools computers. Valued at $158,800, the laptops were stolen from five schools from December 2009 to January 2010.  The computers were then sold on Craigslist, eBay and to friends and acquaintances of the defendants.

Not to be outdone, Sim's father, Donald Lewis Sims Jr., has been charged in a felony case of computer theft at the University of Michigan.  Reports The Detroit News, "the elder Sims, who was employed at the university, is accused of fraudently [sic] purchasing at least 75 computers and 14 computer-related items valued at about $74,000. He's also accused of spending about $14,000 in other fraudulent purchases."

Under Armour pursues the girls’ & women's apparel market

After establishing itself as a player in the men's fitness apparel arena -- primarily around the testosterone-fueled 'We Must Protect This House" media campaign -- Under Armour is launching an effort to capture a piece of the girls' and women's sports apparel market, according to a New York Times article.

While Under Armour's previous attempts at trying to create a line of women's clothing were unsuccessful, company founder Kevin A. Plank predicts “women’s apparel some day will be larger than our men’s apparel business, which is our goal.”

The company's new television and digital campaign, introduced this past Wednesday, will target the "team girl," which Under Armour defines as "a female who is competitive and confident and who plays on high school or college sports teams, or who, after college, continues to work out regularly."  Or, perhaps, is an 11-year-old tennis player.

The campaign will be called, and we are not making this up, “Protect This House. I Will.”

Changes to Title IX compliance policy

Last week Vice President Joe Biden announced that the Obama administration had repealed a 2005 policy change to Title IX that had altered the way compliance to the law was measured in universities.

In lieu of the accepted construct of proportionality, the 2005 Additional Clarification of Intercollegiate Athletics Policy allowed universities to use surveys of student body interest in sports in order to assess athletic interest amongst women students.

Critics of the policy argued that the surveys unfairly skewed the results such that there was an appearance of disinterest in sports in the female student body.

Joanna L. Grossman, in her review of the history of enforcement of Title IX, highlighted the main criticism of the 2005 Clarification:

Reliance on student interest surveys is troubling because it compounds past discrimination against women as athletes. Schools create interest by funding teams, hiring top-notch coaches, providing scholarships, and promoting their sports programs. Cold surveys are much more likely to reveal stereotypes resulting from past discrimination than true interest levels. Moreover, student athletes are unlikely to apply – and thus be in the surveyed population – to a school that does not offer the sport in which they specialize. Even worse, the policy expressly permitted schools to permit all non-responses as indicators of non-interest, even though there are many reasons a survey recipient may not respond.

Vancouver Athletes’ Election

Angela Ruggiero, of the USA ice hockey team, and Adam Pengilly, a British bobsledder, have been elected to the International Olympic Committee’s Athletes Commission by fellow Olympians at the Vancouver Olympic Winter Games. 

You can re-read Ruggiero’s 2006 SportsLetter interview here.

LOI out loud

Lost in all of the melodrama and artificial angst of college football's National Letter of Intent signing day was the fact that February 4 also was the initial signing date for other NCAA sports.  Like their football classmates, many high school athletes from the sports of field hockey, soccer, track and field, cross country, and men's water polo gathered friends and family around them, committed to a college, and fired off their Letters of Intent (LOI). 

Dyestat broke down the track and field and cross country signings on a school-by-school basis.  Oregon's signing of track phenom Jordan Hasay, who delighted crowds at Hayward Field when she ran in last summer's Olympic Trials, seems to have been the coup of the day.  

Increasingly, private clubs are playing a role in the development of high school athletes.  Nowhere was this more evident than in the list of incoming men's college soccer players.

Recruit yourself. We can help.

When high school athletes are talented enough or play in big-time athletic programs, college recruiting magazines often are hovering around to observe every dig, block or throw.

For athletes who play on less-publicized teams, or have talents they feel have been underappreciated or overlooked, or who simply don’t want college coaches eating ‘tater salad and watching movies with their grandmothers, there are other options. 

Recruiting services, or private athletic-recruiting counselors, will put together a recruiting package and forward that package to selected universities.  Like most personalized services, there are fees, and some of those fees can be a bit hefty for a family trying to feed an offensive lineman.  As documented in a recent Wall Street Journal article, there are other options.  With costs ranging from free to nearly $1,000, “do-it-yourself” recruiting websites enable parents and athletes to produce recruiting packages on their own.  As one parent from the article put it, "You really can do this stuff yourself.  To pay someone $2,000 just seems crazy."

This year, Jamestown College in North Dakota has nine freshmen on its football team the coaches found through one of the “do-it-yourself” websites.  For the record, the NAIA Division II school finished with an overall record of 7-3 and a 5-2 record in the Dakota Athletic Conference; good enough for second place in the conference, but not quite good enough to get invited to the 16 team NAIA Football Championship.

Hitting the books

We’ve witnessed some exciting moments in the 2008-09 college football bowl season, with more sure to follow.  As college teams hope to continue their successful seasons with a bowl victory on the field, the Associated Press has taken the time to look at the effort colleges have made in the other half of the student-athlete equation.  According to a recent AP article :

The last five years have seen an astounding jump in the time, money and resources devoted to academic support for student-athletes, even as some faculty complain that just plain students are being left behind. To learn more about the trend, The Associated Press surveyed the 65 schools from the six major conferences involved in the Bowl Championship Series plus independent Notre Dame.

The AP started work before the first kickoff of the season and eventually obtained at least some financial information from 45 schools about the resources they devote to graduating athletes.

The picture formed by the data is one of schools frequently spending more than $1 million annually on academic support, with some spending hundreds of thousands of dollars more in 2008 than they did in 2004, the AP found. Eight BCS schools reported spending increases of more than 70 percent in the last five years.

Four -- South Florida, Illinois, Georgia and Kansas -- more than doubled spending.

Helping athletes graduate has become its own academic profession. A national group for people who work in the field has nearly doubled its membership to around 1,000 in just two years. Many work in new academic centers devoted exclusively to athletes.

Behind the spending binge, fueled by both public and private funds, are toughened NCAA regulations that now punish schools for poor academic performance.