The National Collegiate Athletic Association

NCAA CASE STUDY

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The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is an association formed back in the late 1905 by President Theodore Roosevelt. Spanning over a century the organization’s main goal is to promote sports in a safe, fair and equitable manner and integrate the same into the main highlight of their functioning- education. Education has always been a main focus point for NCAA, and all the funds generated through television and marketing of the sports is out towards student athlete’s betterment such as scholarship, aids, better facilities etc.

With the inflow of increasing funds, the NCAA went on to become a growing monopolistic and monopolistic structure. Its orientation began to shift from its mission to integrate sports and education for student athletes to increasing its amount of funds and financial stability. As the organization began to gain almost all the power, there were claims and reports from critics and its member institutions that the NCAA had slowly shifted its focus and is no more aware of its responsibilities. Other claims included it becoming more corrupt, money minded, cartel-like structure, absence of proper leadership most importantly lacks coherence as its got its priorities mixed up.

However, the NCAA is a clear example of a growing commercial success, the various steps it has taken to become what it is now. No college sport is considered complete without NCAA. This organization serves as a clear example of a successful business enterprise that has managed to establish a monopoly in the area of college athletics.

PART 1

1. As outlined in the case, describe the mission of the NCAA. In addition, name the stakeholders being addressed in the mission statement as well as other stakeholders who should be considered.

The NCAA was an organization that supported over 89 collegiate national championships over 23 sports across three divisions. As such a huge body that governs many student athletes from different fields of the sport, its mission was to “govern competition in a safe, equitable and sportsmanlike manner and integrate inter collegiate athletics into higher education so that the educational experience of the student athlete is paramount.” As explained in the mission, which is self-explanatory, all the work they put in was towards giving the student athlete a holistic college experience. According to the NCAA News Archive,  their main core purpose was to “ensure that the intercollegiate model of athletics serves as an integral part of higher education and that college athletics are conducted in a manner that ensures fair, safe competition for student-athletes." Through both of the above, that is the purpose and the mission, we understand that their reason for establishment was to safeguard the interest of the student athlete along with promoting the education system into their hectic athletic lifestyle.

The stakeholders being considered here is most definitely all the student athletes within all of the three Divisions(I,II,III) , to critics, the member institutions in the NCAA, the coaches, athletic directors of all the schools in order to make their vision and goal clear, presidents, faculty of athletic divisions and various other women administrators. On the other hand, I feel like the other stakeholders that should be considered here, should be the interest of other college students(non-athletes), general public, government of United states, and other new voices including the  council of practitioners empowered by the board to handle primary rule-making and legislative decisions about sports-specific issues like recruiting, amateurism, and health and safety.

1. Explain how the NCAA may or may not be aligned with its stated mission and core values and how it can further exemplify its mission.   In your explanation, provide

What started out to be an institution that aims for a holistic environment, and an three specific examples. overall safe, impartial environment for all student athletes, went on to become a monopolisticly controlling, commercial and independent of all the rules that applied to the member institutions.  I feel like everything the NCAA did after the initial few years had a motive of establishing power and control rather focusing on their one true mission- integrating college education into the life of a college athlete. There were instances when its orientation had completely shifted towards making money, rather than the betterment of the program, in the sense that there was a more capitalistic approach undertaken. Some of them were:

1. The NCAA’s increasing capitalistic approach to things conflicted with their key interest and mission as a governing body within its member institutions in USA and Canada. There came in a point where whatever the NCAA did was to get more funds and had a pure commercial intent. This is exactly when the critics point out that the NCAA had become an increasingly commercial, corrupt and cartel based given the lack of financial accountability. There was also a ton of claims and report that said the NCAA had been exploiting the students and were not too transparent enough.  Nevertheless, as a non-profit institution, the NCAA had worked hard to justify its centralized power in the way things go about is a way to develop some organization and flow of processes in order to achieve their mission.
2. The television rights come in a close second. Initially, most of the colleges had their own individual tie ups with respective TV channels to broadcast finals and various sports championships and therefore gaining more money and control individually. Consequently the NCAA went on to acquire sole television rights to broadcast ga,es exclusive to college football. Hence generating and minting over most of the money through television and marketing rights. There were many reports that the NCAA never utilized the money towards college sports and taking their mission to a bigger scale, but instead became more corrupt by keeping the funds to themselves. There was a case filed against the organization by an athlete over the fact that the NCAA makes money by advertising and marketing the achievements of him, but he has no right over the money generated.
3. On the other hand, recent reports suggest that critics wanted to dissolve NCAA and put its Indiannapolis headquarters into foreclosure. This was due to the fact that the NCAA had authority over everything and exceeds its authority even in petty matters or involves in large matters where it has little or no responsibility, while failing its ony one main goal-education.

These reports go to show that not only has the NCAA become more of a cartel based, controlling institution but also forgotten its main responsibility and taken other little ones into hand. I think that the NCAA must adopt the ideology of division of work and practice the idea of centralized force, yet have an aspect of decentralization. This inturn would help the organization grow and give equal right/power to every tier of their management along with the fact that there would be no negative reports on the institution itself.