Not surprisingly, there has been concern that playing in postseason bowl games at end of the fall semester could have an adverse effect on players’ grades. Those concerns are now being heightened by the push to expand the college football playoffs. But a new study from the University of Missouri shows that the chance to compete in the postseason can actually motivate student-athletes to remain academically eligible to play football.

“On one hand, you might think all the extra practices and travel around final exam [time] might serve as a potential distraction, but the research seems to suggest some positive academic benefits of the players continuing to be around their teammates, coaches and academic advisors within the athletic department,” says Bradley Curs, co-author of the study and an associate professor in the University of Missouri’s College of Education and Human Development.

“Maintaining the structure that comes with daily routines on campus throughout the season can be potentially helpful academically compared to leaving campus around final examinations and not having as much social support or structure at home,” Curs says.

Curs and co-author Casandra Harper, also an associate professor in the College of Education and Human Development, compared academic data for student-athletes on 130 teams who did and didn’t play in bowl games between 2003 to 2018. They analyzed three academic categories: retention (whether the players returned for the following semester); whether they maintained academic eligibility based on grade point average and credit-hour requirements; and the teams’ overall Academic Progress Rate, which tracks players’ progress toward graduation based on retention and eligibility rates. College and universities risk sanctions if certain Academic Progress Rate benchmarks are not met.

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Bowl games had no impact on retention but academic eligibility rates and overall Academic Progress Rate scores were slightly higher for football players who competed in the postseason. “There are many incentives to the players for competing in the bowl games, including prizes and cash, maybe the chance to travel to a new city that many of the players have never visited before, and the exposure of playing on national television,” Curs says. “These opportunities may motivate players to finish off the academic semester strong so they remain eligible and can enjoy playing one last game with their teammates.”

The findings should alleviate some concerns from university administrators or athletic departments that participating in bowl games can harm students’ academic performance, Curs concludes.

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The answer is, not nearly as much as they should be, according to a new study released by the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) and Mantra Health. The report concludes that 90% of athletic directors believe their institutions do not offer enough training or psychiatric support services for student-athletes and their coaches.

“With all the stressors that come with juggling school work, social life and a demanding athletics career, it is important that our institutions are able to protect and prioritize the mental health and wellbeing of our student-athletes,” NAIA President and CEO Jim Carr said. “We want to thoroughly understand the services and resources that can help our student-athletes, and the findings of this survey are a great step in giving us this insight.”

Nearly three-quarters of the 50 NAIA institution leaders surveyed said they don’t have sports psychologists or therapists in their athletics departments, while around 45% said their institutions’ overall resources related to mental health are “average.” They said this impacts two of the core concerns of college and university administrators—student success and retention. ADs and other leaders surveyed said student-athletes are especially vulnerable because of the severe time constraints forced by playing and keeping up with classwork (92%), plus struggles with relationships outside sports (82%) and financial hardships (77%).

“In addition to the normal stressors of college life, student-athletes face a lot of pressure to perform in sports and academics, all while balancing interpersonal relationships and personal responsibilities,” said Dr. Liz Jodoin, clinical solutions consultant at Mantra Health. “We’ve also seen that student-athletes are less likely to seek help than non-athletes since many have been conditioned to play through physical, emotional, and psychological pain. As a result, this has contributed in part to higher rates of stress, anxiety, depression and, in many cases, has exacerbated pre-existing mental health conditions.”

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Students-athletes are a critical part of most institutions, comprising about 15% of populations on campuses. They also bring eminence to colleges and universities, even if they don’t rise to the levels of Phelps or Biles. The outspokenness of elite athletes has elevated the conversation and brought new questions about how institutions can help properly deliver services to all of them. Right now, there are major gaps that health and athletic leaders said need to be addressed.

“The larger initiative Mantra and NAIA are trying to tackle is to change the culture in athletics,” said Ed Gaussen, co-founder and CEO of Mantra Health. “Our goal is to help athletic departments build robust mental health practices, which will take time, research and collaboration. This will also have the greatest chance of addressing student-athletes’ specific needs and improving their mental health in the long term.”

In order to try to help institutions and their athletic departments provide better support, Mantra Health has released new guidance called Taking a Team Approach to Mental Health. In it, the agency offers “recommendations for transforming athletic departments.” Among the topics covered are the 10 best practices for athletics programs to follow and how colleges can handle and prevent worst-case scenarios from occurring.

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“During my testimony to show the inequalities, I held up a pair of men’s gray boxer briefs,” Kaplowitz recalls. “These were standard-issue shorts for men and women. Obviously, they didn’t fit women so well. I said, ‘This is a sign that their assets are getting protected and ours aren’t.'”

The courts agreed. Brown was forced to temporarily reinstate the gymnastics and volleyball programs to varsity status during her final two years and eventually lost the case in 1996 after Kaplowitz had graduated. The victory was groundbreaking for women’s athletics and for the strength of Title IX, more than two decades after it was stamped under the Educational Amendments of 1972 as a vehicle for change and equal opportunities for all. On its 50th anniversary Thursday, it remains the benchmark for women, people of color and those with disabilities in the fight for justice and equality, though it is often challenged by institutions that attempt to, sometimes unknowingly, skirt compliance.

That immense legislation has been empowering for individuals like Kaplowitz who have been impacted but not deterred from becoming transformational leaders. She became an investment banker in a male-dominated industry and later a chief financial officer in private equity-backed startups before landing in higher education at Rutgers University. An assistant professor in finance and economics, she co-founded the Rutgers Center for Women in Business to help others overcome barriers to achieve success.

“When I came into academia, I noticed that there were pockets of programming for women at Rutgers Business School, but there wasn’t anything comprehensive and cohesive,” Kaplowitz said. “The advocacy that I experienced and gained during the Title IX case is really what fueled my passion to continue it later on. We do three things: remove barriers, build community and empower women. It works to change systematic inequalities that exist. That directly correlates with what we were trying to do during the Title IX case. I didn’t realize that at 17 years old, but we were really trying to change the power structure.”

Though Title IX offers robust protections—“no person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance”—it continues to be challenged throughout education, both in K-12 schools and universities. It is often connected with athletics, where women have managed to increase college representation from 15% to 44% in 50 years.

But they still face obstacles. A recent ESPN report noted that 100 collegiate athletic programs have been on the chopping block since the start of the pandemic, including many on the women’s side. Stanford University last year had to reinstate several women’s programs set to be cut because of imbalance, as Brown did in the 90s. The fight never seems to subside, for athletes and for others on campuses.

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“Depending on which statistic you look at, 80 to 90% of institutions are not in compliance with Title IX,” Kaplowitz says. “BIPOC students, girls and women are still lacking opportunities to play sports as compared to white girls and women. Title IX is more than just numerical representation of equal numbers. We’re still lagging in practice time preferences, travel and tournament budgets, and salaries that are paid to the coaches and the women’s game. Scholarship dollars are significantly less for women. Those are things that still need to evolve, even with Title IX. I’m happy to see that it has expanded beyond sports because everybody needs to have a safe environment to study, to learn and to grow.”

Why is Title IX so critical? It empowers leaders

Kaplowitz’s story is both heart-wrenching and inspirational, yet not unlike others who face potential bias. A gymnast nearly on par with competitors who wound up in the Olympics, she turned down several offers to sign with Brown. She then got the news that the team was being reduced to club status. Her family was on government assistance, so she had few options. She decided to stay at Brown after a coach convinced her they would “raise enough money to compete.” They didn’t. So Kaplowitz, fellow gymnasts and two volleyball players decided to become plaintiffs in a case against Brown.

“Because I was the last one recruited, I became the poster child to demonstrate that athletes were interested in playing sports at Brown, athletes were at that elite level but weren’t able to play, and that Brown needed to create the opportunity for us,” she said. The process was slow, but the courts eventually granted them an injunction, and they were elevated back to varsity. Her testimony not only helped change the landscape for athletics, but it also sparked a modern-day necessity: standard-issue sports bras for women.

She recalls the struggles of those moments—no access to trainers, no access to a locker room, having a bus with a door that didn’t close in the winter, and a lack of support campus-wide. But out of that came three things. The first was the appeal that was upheld by the Supreme Court, which set the precedent for Title IX. The second was that Brown added women’s teams without cutting any men. And the third, Kaplowitz says, was “the lessons of leadership, time management, teamwork and perseverance. All of that is what makes us better leaders and better co-workers after graduation.”

Kaplowitz cited statistics that show the vast majority of women who are in C-Suite positions have competed in athletics, including nearly half at the college level. She says those opportunities are also critical to competing in the job market, where overcoming bias and discrimination may exist. Her continuation at Brown helped her stay on her career path and inspired a passion to help others. She has been on the board of a nonprofit called PowerPlay NYC that works to empower girls through sports. She also co-founded an affinity group for women athletes at Brown, where she is a member of its Hall of Fame, to help guide current students with career advice and mentoring.

“When more women are playing sports, they’re training themselves to be leaders,” she says. “You see this virtuous cycle of investing in women continuing. Abby Wambach and Billie Jean King are two of the many founders of a professional soccer team in Los Angeles. Serena Williams is a venture capitalist investing in women- and minority-owned businesses. When you have more women playing sports, they get into leadership roles. Studies have shown that when women have economic independence and are compensated equally, it increases the overall economy. It increases GDP. Those are all positives that are direct results of Title IX.”

Still, there is work to be done, as evidenced by the hundreds of cases still pending in the courts related to Title IX. So what needs to change for a full embrace of the legislation to happen? Kaplowitz says leadership at institutions and businesses must evolve. “It has to be prioritized. When you have a more diverse group of individuals making decisions—Brown just hired a new athletic director, and it’s a woman—you’re going to prioritize Title IX more.”

As for her own experience with Title IX, Kaplowitz says she is thankful that the legislation was there to both back her and empower her.

“I’m grateful that Title IX gave me the opportunity to participate and the opportunity to do this work,” she says. “It was the catalyst to create the Rutgers Center for Women in Business. It has had a profound impact on my life and on other women athletes. There’s still a long way to go to truly reach equality and equity, both in athletics and outside, but I’m grateful for the progress that we’ve made.”

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Reaching that pinnacle is the goal of every Div. I program …. and increasingly the hopes of those who hold power over institutions of higher education. After all, it’s hard to beat the brand recognition and riches enjoyed by the Alabamas, Clemsons and Ohio States.

Those that fall short of that goal are not sitting still. They are scrapping affiliations with longtime athletic conferences to position themselves for that glory, moving in and out of leagues like uneasy renters. The most prominent example is the Big 12, which by 2025 will no longer include Texas or Oklahoma but will have newcomers Central Florida, BYU, Houston and Cincinnati. Texas and Oklahoma believe their chances will be better in the SEC, but Commissioner Bob Bowlsby called the risky moves “delusional” in an interview with the Austin-American Statesman.

The slew of multibillion-dollar gambles—ESPN has a conference realignment tracker dedicated to all the changes—prompted Stephanie Herbst-Lucke of Georgia State University’s Robinson College of Business, a marketing leader and former All-American track athlete, to survey the college landscape to see whether shifting conferences actually does lead to a pot of gold of acclaim and revenue. In almost every instance during a period from 2009-2017, the answer was no.

“We found that universities that changed conferences neither increased earned revenue nor decreased debt, compared to universities that stayed put,” she said. “The economic mission, athletic performance and brand outcomes described in academic literature and anecdotally are not. In no other category would iconic brands voluntarily disrupt successful, long-standing relationships.”

Herbst-Lucke spent four years on qualitative and quantitative research on the topic as part of her doctorate dissertation. Add to that 30 years as a business leader plus her time as a world-class athlete at the University of Wisconsin, and she has a lot of background in both the Big Ten and college athletics. She also has built a lot of connections. For the study, she teamed with Paul Salipante and Kalle Lyttinen of Case Western Reserve University and Dr. Robert Mayberry of Georgia State to glean information from 82 sources, including conference commissioners, athletic directors and experts including those representing the Power Five conferences—the SEC, Big Ten, Big 12, ACC and American—to assess how the trends have panned out.

What they found was a stunning dysfunction between the fractured groups – those on the institution side and those in powerful positions affecting higher ed – and unachievable defiance toward making conference switches a reality, even when there was a known lack of positive outcomes, along with a lack of leadership by the NCAA.

“The data was absolutely clear that this was not driven by money. It was all driven by stakeholder aspirations and pressure on the system,” she said. “We found that not only was revenue not going up, but it was slightly going down [when colleges switched conferences].”

They also found that graduation rates, application rates and performance did not improve.

Athletics over academics?

From the interviews, 82% said there was a dilution of their mission, purpose, value and ethics. Another 76% believed the university brand had been depleted. And 90% said that because there had been such a disconnect from the brand and mission, the system was not sustainable.

“They’re putting athletics ahead of academics,” Herbst-Lucke says. “They’re depleting academic revenue and reserves to continue to support a system in which 90% of those in it are not solvent. That’s crazy. They’re diverting funds from education to cover these losses. All the literature suggests that there are these huge conference distribution numbers that the schools are going after to get a huge influx of revenues. But it’s actually not the case.”

Once a system based on stable relationships, college athletics has been undermined by leaders who may not see the value in staying put. They instead see the allure of the SEC and think Alabama levels are attainable and will try to get there at any cost. According to many of those who responded in the study, politics played a big part in decision-making, with an array of stakeholders who have little knowledge of the inner workings of college football driving moves and leaving commissioners and athletic directors with their hands tied. “They care a great deal about their system, but they don’t think that they have any control,” she says. “They feel like they lack agency.”

In the end, they all may agree to something they know will not work. And after they’ve moved and balance sheets are done, there may be an equal distribution of revenues and expenditures, but the bottom line is most are losing when subsidies are removed. Of institutions that were not in the Power Five, estimates are that all of the others lost an average of $23 million in 2019 alone. “The athletic directors, commissioners and presidents of the schools are supporting the narrative that conference change will improve the revenue, and they know it won’t,” she says. “But they are continuing to promote that.”

Only two institutions during the 2009-2017 period managed to show positive gains. One was the University of Missouri, which joined the SEC and won three division titles during that stretch and saw a 321% rise in postseason revenue. After 2013, when its win-loss ratio declined, it showed no improvement. The other was Rutgers University, which joined the Big Ten and saw huge jumps in sponsorship and licensing. The rest did not. Those that make the switch are also not exactly welcomed with open arms by fans, who are confused and frustrated by conference realignments.

“The Big Ten changed a 122-year-old brand and then they retained the name,” says Herbst-Lucke. “They changed the rivalries. Now you’ve got schools like Wisconsin not playing Michigan or Ohio State every year, which changes attendance. Ticket sales alone make up 28% of the overall revenue for an average athletic department. You get your tickets and how many games are you interested in? Maybe one or two? It’s a risky venture when you start doing those kinds of things.”

And dangerous for colleges and universities who can’t get into conferences such as the SEC but make huge decisions to move that may affect their brand, their missions and their academics.

“These 100-year-old systems are breaking apart even though, by nature, they are collaborative,” Herbst-Lucke says. “These decision-makers have taken this very narrow lens of athletics. Of the top 25 ranked schools by U.S. World & News Report, not one of those schools tried to change conferences because their stakeholders are focused on academics. There’s a story here that perhaps the espoused mission of a university is not academics. It’s certainly questionable the way that they’re spending the money.”

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A federal jury in Boston took 10 hours to return guilty verdicts for Wilson, a former Staples and Gap leader, and Aziz, the former COO of Wynn Resorts Development and ex-CEO of MGM Resorts International. They are scheduled to be sentenced in February, though it is likely that they will appeal.

“These parents were not willing to take ‘no’ for an answer, and to get to ‘yes’ they crossed a line,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Frank said in the courtroom. “In crossing that line, they broke the law.”

More than 30 others, including celebrities Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman, already have pleaded guilty in the bombshell case, in which wealthy parents used their power and significant resources to get their kids into the institutions of the choosing through sports, allegedly through connections with California-based admissions counselor Rick Singer, who also has pled guilty. All were charged more than two years ago.

Wilson, a private equity executive from Lynnfield, Mass., was said to have paid $1 million to Singer to try to get his two daughters into Stanford and Harvard. Five years earlier, he paid more than $200,000 for his son to gain admission to the University of Southern California as a water polo star. None were high-level recruits but their payments to Singer and the willingness of coaches to accept money in return got them spots.

Meanwhile, Aziz (also known as Abdelaziz) agreed to pay $300,000 to Singer to have his daughter gain acceptance into USC through athletics, though she had no recruiting prowess as a basketball player.

They pled not guilty and attempted to convince jurors that they had no knowledge that the payments they were making were not legal, that they were simply contributions to the school.

“[Aziz] never agreed with Rick Singer to bribe anyone at USC and he never agreed with Rick Singer to defraud USC with some phony profile that he never saw,” his attorney, Brian Kelly said. Kelly earlier had said in the trial, “Giving money to a school with a hope that it gets your kid in is not a crime.”

However, several calls wiretapped by the FBI placed between Singer and Aziz, as well as others with Wilson, proved to be damning, showing their acceptance of transactions in great detail.

In addition to the parents involved, coaches from Yale, Stanford, UCLA, UC San Diego, the University of Texas-Austin and Wake Forest also have been implicated or named in the scandal, which was revealed in March 2019.

Singer, who admitted to bribery and helping boost test score numbers, was charged with multiple conspiracy counts, including racketeering, money laundering, defrauding the United States and obstruction of justice. The former basketball coach in northern California who turned to helping high school students gain admissions to colleges has yet to be sentenced.

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Full details were not disclosed, but under the arrangement Stanford must in the next year review its athletics programs to ensure Title IX compliance and complete it no later than the 2023-24 academic year. That plan must be made public on its website no later than Oct. 1, 2022.

“We were able to work together to come up with a process that will really engage the Stanford athlete community,” said Peterson-Fisher, who noted that Stanford Title IX Coordinator Stephen Chen, a former attorney with U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights that oversees Title IX, will play a “significant role in the review and will approve the final plan.”

Attorneys said Stanford’s review will include:

• “The assessment of gender equity in participation opportunities
• Provision of equipment and supplies
• Scheduling of games and practice times
• Travel and per diem allowances
• Opportunities to receive coaching and academic tutoring
• Assignment and compensation of coaches and tutors
• Provision of locker rooms, practice, and competitive facilities
• Provision of medical and training facilities and service; provision of housing and dining facilities and services
• Publicity and athletic scholarship awards.”

Stanford also must create a portal for student-athletes and staff to comment on the review anonymously.

The history of the suit

Each of the athletes (Liana Keesing, Megan Frost, Sophie Molins, Amita Gondi and Ava Jih-Schiff) represents a team that was set to be cut by Stanford – fencing, field hockey, lightweight rowing, squash and synchronized swimming, respectively. They said Stanford’s cuts would have left an imbalance in the number of male and female athletes in its athletics programs.

Their lawsuit was separate from another launched by students who claimed the university “fraudulently induced” them into believing their sports would continue, potentially denying them from seeking opportunities to play at other institutions. That suit was withdrawn when programs were reinstated, said their attorney, Jeffrey Kessler, Partner, Co-Executive Chairman and Co-Chair of Competition and Sports Law Practice Groups at Winston & Strawn.

Stanford had said it was canceling 11 programs overall because of shortfalls brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. The costs were estimated to be more than $12 million in FY 21 and as much as $70 million over three years. The movement of “nonrevenue-generating varsity programs” into club sports would effectively save $8 million. The sports they were canceling may not have brought financial gain to the university but certainly, notoriety, producing 27 Olympic medalists and 20 national champions.

The cuts to the women’s programs prompted Peterson-Fisher to say in May: “One reason Title IX has been so successful at increasing women’s participation in college sports is the requirement that schools offer athletic opportunities to women and men that are proportional to the percentage of women and men in the student body. Even before the planned cuts, Stanford’s athletic opportunities disproportionately went to men. Their plan to cut these teams will widen the gender gap even further. Stanford cannot go forward with these planned cuts without further violating Title IX.”

Stanford did reinstate those programs in May but lawsuits moved forward, with compliance in the future being one of the main missions.

“Our goal is gender equity in all aspects of Stanford athletics, and we’re looking forward to working together to achieve that,” said Keesing.

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That sweep in NCAA v Alston—with the court upholding a ruling from the 9^th Circuit court—provided another victory for Division I athletes, who are also piling up wins in many states trying to profit from their name, image and likeness (NIL).

Although the ruling doesn’t wipe out its power completely, the “NCAA no longer has carte blanche to control athletes’ livelihoods and monopolize the market,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) said in a statement after the court’s decision.

More than just its impact on athletes, the decision could very well define how 130 or so college and university programs at the top level will move forward:

• Will they seize opportunities to further provide for their players?
• Will they lower expectations and get booster backing to make athletics less of a priority?
• Or will they decide the costs are too high and abandon athletics altogether?

All are possible. But Martin Edel, who is chair of Sports Law Practice at law firm Goulston & Storrs and an adjunct professor at Columbia Law School, says there will be opportunities for programs to be transformational. “What it’s going to do is force a number of schools to rethink the viability of their program and what they want to be to their students and alums,” Edel says. “For large schools, it gives them an opportunity to gain recruiting advantages. For smaller schools, it gives them the opportunity to define their position in a way that’s different from the current model.”

Competing for glory

But how feasible will it be for smaller colleges if every athlete wants to be compensated and major programs can pony up big incentives to dozens of athletes? Edel says there may still be ways to bring in quality student athletes and make a difference, especially if they can already earn money off their image from third parties.

“It may be that for some schools, it’s simply not going to be what they had envisioned before,” he says. “Maybe you have other conferences developing outside of the traditional Power 5 (Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-10, ACC and SEC). Maybe you create another classification of bowls. You can have viable competition, and those students who are truly magnificent will still be recruited for the pros.

“But we can have something that meets the boosters’ goal of going to football games every Saturday, meets the sponsors’ goal of having more athletes to advertise its products and meets the students’ goals of having this sport at a real competitive level. Schools want to educate their students and empower them. But if they have a losing program, why would they need to keep that? Is there a better model?”

There are many more questions to be determined over the coming months, says Matt Ralph, partner at the international law firm Dorsey & Whitney, who is co-chair of Dorsey’s Antitrust Practice Group. “A big question is whether the Power 5 conferences will react to this decision by imposing their own limits on student-athlete compensation or by competing for student athletes in new ways,” he says. “Still another question is whether colleges and universities could withdraw from the NCAA and still compete with NCAA schools, thus challenging the NCAA’s monopoly power over college athletics and monopsony power over student athletes.”

While the future for conferences and the colleges they serve is uncertain, the NCAA’s road ahead will be bumpier. Instead of controlling how and when athletes get compensated, it may only end up with advisory power, even as it tries to hold onto the notion of amateurism for players in an arena where coaches get paid millions. “If [the NCAA] wants to be what it’s been, which is to prescribe all these rules that deal with compensation of athletes and how people act, the Supreme Court is saying, you’ve got to rethink that,” Edel says. “Not saying there isn’t a role for the NCAA, but it needs to define what it wants to accomplish.”

Considerations for colleges

Edel defined five areas that will be important for college athletic programs to consider as they weigh the future of student athletes:

1. Competition. Former Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi once said, “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.” And college programs aren’t operating to lose—or lose money. Fielding the best teams is always the goal. To do that, Edel says, “You need the best possible athletes you can recruit, gain as transfer students or prevent from transferring. If you promise a grant-in-aid program, that’s an enormous sum. Let’s say your school promises educationally related benefits, too. They can also give them a vigorous NIL endorsement program. If a rival school doesn’t have all those benefits, why would a student want to go to there? Maybe a student will conclude it’s because they have a better educational program. But that often isn’t the motivating factor for student athletes.”
2. Budgeting. How will struggling college programs that want to remain competitive find the funds and benefits to appease athletes? Good question, says Edel. “Will this concept of additional benefits stretch the existing budget? If it does, where is that money going to come from? Let’s say a college wants Athlete X. To get Athlete X, educationally related benefits should be $20,000 above the grant-in-aid program. That may make a Power 5 school emboldened, but it may make a school in a smaller division much less aggressive about recruiting because of the cost.”
3. Title IX. Speaking of payments, how will that work when it comes to gender equity? “If you’re paying a student athlete a sum above and beyond, are you allocating these equally among men’s and women’s sports?” Edel asks. “Can you do it just for football players and basketball players because they’re your revenue producing sports? Not under Title IX.”
4. Internships. Edel says another potential pitfall for colleges could be in benefits such as internships or other connections that have traditionally been monitored by the NCAA. “Who is going to pay for that internship? Is the internship going to be with a private donor? Is that private donor someone who is a big booster of the athletic program? What sorts of guardrails is a school going to enact to make sure the internship is meaningful and not just a cushy thing to compensate the athletes?”
5. Compensation for labor. Could student-athletes press for more, perhaps seeking benefits as workers? Potentially, Edel says. “You have a situation where athletes are getting paid [through those education-related benefits]. It’s not clear whether this is compensation, like wages and hours within the meaning of the National Labor Relations Act, but it could be, especially as you go beyond simply a grant-in-aid and  deal with additional expenses. These students put in upwards of 60 hours per week during the season. With training and practice, it becomes practically a year-round activity. If so, should these student athletes be treated as employees and given benefits that employees of the school get? This [ruling] is a very significant step in that direction. It’s not something that colleges and universities will have to face today or tomorrow, but they may have to figure out how to deal with it.”

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A realm long-dominated by men – from the pros down through university and high school levels – this new esports league called the *gameHERs Collegiate Division will provide a “a safe, inclusive online community” for those who have long been shut out or provided limited access to events, teams and even games themselves, according to the leaders of the platform which shares the same *gameHERs name.

Developed by four women in 2020, the *gameHERs is being supported by several higher education programs, plus a bevy of partners that include Lenovo Esports, Stay Plugged In (SPIN), scholarship platform eFuse, and Evil Geniuses’ Genius League.

“We are thrilled to expand the *gameHERs mission into the collegiate space by creating an intentional division on campuses throughout the U.S,” said Rebecca Dixon, co-founder and chief marketing officer of the*gameHERs. “Since our inception in March 2020, we’ve been working hard to appeal to college students, so this is a huge milestone in our business.”

One of the esports programs signing on this fall is DePaul University, which has gotten off the ground quickly with Big East Championships and is backed by a stellar game design program.

“DePaul University is excited for the opportunity to partner with the *gameHERs as we continue to grow and develop our esports program,” said Courtney James, Director of Student Involvement. “The *gameHERs mission to amplify and center the voices of women, femme-identifying gamers, and non-binary gamers mirrors the goals of DePaul’s esports program so we are excited to collaborate as we both work to create a more inclusive community for all gamers.”

Just like all other esports initiatives that have tie-ins to education, the goal of the *gameHERs is to help create a pipeline of opportunities for students, whether in the games or not, around all of the pathways that exist. That includes streaming, social media, design, marketing, casting and other roles that are vital to the success of organizations in an industry that is booming.

“One of the driving forces at SPIN is our commitment to preparing our players for collegiate programs, and to help them find the institutions that best suit their needs,” said Taylor Gach, Director of Strategic Partnerships for SPIN, a recruiting platform that offers a custom STEM accredited curriculum and coaching. “Working with innovative partners like the *gameHERs opens a direct line of communication to female student-athletes interested in competing in esports and developing skills for future careers in the gaming industry. Our goal is to ensure that women are invited into a community that provides support and resources towards their educational aspirations.”

But unlike the others, this one will be hyperfocused on women. The *gameHERs platform is dedicated to providing among other things a “sexist-free space” for all types of gamers while amplifying their voices and their stature. To that end, it says it is 100% bully-free and will not tolerate harassment, trolling or violence, which have been unfortunate outcomes for women gamers in unmonitored online spaces.

Evil Geniuses, which was the first major esports organization in the world to have two women on its roster, is excited to be board and hopeful about the future of gaming.

“Our Genius League collegiate program learnings showed us that diversity has never been more important to the future of esports at the college level, and we’re proud to share those learnings with the*gameHERs as they build out their program,” said Jessica Hammond, Chief Culture Officer at Evil Geniuses. “Together, we look forward to providing college students from all walks of life with even more opportunities in esports and gaming, working towards a more diverse future for our industry.”

Fortnite champs crowned: A team from the University of Maryland-Baltimore County (UMBC) won the Gaming Community Network’s Collegiate Esports Invitational by beating Cal State Fullerton to earn the $5,000 first prize plus several gaming-related accessories. Representing respective conferences, the America East team captured the title over the Big West squad in the 10-conference pool. The event had more than 650,000 live views on Twitch and was carried live on more than 85 websites. Drexel University topped Santa Clara University to place third.

Esports bytes: Florida Southern College has added 30 new gaming stations plus seating for console players as it has expanded out its Snake Pit arena with many movable pieces. The goal of the renovation was to provide more space for casual gamers rather than its Mocs Esports team. In addition, Florida Southern is backing esports with academic offerings. “We recently announced that the Barney Barnett School of Business and Free Enterprise will introduce an undergraduate minor and a Master of Business Education (MBA) concentration related to competitive gaming,” said says Dr. Anne Kerr, president of Florida Southern. “So, this new gaming area is a perfect addition to the educational and job opportunities for our scholars.” … SUNY Jamestown Community College says it will field both an NJCAA Esports team and club team for 2021-22 that will be eligible for students on all their campuses. It also has a steering committee that is exploring a potential esports management degree program.

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Oregon State University and Michigan State University made headlines earlier this year as the recipients of donations to athletics programs. At $50 million and $32 million respectively, both of these gifts were the largest gifts in institutional history, and each rivaled the total endowments of many institutions.

Athletics are an integral part of many colleges and universities and, for many, entwined with the institution’s identity and brand. But, as all of higher education is facing drastic cuts and with affinity for athletics overtaking other institutional priorities, we must consider how to broaden and bolster engagement so that what we offer in our classrooms is as attractive to donors as the athletics we offer our students and fans.

Contemplating this raises the all-important question: How can strong and sustainable community support be extended beyond athletics? For higher education to survive our current financial reality, it must.

Alaska isn’t an anomaly anymore

At the University of Alaska Anchorage, we’re no strangers to seismic budget shakeups. We’ve had to make deep, existential cuts at the university system and campus levels.

While many public and private institutions watched our budget reality play out over the past two years with a mix of fascination and horror, they were thankful to see our situation as an anomaly. Yet, COVID-19 has leveled the financial playing field across the academy in ways none of us could have predicted.

With the ongoing pandemic and declining enrollments, many other colleges and universities have now joined us in facing enormous budget cuts impacting essential parts of our identities: academic programs we offer, faculty and staff we employ, scholarships we award. Even athletic departments are working with less than they’re accustomed to as higher education prioritizes our limited funds.

Student-athletes and mental health: 5 lessons learned from COVID

If I can send one message to my colleagues across higher education, it would be this: Alaska isn’t an anomaly anymore, and it’s unlikely that we’ll go back to a “normal” of counting on support from state legislators to fund anything beyond their interpretations of our core missions. While this is a sobering reality to grapple with, there are important lessons we can take from community support for athletics, as well as one considerable note of caution.

With intercollegiate athletics, we see a connection among alumni, donors, and our greater communities. Athletics departments are setting the example for how we must build excitement for what we provide.

We can learn from the way in which they’re connecting and then make that appeal when advocating for the benefits of public higher education. Instead of just rooting for the team, we need to extend that community support to the institution itself.

Last year, UAA had to make the difficult decision to cut funding for some sports programs, including Alpine skiing, gymnastics, and hockey. We extended the opportunity to these teams to raise money to cover operating costs in the hopes of allowing their athletes to play another day.

Boosters are rallying now, with deadlines looming. Alpine skiing achieved its financial goal relatively quickly, and hockey and gymnastics continue their fundraising efforts valiantly.

Leveraging the athletics playbook

What we learned from these experiences is that community appeal matters, but it must be managed carefully and thoughtfully with an eye toward long-term sustainability.

This reality has to be something leaders in higher education shoulder with increased frequency. At UAA, we’re focusing on developing revenue generation and fundraising plans with specific, measurable goals. Our athletics fundraising is integrating with systemwide campaign work aimed at increasing annual and major gift engagement and revenues.

As we have watched our community rally behind our athletics programs, it is a reminder we need to leverage the athletics playbook to harness that same excitement and enthusiasm for other areas of the university. Some of this will mean finding new ways to engage athletics’ supporters in different parts of the institution.

But it also means engaging supporters whose passion lies in other areas such as student scholarships, research and academic program support to stave off the loss of other vital parts of our institution.

Whether it’s contributing to our athletic programs or academic programs, we know community backing is essential in moving forward sustainably. The outpouring of support from the community in Alaska and beyond has been put to the test, and we’ve found it to be generous, even in the midst of a pandemic.

Our hope now is to inspire our community with the message these gifts enable us all to work together toward a brighter future for Alaska.

Bruce Schultz is interim chancellor of the University of Alaska Anchorage and was previously vice chancellor for student affairs.

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The consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic have undoubtedly been far-reaching across the field of higher education, and these impacts are particularly evident where student-athlete populations are concerned.

In the early stages of the 2020-2021 academic year, public health restrictions and social distancing protocols drastically limited the student-athlete experience. When it came to the duration or frequency of scheduled team practices and restrictions on how many teammates can interact together at any one time, this past year has certainly been different than a typical athletic season.

Repetition and routine are critical for the success of student-athletes as well as their teams, and this marked change in the availability of resources proved to be a major obstacle for universities across the world to overcome. Aside from logistical and physical limitations, the pandemic also introduced a new series of challenges related to the mental health of student-athletes—with anxiety and depression ranking among the top concerns of both school leadership and coaching staff.

For student-athletes navigating recent prolonged periods of great uncertainty, a number of contributing factors precipitated the anxiety brought forth by COVID-19. Across the board, student-athletes have experienced isolation, loneliness, change in schedules, shifts from in-person to online class instruction and concern around ensuring adequate resources for academic, financial, transportation and logistical needs.

As a direct result of the pandemic, Westcliff University has learned five essential lessons regarding student-athletes, their mental health and how universities can effectively address these concerns:

1. Consistency is key

Especially when in-person interactions are limited, or even impossible, the ability to have regularly scheduled team events is essential. Weekly team meetings, student athletics advisory council meetings, weight room training sessions or even study hall helped to create consistent opportunities for student-athletes to both see and interact with their teammates and coaches on a reliable basis.

These planned sessions enabled students to engage with their peers and coaches, vent their frustrations, realize that this experience was collectively difficult for everyone, and retain some semblance of a normal athletics environment. Having these hours scheduled in advance gave many student-athletes something to look forward to during quarantine.

Regardless of the pandemic phase or degree of health restrictions in place, providing student-athletes as much routine as possible is a great way to improve and sustain student body morale.

2. Individual follow-ups and metrics matter

Responses to the pandemic are varied from individual to individual, and this is no different with student-athletes. School administrators and coaching staff should take advantage of available data and metrics to determine which student-athletes may be struggling.

Looking at information such as attendance in study hall, practice or team meetings, as well as low grades, can allow staff to identify which students may be actively participating less or in need of additional assistance.

Through the diligent observance of these metrics, staff can individually reach out to student-athletes, meeting them where they are, in order to see how they are doing, if everything is alright in their personal lives, or if they require anything they may be currently lacking.

More from UB: Lessons learned from insuring college sports programs during COVID

These personalized interactions show the student-athletes that they are not alone, that they’re part of an athletics family, and have an available support system to reach out to if anything becomes overwhelming or unsafe. This practice is absolutely something that was in place prior to COVID-19, but the demonstrated results of meaningful check-ins show that follow-up is now perhaps more relevant than ever before.

3. Virtual events are effective

Despite anxiety or mental distress stemming from the pandemic, virtual events—such as Kahoot activities, media days or virtual giveaways—have proven to be both successful and popular among student-athletes. These events work to provide a continued reminder that student-athletes are still a part of their university and athletics family.

Using these platforms to engage with student-athletes in a fun way can assist in showing that athletics staff is actively working to create some sense of normalcy in these atypical times. Through virtual competition, sharing essential information like new COVID-related policies, promoting team bonding or checking in on students can be done in a new and safe way.

Athletics departments may consider such virtual events as a way to have various sports teams or individual members of a team compete against one another to encourage school spirit even in a remote environment.

4. Highlight student successes

Showcasing student-athlete success stories, even without traditional competition, is an important staple to keep in place in these uncertain times. Although most sports seasons and scheduled games were outright suspended in the wake of the pandemic, highlighting student-athletes including their successes and their personalities provides sports teams with additional ways to interact with one another and the university as a whole.

Using websites, email or other publications, athletics staff can promote student-athletes via profiles, interview series’ or showcases on what students have done to remain positive during the last year. Similarly, social media takeovers are an effective means of showing what the life of a current student-athlete may look like.

Highlighting the good—even amid the stress, anxiety and uncertainty of the pandemic—is instrumental in providing student-athletes with both an outlet and a sense of community in this “new normal.”

5. Provide flexibility and options

Throughout the last year where university staff has asked student-athletes to remain flexible in their academic and athletic pursuits, this same level of adaptability must be reciprocated when it comes to providing students with the options they need to succeed.

With the ever-increasing stressors of the pandemic, students may have experienced a great lack of clarity around whether they wanted to forego a year of eligibility as part of a team whose season could be canceled at the university, conference or national association level. Understandably, these decisions are of the utmost importance, and no student-athlete wanted to rush into a decision on transferring or removing themselves from their team.

In this light, committing to an athletics season during the pandemic quickly became a conversation requiring great consideration for student-athletes and their families. Universities that offered flexible options—such as an “opt out” option for students to withdraw from team activities if they felt unsafe participating during the pandemic without the consequences of losing a scholarship or their spot on the team—were extremely effective.

In alleviating one of the numerous stressors in the day-to-day lives of student-athletes, universities can promote the overall mental health of their student body.

These lessons are easily applicable for any university looking to tackle the challenge of mental health in student-athlete populations head-on. By and large, student-athletes are connected in automatic relationships that are defined by their role on a team. Through this family-like dynamic, student-athletes are able to rely on one another, learn from each other and work together to achieve a common goal.

If the COVID-19 pandemic has taught us anything, it is that one of the greatest strengths of a student-athlete is their adaptability. These individuals thrive on being able to adjust their game plan when “in-game” situations demand it, practicing how to react, prioritize and succeed when their first plan may not work.

While this past year has been far from ideal for athletics departments around the world, universities that provide their student-athletes with the support, community and resources they need to remain healthy and successful are the ones who will not only rise to this unique challenge but hurdle over it in the immediate future.

Shawn Harris is the dean of athletics for the 23 teams at Westcliff University in California.  

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