Dayton AD: ‘Heavy lifting’ ahead for NCAA after commission’s report

Dayton’s Sullivan, Wright State’s Grant react to release of Commission on College Basketball’s report

The Commission on College Basketball, which was established in October to reform the game, released its report Wednesday. Its recommendations — including asking the NBA to abolish the one-and-done rule — didn't impress everyone.

In general, the headlines were not kind to Dr. Condoleeza Rice, the former U.S. Secretary of State who headed the commission, and the 13 other committee members, including Ohio State Athletic Director Gene Smith and former Duke star Grant Hill. The consensus seemed to be that the report didn’t go far enough in suggesting meaningful change.

“Failure of NCAA basketball commission is disappointing, but not surprising,” read one headline on ESPN.

“Rice Commission’s report no recipe for successful change,” read a Sporting News headline.

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While the commission's efforts may not be getting good press, Dayton Athletic Director Neil Sullivan cautioned people to not look at this as the final report but just the beginning of the NCAA's efforts to fix the issues that led to the FBI probe and recruiting scandals last fall.

“It took us decades to create the system we have today,” Sullivan said, “and it’s going to take more than six months to turn the tide. I think these are broad policy and governance recommendations if you look at them. The discipline of the NCAA to draft and execute the details, I think, is going to require some real heavy lifting.”

Wright State Athletic Director Bob Grant didn’t see anything in the report that will affect how his school does business on a day-to-day basis, and he didn’t see anything surprising in the recommendations either.

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Grant was pleased to see the commission recommend stiffer penalties for serious infractions. There was a suggestion, for example, of five-year postseason bans with a loss of revenue sharing throughout the length of the ban.

“I’ve said it for years, very few businesses reward bad behavior like ours does,” Grant said. “It’s really embarrassing. The reward for cheating in our business outweighs the risk, and hopefully that’s going to come to an end sooner or later. My hope, if nothing else, is a report like this shines a light on something like that. We’ve known for years. It’s gone on for years. When I see things like lifetime bans and potential career-killing penalties, those are things that should be talked about.”

Neither Dayton or Wright State recruit many players who would be affected by a change to the one-and-done rule. The Dukes and Kentuckys of the world — the programs that thrive on players using college as a steppingstone to the NBA — will pay more attention to that.

The opportunity to enter the draft, get feedback from scouts and coaches and return to college basketball is something that could effect players from every level of college basketball. At the moment, players can declare themselves eligible for the draft, and if they don’t hire an agent, they can withdraw from the draft before the draft and still return to college.

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The commission wants to provide players with even greater draft flexibility — allowing them to remain in the draft and return to school if they don’t get drafted, for example — as well as allowing them to hire NCAA-certified agents as early as high school.

“I think anytime a young person has a chance to get a valid, reasonable judgment of their ability to perform at the next level, that’s a good thing for that person,” Sullivan said. “Anything that gives them a chance to make good, sound decisions about their future, we should support.”

One other recommendation of the commission was an overhaul of summer basketball. Non-scholastic events run by shoe companies or numerous other organizations provide college coaches with a chance to watch prospects. The commission wants the NCAA to take over these events, starting in 2019, with the help of the NBA, the NBA Players Association and USA Basketball.

“That’s a big, old beast with thousands of teams and tens of thousands of players,” Grant said, “and it’s probably easier said than done to do much overhauling of that in a short period of time. It would be really hard to be nimble on something like that, but again it’s good that these things are being talked about because they’ve been whispered about and talked about, so if nothing else, if Dr. Rice’s commission can shed light on these things and get them more part of the mainstream conversation, I’m all for that.”

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