?Listening Tour? Provides Athletes Voice
March 30, 2016 | Women's Track & Field
Pac-12 Conference Commissioner Larry Scott was in Corvallis on Monday to meet with coaches, administrators and members of Oregon State's Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC) to learn their thoughts on the time demands intercollegiate athletics place on student-athletes.
Scott said the Pac-12 already is the gold standard in advocating for, and investing in, the general welfare of the thousands of student-athletes competing at its 12 member universities.
“We've taken the lead nationally in increasing the value of scholarships to cover the full cost of attendance,” he said. “We have the most supportive policies in terms of covering medical expenses for student-athletes who were injured while playing at our schools.
“[The Pac-12 leads] in terms of liberalizing and expanding training table rules,” so more student-athletes have better nutritional choices. “We guarantee scholarships for student-athletes who leave but want to return to complete their degrees.
“These things require investments that have happened on our campuses, and that's great.”
OSU senior track/cross country student-athlete Maureen Tremblay, a member of the SAAC, said the meeting was very informative.
“It was a very good meeting,” she said. “Afterward he said Oregon State had the best turnout, and was the most engaged group he's met with on his tour.”
The objective of Scott's ongoing “Listening Tour” is to learn more about how much time it takes for student-athletes to compete in their chosen sport, and how the conference can help them excel in that pursuit. His findings will help the conference formulate legislation to be introduced at the NCAA Convention in January.
“We want to make sure the right balance there, so our student-athletes have the chance to be elite and compete at the highest level, and to also fully participate in campus life.
“Balancing [the time demands of a sport] with rigorous academic pursuits and engaging in student life doesn't leave a lot of time for other things. What I'm finding mostly is, if you're a very serious student-athlete and very serious about your academics, it leaves very little time for other things.”
He received plenty of feedback from the Beavers.
“The biggest issues we were pretty passionate about were the voluntary commitments and the off-season periods,” Tremblay said. “Even though athletes are doing more than 20 hours a week in their off-period, we would rather have more communication with our coaches and be able to practice with them. That was the general consensus from all the teams. We want to communicate more and to have more opportunities to be coached.”
Scott said that while time demands vary from sport to sport, one thing has been consistent across the board, and has really opened his eyes: How much time student-athletes spend on their sports before and after practices, above and beyond the NCAA's rules governing how many hours per week they can participate in athletic-related activities.
“The amount of time it takes to properly prepare, to tend to any injuries and to make sure when you are practicing you can fully take advantage of the opportunity in a healthy way” has been a revelation, Scott said. “And after practice, what it takes to cool down, for rehab and injury prevention.
“Science has improved. We've learned more about peak performance, how to prevent and recover from injuries; I think our student-athletes take it very seriously,” and that dedication can also be time-consuming.
According to cubuffs.com contributing editor Neil Woelk, the Pac-12 introduced two time-demand proposals at the NCAA Convention in February during the second autonomy session, the meeting of the five major conferences (Pac-12, Big Ten, SEC, Big 12 and Atlantic Coast) that have been granted autonomy by the NCAA to discuss a variety of issues.
Two of the proposals called for two weeks off after every season, and eight hours every night with no athletic-related activity. The so-called “Power Five” conferences will return to the 2017 NCAA Convention with what Scott described as “a comprehensive set of reforms” regarding time demands on student-athletes.
Power Five conference representatives will meet in April to discuss proposed legislation for the 2017 NCAA Convention. Any legislation passed at the upcoming convention would take effect in the 2017-18 academic year.
Different rules could apply to different sports. For example, Tremblay said OSU's track athletes wanted more communication with their coaching staff than the NCAA presently allows, not less.
Scott said a one-size-fits-all concept isn't practical.
“What we've found is that missed class time is less of an issue in football than in other sports that have more weekday contests,” he said, explaining why a blanket approach is impractical.
“For baseball and softball, especially in the Northwest, early in the season you have to go to warm weather” to find games. “For some soccer or lacrosse student-athletes it's not uncommon for them to go back to the East Coast for a week to find competition.”
And Tremblay, a fifth-year senior on track to graduate in June, said the Pac-12's rule changes benefitting student-athletes has not gone unnoticed.
“The last five years it's been more about looking at the student-athletes as something more than just an athlete,” the double major in education/kinesiology with a minor in psychology said.
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