Storyline: Walter Byers, who died last month at 93, was the NCAA’s first full-time executive director (1951-1987). He went to his death ruing what he had built.
For at least thirty years Walter Byers lived an unsettled life. He didn’t hide it. He made it public, in fact. That’s exactly what he preferred.
Who is Walter Byers? And why would he be the topic of a sports column?
Courtesy: ncaa.org
Byers, who died last month at 93, is one of the most important names in the last half century of college sports. He was the first full-time executive director of the NCAA, a tenure that spanned multiple generations—from 1951 to 1987. Those years represent the formative years of college sports as we know it today.
Byers began his directorship early—at the unlikely age of 29 years. The NCAA was young, institutionally, too. As Bruce Weber wrote in The New York Times: “He (Byers) was hardly a formidable figure; his previous job, his son said, was as the assistant sports information director of the Big Ten Conference. He had never run an organization of any kind. His staff initially consisted of himself and an assistant. At the time, the organization had 381 member colleges and oversaw 11 national championships. When he retired, the N.C.A.A. had more than 1,000 member colleges, recognized 74 national champions in men’s and women’s sports and, according to an Associated Press report at the time, employed a full-time staff of 143 on a budget of $100 million.”
Byers coined the term “student-athlete.’ Byers cultivated public interest in college sports—in college football, especially. Byers connected college sports to the national media—to TV, especially. It was Byers who built the foundation of college sports’ juggernaut—the billion-dollar-a-year NCAA.
A lot to be proud of? Well, for Byers, not so much.
Courtesy: The New York Times
Byers went to his death ruing the enterprise he built. He had regrets. He lamented what he had done. He deplored what the NCAA has become. And he turned his soul inside out—in public, through writing and speaking out—perhaps to repent for presumed sins.
Consider, as evidence, the title of Byers’ 1997 book: Unsportsmanlike Conduct: Exploiting College Athletes. The NCCA had become “arrogant, autocratic and “self-righteous,” Byers wrote, and he urged lawmakers to enact an Athletes’ Bill of Rights.
Why did Byers write and say these things? I’ll never know. But I do know that institutional founders— those who had exercised leadership to build something new and special—sometimes face challenges. Sometimes they can’t let go. Sometimes they want future leaders to be just like them. And sometimes they blame organizational problems on successors, who don’t measure up. It’s called Founder’s Disease or Syndrome.
Did Byers have it? I don’t know. William Rhoden of The New York Times, a respected sports journalist, saw Byers “a flawed leader.” Rhoden wrote: “For 36 years under Byers, the NCAA began to look like an American fief, not unlike those commanded by sports czars who were his contemporaries, like Primo Nibiolo, head of an international track federation, and Juan Antonio Samaranch, who led the International Olympic Committee.”
One interpretation, a reader’s comment (to Joe Nocera’s column about Byers), goes this way:
Courtesy: masaidesign.com
“Byers’s psychological profile reads like a textbook case of egomania. Sounds like he saw himself as the only one who was always right. When people like that are given power and means they can build mean-spirited institutions. Sociology shows that people in groups will act to much greater extremes than they will on their own. When these people are the workers and the leader sets the extremes, off it goes. Then,…ironically, when the leader moves on, if he moves on, he looks back with disdain at the callousness of the place, blames the people in it and is still always right. In that sense, I do not think he had a change of heart. His righteousness moved outside the organization.” WJL, St. Louis
Without question Byers was an interesting personality. He was disciplined, structured, and had unbending standards. People respected him and they feared him. More than a few associates didn’t trust him.
But here’s the thing: the issues Byers had with the NCAA are the same issues many of us have had with the NCAA. The difference? We’re outsiders. We critique. Byers was an insider. He criticized. He turned on the very enterprise he created and was considered a traitor by some. That happens from time to time in sports (e.g., Jose Canseco) and elsewhere, but it’s hardly an everyday occurrence—especially when somebody has been the CEO. That’s what makes this such a fascinating story.
Courtesy: KCUR.org
What did Byers find wrong with the NCAA? It’s a long list: questionable academic standards, manipulative college presidents, donor engagement and gifts, advertising endorsement, ethics and corruption, and weak enforcement. He concluded that today’s college sports is no longer a “student activity.’ Rather, it’s a big-money commercial enterprise.
A staunch supporter of amateurism, Byers later regretted coining the term, “student-athlete.” He admitted (years later) that he did it on the advice of NCAA attorneys—to avoid possible litigation (workers comp) associated with interpretations of state labor laws.
Others agree that the term is a misnomer. They base that claim on studying athletes’ functions and time spent on sports vis-à-vis what university employees do. They conclude that the “student-athlete” label is misleading, if not inaccurate. Revenue-based athletes are university employees, they contend.
But what does today’s public think? In January of this year CNN’s Sara Ganim wrote an article on CNN.com in which she reported, and then analyzed, the results of a Monmouth University poll:
75% say competitive athletic pressure warps school priorities
67% say universities put too much emphasis on athletics
42% say the NCAA does a poor job of emphasizing the right athletics-academics balance, and
24% say major college programs find the right academics-athletics balance.
Courtesy: collegesportphdblog.com
While it’s easy to find fault with Byers—because he had a strong hand in influencing what the NCAA has become—he also had important things to say about what the NCAA has become. He may have had Founder’s Disease (and probably did), but he also had legitimate gripes that many of us share.
His story is an important one in sports, showing just how hard it is to balance commercialism with other matters in sports—matters that are so important, not just for college sports, but for sports, generally.
While Byers did a host of big and important things, he didn’t frame the balance appropriately and he didn’t do enough in the name of reform. Perhaps what emerged in his later years is a type of self-criticism–one that’s expressed outward.
But let’s be clear: people, like Byers, serve a valuable function. They speak up when others (knowing the same things) either remain quiet or endorse the party line.
At a price, though, Walter Byers ….
Courtesy: ncaa.org
