So. Wow, that looks kind of disturbing, doesn’t it? Well, maybe, but I doubt it.
As many already know, I spent several years as a swimmer for the University of Michigan. We did all of our “dry land” workouts on the mezzanine level at the Natatorium, away from the coaches and (mostly) out of sight from public view. If you arrived late or if you skipped a portion of these workouts, you put yourself at risk of receiving a “dog pile” courtesy of your teammates. I doubt the coaches knew the specifics of any corrective measures taken by the team, but I also doubt they were completely ignorant of the practice. And if anyone started to make a habit out of missing or skipping these workouts, eventually the coaches would hear about it and would eventually do something, like say, publicly shame the swimmer and question their commitment. Dog piles weren’t pleasant, I imagine getting called out by coaches in front of the team isn’t pleasant, and as a freshmen you quickly got the message loud and clear- you show up for these workouts, or you get punished and perhaps get pushed aside.
But, during my years with the Michigan Swimming program, we completely complied with the NCAA practice time guidelines, and I’m sure I signed several documents attesting to that. I maintain that assertion to this day- one may consider those dry land workouts to not actually be, you know, voluntary. I disagree. Those kinds of workouts always were and always will be voluntary, because doing just a little bit more than the other guy- just for a chance to be the best- will always be a choice.
I’ll leave it to Brian at MGo to tear into all the little technical details and factual problems that the Freep article may or may not have. I’ll leave it to Orson at EDSBS to approach this from the cynical “I don’t see the problem here” attitude. And I’ll leave it to at least one person here at the WLA to be officially concerned about all this, even if (probably) there are no NCAA violations. Fine.
What troubles me about this brouhaha is the inherent assumption that excessive practice time, voluntary or otherwise, is somehow a bad thing. News flash: in sports, there is always someone bigger, faster, stronger, and harder-working than you. If you choose to commit to a sport at the highest level, then you choose to be part of this bigger/faster/stronger culture. Deal.
Bluntly- this isn’t peanuckle pinochle, and most of the kids at powerful Division 1 programs aren’t dilettantes. At this level, there is a certain amount of seriousness and yes, professionalism that is required of the participants. I use the word “required” there loosely- I don’t mean coaches and staff literally require all this extra practice time from the kids. I mean that the nature of the sport, the teammates, and their opponents essentially demand an obsessive level of time and energy.
“Workouts are voluntary, but so is playing time” is not, in my e-pinion, a wink and a nod to the NCAA rules, but an actual credo embraced by most of these kids. The way I see it the coaches don’t say this as a way to force kids into “volunteering” for workout, but rather to remind them of the environment they are part of.
If you want to get quality playing time, say, on the offensive line at a highly visible Division I football program (like, say, Michigan), then are all those offseason workouts really voluntary? Really? There are 4 star and 5 star kids coming in with each new year, and some of them are bound to be more physically gifted than you. What precisely is your plan to be better than them in order to obtain playing time? Going a step further, if you do get playing time you will be facing off weekly against equally talented kids, and they will probably do anything to beat you on every.damn.play. What precisely is your plan to do your job on Saturday in order to keep your playing time? Do you honestly think those offseason workouts, weightlifting, running, etc. are optional when facing off against all of that competition, both inside and outside your own team?
Your coaches have nothing to do with that. You signed up for this, and there’s no way you or your coaches can hold down the genetic gifts and/or competitive fires of freakin’ everyone around you. If you can’t keep up, then one way or another you will be pushed aside. That reality essentially demands these workouts be done, NCAA guidelines and coaches’ mandatory absences be damned. You are going to do these things, because you want to be the absolute best, and the absolute best demands that “voluntary” workouts are anything but. It’s that simple, and again, your coaches have nothing to do with it, and shouldn’t be responsible for failing to stop it.
If there are actual violations here, then RichRod and Barwis will get what’s coming to them. But I highly doubt any violations have occurred, because I highly doubt any of these workouts were mandatory. From what I’ve read, the key to defusing this whole “scandal” has been understanding what exactly it means to have a “voluntary” workout. And as I just tried to explain, this isn’t a defense of whatever’s been going on in the offseason because “everybody does it.” This is a defense because “everybody wants to do it, and thus no one can stop it.”
The NCAA guidelines on practice times are there to protect against institutional abuses of the student athlete, and that’s fine. There have to be boundaries, and everybody accepts that. But there never have been and never will be rules for any sport in the history of the universe that will protect a player from the competitive pressure s/he may feel to get and maintain an edge. There is nothing any of us can do about that. Even the NCAA recognizes this, as “voluntary” workouts are completely unrestricted. So WTF is the problem here?
The problem is that the competitive pressures of college football, to paraphrase chitown, are so great as to make a farce of the idea of a “voluntary workout.” But farcical “voluntary” workouts will always exist when sports achievement is richly rewarded. So, then essentially what we’re saying is because rich rewards place a lot of competitive pressure on college football players, the problem is really that college football is too rich and too big and too attractive and too entertaining and blah blah blah. That may be so, but we’ve strayed far, far away from any kind of problem with offseason workouts, haven’t we? And we’ve certainly not discovered or proven any specific wrongdoing by RichRod or Barwis, so I don’t understand why suddenly a problem of environment completely out of their control is their sole responsibility to fix. That’s absurd.
At the highest levels, voluntary activities are always only “voluntary” in name. There is nothing wrong with that, there is no scandal in failing to stop that, and it is pointless to be “distressed” by that.
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