Athletics Veritas is a weekly series aimed at helping higher education executives, faculty, and other stakeholders stay tuned in on trending national issues impacting college athletics, especially NCAA Division I. Athletics Veritas is created by senior DI athletic administrators around the nation.
Term-in-Ology:A Teachable Moment - The NCAA Division I Student Athlete Teaching Rule Epitomizes Overregulation and Paranoia
Once upon a time in the Division I awards and benefits rules (aka Bylaw 16), Division I adopted a rule that spelled out if and how a student-athlete could be involved in student-teaching at a high school. Without reading more, do we think it’s necessary for a national athletics association to regulate this? We digress.
As it goes, the NCAA Division I rule on student-teaching holds that a student-athlete may accept actual and necessary travel expenses from a high school if the student-athlete is student-teaching (even if teaching or coaching a sport) if the high school is located in a city other than the one in which the collegiate institution is located. In order for the student-athlete to accept such expenses:
(a) Receipt of the expenses must be permitted by the established guidelines of the institution for other student-teacher trainees;
(b) The assigned coaching responsibilities must be a part of the supervised, evaluated teacher-training program in which the student-athlete is enrolled; and
(c) The high school must provide such expenses for all of its student-teacher trainees.
This is an example of unnecessary regulation. The NCAA’s extra benefits rule and impermissible recruiting activity provisions would capture any concerns of abuse that could be folded under the guise of student-teaching by a student-athlete who might, in fact, want to be a teacher after graduation.
It seems a bit farfetched and antiquated for student-teaching to be used nefariously in 2022 for purposes of sliding extra benefits to a student-athlete or somehow to get an unparalleled recruiting advantage with a high school prospect when NIL, social media, and red-carpet recruiting visits to campus would sway more.
Athletics Veritas is presented for information purposes only and should not be considered advice or counsel on NCAA compliance matters. For guidance on NCAA rules and processes, always consult your university’s athletics compliance office, conference office, and/or the NCAA.
