Qatar 2022 – A mixed blessing

By James M. Dorsey

Winning the 2022 World Cup hosting rights has proven to be a mixed blessing for Qatar. The wealthy Gulf emirate, more than two years after world soccer body FIFA voted in Qatar’s favor, is under greater scrutiny than it ever has been and that it originally had bargained for. Qatar’s suitability as a host is being questioned, its labor system is under attack and some court decisions have earned it unfavorable publicity.

Writing in Arabian Business as FIFA prepares at an executive committee meeting in October to move the dates of the Qatari World Cup from summer to winter because of the emirates’ extreme temperatures in June and July, Gay Wright raised the specter of the unprecedented: “What if Qatar loses the 2022 World Cup?” That may be less far-fetched than meets the eye given that the losers in the race for the 2022 Cup – the United States, South Korea, Japan and Australia – could initiate legal action demanding a new vote on the grounds that a change of dates constitutes a change of the terms of the bid.

To be sure, the logic of granting Qatar the Cup made imminent sense. The Middle East and North Africa, a region where soccer has played a key role in national and social development since the late 19^thcentury, has never hosted the world’s biggest sporting event. Much of the argument against Qatar amounts to sour grapes, unjustified arrogance, and bigotry.

Debate about a change of dates has opened the door to renewed questions about the integrity of the bidding process at a time that FIFA has yet to convincingly argue that it has drawn lessons from the worst series of corruption scandals in its 108-year old history. Qatar plays into that in two ways: FIFA’s executive committee voted in favor of Qatar despite its experts having raised technical issues, including the question of summer temperatures that sore beyond the 40 degrees Celsius mark, and FIFA President Sepp Blatter’s own implicit admission that a FIFA investigation had been false when it concluded that Qatar had not engaged in vote swapping with Spain and Portugal, which were bidding jointly for the 2018 Cup. Blatter conceded in a BBC interview that there had been a vote swap agreement, but dismissed it because it had produced no advantage for either party.

The incident constitutes the only confirmed case of potential wrongdoing but says more about FIFA’s concepts of integrity and upholding rules and regulations than about Qatar. This is true for much of the other suspicions that have been expressed about Qatar’s bid, including possible incentives offered to national soccer federations represented on the FIFA executive committee as well as the fact that the Gulf state allocated a significantly larger budget to its bid campaign compared to its competitors. All of that may raise ethical issues, but only goes to demonstrate that FIFA’s bid rules have gaps in it similar to Emmenthaler cheese and a political deal with former French President Nicolas Sarkozy that led to Michel Platini, head of European soccer body UEFA, voting in favor of the Qatari bid.

If most countries bid for mega sporting events as country branding exercises and potential boosts to their economy, for Qatar the cost-benefit analysis in allocating funds was one that went to its core defense and security concerns. Qatar, no matter how many sophisticated weapons it purchases, will never be able to defend itself. The 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait taught it two lessons: big brother Saudi Arabia, unable to defend itself, is an unreliable guarantor. Confidence in the reliability of the United States has since also been called into question. The international coalition that came to Kuwait’s aid demonstrated that soft power and embedment into the global community at multiple levels earns one friends when in need. Qatar’s soft power is vested in sports and particularly soccer.

The ability to wield that soft power is proving to be more complex than Qataris expected. The sour grapes stemming from Qatar’s financial muscle, the arrogance of large nations seeking to delegitimize it on the grounds of it being tiny in population and territory, and anti-Arab and anti-Muslim prejudice threw up unexpected obstacles. So did the fact that the winning of the World Cup exposed Qatar to greater international scrutiny than ever before and made it more vulnerable to criticism by rights activists. The silver lining is that like the World Cup that imposes a timeline on Qatar’s massive infrastructure projects, it potentially offers the Gulf nation a straightjacket for inevitable social reforms.

Conditions for migrant labor that accounts for the majority of Qatar’s population has topped the agenda of activists with international trade unions and human rights groups threatening a boycott  of the World Cup and pressuring international infrastructure contractors to adopt global standards. The issue is more than simply capitalist exploitation or what the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) terms modern slavery. To Qataris, it is existential raising fundamental question about the nature, culture and identity of a society that is theirs but in which they constitute only 15 percent of the population. Ironically, Qatari leaders see sports as one way to strengthen national identity.

Nevertheless, the fact that the cost of maintaining an exploitative labor system and building walls between population groups goes beyond reputational damage was laid bare in a recent study by researchers of Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar published in Perspectives on Public Health. Their research concluded that Qatar would be near the top of the United Nation’s Human Development Index (HDI) if adjustments were made for the country’s large population of migrant workers. That conclusion cuts to the core of Qatar’s soft power effort to project itself as a cutting edge, 21^stcentury knowledge-based society.

Similarly, a string of recent court cases and labor disputes have cast a shadow over Qatar’s effort. Representatives of Asian American couple Matthew and Grace Huang imprisoned on charges of having murdered one of their three adopted black children argue that theirs is a “case of faulty science and what appears to be racial and cultural misunderstandings by the Qatari officials about American norms regarding international adoptions and homeschooling. The Qatari officials have to date refused to acknowledge that mistakes were made and the Huangs have been imprisoned in Qatar for nearly six months,” said Alex Jakubowski of Capitol Media Partners. The Huangs moved to Qatar so that Matthew could work on a World Cup-related infrastructure project.  

An investigation of the sudden death of their daughter Gloria of an eating disorder possibly due to malnutrition because of poverty before her adoption raised the Qatari authorities’ suspicion. “The police investigating Gloria’s death found the family situation inherently suspicious. For example, the investigative police reports repeatedly suggest that Matthew and Grace could not have had a legitimate reason to adopt children who were not ‘good-looking’ and who did not share their ‘hereditary traits. ’The investigative reports theorize that Matthew and Grace ‘bought’ their children in order to harvest their organs, or perhaps to perform medical experiments on them … It appears they did not know that adoptions of children from other countries and other racial backgrounds is common in the United States.,” Mr. Jakubowski said.

Earlier this year, employment-related complaints by two international players, one of whom was barred from leaving Qatar, threatened to overshadow the 2022 World Cup organizing committee’s release of a charter of worker’s rights designed to fend off criticism of labor conditions. In separate interviews French-Algerian player Zahir Belounis, who was locked into a salary dispute with Al Jaish SC, the club owned by the Qatari military, and Moroccan international Abdessalam Ouadoo, who left Qatar last November to join AS Nancy-Lorraine, complained about failure to honor their contracts and pay their salaries as well as ill treatment.

The legal issues play into the hands of Qatar’s distractors. Like with the criticism of Qatar’s labor conditions, the ball is in the Qatari court. It can adopt a defensive position seeking to counter the criticism or introduce reforms that would benefit its far more existential goal: embedment in the international community as a nation that is forging its own path in the 21^st century as a forward-looking, knowledge-based, equitable model in one of the most volatile parts of the world.

James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, co-director of the University of Würzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture, and the author of The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer blog.

Judging sports

The last time a high-profile case was resolved in federal court, the presiding district judge became indelibly linked to the sport and rode it all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States.

Is Judge Anita Brody now forever linked to football?

Another take on NFL Concussion Settlement

Howard blogged about it earlier and I have a new piece for SI on the settlement and what to expect next.

Settlement in NFL concussion lawsuit

The class action against the NFL by more than 4000 former players, alleging that the league knew and failed to disclose the risks of head trauma associated with the game, has tentatively settled. Players will receive $ 765 million (plus court-approved attorneys' fees to be determined later) for individual compensation (reportedly about $ 110,000 per plaintiff), plus funding for research and medical examinations. The settlement was reached following court-ordered mediation, although the agreement still must be approved by the court.

Much is being made in some sports-media circles about the size of the settlement relative to the NFL's wealth, but, of course, civil damages are tied to the harm to the plaintiffs, not to the defendant's ability to play. We might question whether the settlement figure provides sufficient deterrence that the NFL will take real steps (as opposed to the cosmetic ones it has been taking) to make the game safer--assuming such a thing is actually possible (I have my doubts).

Like many other cases, this one also highlights the question whether settlement, especially in money cases, furthers the civil justice system's goals of discovering the truth. There was no discovery, so we never really learned what the NFL knows and has known about the game's risks or about what those risks actually might be (the answer to both is "a lot," according to a forthcoming documentary). We also have not heard the plaintiffs' stories told in a judicial forum (although we might not have). Of course, discovery in a case like this almost certainly would have been sealed, a regular practice that presents a different problem in modern litigation. And the plaintiffs' willingness to settle this early makes sense, because this case would have been a ripe target for a Twiqbal-based 12(b)(6).

Sport and Speech: The Bobblehead

Monday night was Rick Monday Flag-Saving Bobblehead Night at Dodger Stadium. In 1976, two damn hippies (no doubt the common characterization at the time) tried to burn an American flag on the field during a game between the Cubs and Dodgers; Monday, then the Cubs centerfielder (he later played for the Dodgers), snatched the flag away. Video of the incident is included in the link.

Monday discussed it in a 2006 interview:

“That means something, because this wasn’t just a flag on the field. This was a flag that people looked at with respect. We have a lot of rights and freedoms — not to sound corny — but we all have the option if we don’t like something to make it better. Or you also have the option, if you don’t like it, [to] pack up and leave. But don’t come onto the field and burn an American flag.”

While I have argued that the stands of a ballpark qualify for designated public-forum status, the field itself does not, because speech is inconsistent with expected uses (i.e., playing baseball). So Monday is half-right in that last sentence: Don't come onto the field and burn an American flag. Make sure you stay in a public forum.

Fixed matches and cultural capital

A new article in ESPN The Magazine (which includes the embedded video report) tells the story of rumors that Bobby Riggs tanked the famous "Battle of the Sexes" tennis match against Billie Jean King, which was played 40 years ago next month. The touchstone of the article is an interview with a man who claims to have overheard two mob bosses and a mob lawyer discussing Riggs' plan, although rumors that Riggs threw the match have abounded for 40 years.

Two notable things in the article. First, two people suggested that Riggs' famous pre-match chauvinism was all for show, that he believed in gender equality and had worked with a female coach at the start of his career. Second, the story ends with Riggs and King speaking several days before Riggs died in 1995; King says she told Riggs how important their match was to women and the women's movement. "'"Well, we did it," Bobby Riggs finally told her. "We really made a difference, didn't we?""

What if Riggs did tank? The match is a cultural milestone because it purported to show that women could successfully compete with men. That idea is absolutely true, of course (although not in professional sports, and I wish the sports conversation would move away from women competing with men so we could enjoy women's sports on their own merits). But the match no longer represents the idea if King did not actually beat Riggs. On the other hand, suppose Riggs tanked because he saw that he could advance the cause of women's right and women's equality (ideas to which he actually was sympathetic) by losing. Regardless of whether the win was real, it laid the groundwork for what we now, 40 years on, understand as true. And his dying words to King suggest he may have understood that.

Turkey moves to prevent protests in stadiums and on campus

By James M. Dorsey

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government has announced a series of measures to prevent soccer stadiums and university campuses from becoming major protest venues as the football season and the academic year begins. In doing so, Mr. Erdogan is taking a leaf out of the playbook of Egyptian military strongman Gen. Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi and other Arab autocrats who demonize their opponents as terrorists.

In a series of recent statements aimed at students and militant soccer fans who played prominent roles in the mass Gezi Park protests in June, the government said it intended to replace private security forces in stadiums and on campuses with police forces; was banning the chanting of political slogans during soccer matches; obliging clubs to force spectators to sign a pledge to abide by the ban before attending a game; and was cancelling scholarships for students who had participated in anti-government protests.

The government said plainclothes policemen would mingle with militant fans during matches and that their activities on social media would be monitored. It also restricted the consumption of alcohol in stadiums.

The announcements were accompanied by stark statements by Mr. Erdogan, his deputy Bulent Arinc and his sports minister Suat Kilic as well as a videoissued by the Anti-Terrorism Office and the police warning that protests were the first step towards terrorism. 

The 55-second video featuring a young woman demonstrator-turned suicide bomber warned the public that “our youth, who are the guarantors of our future, can start with small demonstrations of resistance that appear to be innocent, and after a short period of time, can engage without a blink in actions that may take the lives of dozens of innocent people.” Throughout the video, the words ‘before it is too late’ are displayed.

The video followed the indictment of 20 members of Carsi, the support group of storied Istanbul club Besiktas JK that has a huge following across the country on charges of belonging to an illegal organization. Carsi played a leading role in the mass anti-government protests in June sparked by a brutal police crackdown on environmentalists protesting plans to bulldoze Gezi Park on Istanbul’s iconic Taksim Square to make place for a mall. Carsi joined forces in the protests with supporters of Beskitas’ two Istanbul arch rivals, Fenerbahce FC and Galatasaray FC.

The government measures are part of a battle in Turkey for public space. With the banning in early July of protests on Taksim, protests moved to neighborhood parks across the city. In Besiktas, Abbasaga Park statues of prominent Turkish politicians, journalists and authors wearing gas masks looked down on Hyde Park-style nightly gatherings.

“Taksim is everywhere, resistance is everywhere,” was the motto of the nightly meetings. The underlying tone was one that resembled the breaking of the Arab world’s barrier of fear. United in a desire for greater freedom, protesters from diverse worldviews and walks of life displayed with chants, jokes and art a humor-laced irreverence of power. Carsi members wearing their club’s black-and-white often moderated the deliberations. They insisted that their sole ideology was opposition to repression and inequality, quoting the group’s slogan, ‘Carsi, her şeye karşı!’ (Carsi is against everything!).

Carsi’s claiming of Abbasaga Park like the protesters’ requester of parks elsewhere constituted a rebuke of the city government’s definition of who was entitled to enjoy the public spaces. At a ceremony to mark the reopening of Gezi Park in early July Istanbul governor Huseyin Avnni Mutlu warned that protests would not be allowed.

“We invite our folks, our people, our children, the elderly and families to visit the park,” Mr. Mutlu said. His implicit message was that families were the unit in society entitled to claim public space, not sub-groups like gays who had frequently gathered in the park prior to the protests. “If certain groups claim to be the public and argue that ‘This park belongs to us, we’re the owners of this park,’ we will not allow that,” Mr. Mutlu said.

In the government’s latest salvo, Deputy Prime Minister Arinc said the government measures were in response to information that fans and students were planning mass protests in September. Mr. Erdogan warned that any protests would be countered by police in what he described as the necessary manner. Mr. Kilic went a step further threatening that “those who politicize the stadiums will pay the price.”

The sports minister added that “if some groups try to infiltrate fan groups, they should know that Turkey is not a banana republic. We have fought terrorism for thirty years. We can handle this too. I do not want to be threatening, but you should know that it is not worth risking yourself and your team. Everyone must know that the law will be enforced. I hope that no one will be hurt, but this can happen. I am noting that there will be electronic monitoring in stadiums. Sports prosecutors will watch the games in stadiums, and we are introducing electronic tickets to monitor the seat of every supporter.”

The minister had a similar message for students. “They can try Gezi protests in universities. People should not ruin their lives, should not have criminal records,” he said in an ironic twist given that Turkey with its history of military coups and the Erdogan government’s crackdown on the media has scores of intellectuals and journalists with police records. Among those is Mr. Erdogan himself, who spent four months in prison for reciting a controversial poem.

Journalist Burak Bekdil reported that Şamil Tayyar, a member of parliament for Mr. Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), suggested that the government punish Besiktas if its fan disobey the ban on political slogans by seizing its stadium and turning it into a park. Alternatively, Mr. Bekdil said the government could follow rent-a-fan model of the late North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il. Mr. Kim paid Chinese actors to attend North Korean games during the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. “Mr. Kim was right. When you cannot win hearts and minds you can always rent them," Mr. Bekdil wrote.

Turkey’s battle lines are being drawn in various ways. Mr. Erdogan broke into tears last week during a television interview as a video was aired with the text of a letter that incarcerated Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohammed el-Beltagy wrote to his 17-year old daughter who was killed on Cairo’s Raba’a al Adawiya Square when security forces broke up the group’s sit-ins earlier this month. “I believe you have been loyal to your commitment to God, and He has been to you. Otherwise, He would not have called you to His presence before me,” Mr. El-Beltagy, who was unable to attend h daughter’s funeral, wrote. Mr. Erdogan said it reminded him of his own children who complained that he did not have time to spend with them.

To be sure, many Turks share the sentiments of Mr. Erdogan who has emerged as one of the fiercest critics of the Egyptian military’s coup and crackdown. Like the prime minister, international midfielder and national soccer captain Emre Belozoglu showed the four finger Raba’a salute that has become symbolic of Raba’a al Adawiya Square after he scored for Fenerbahce in their opening game of the season.

Mr. Erdogan failed however to express similar emotion for Ali Ismail Korkmaz, a protester in Eskisehir who was badly beaten on June 2 by men claiming to be cooperating with the police and was kicked several times in the head by a policeman. Mr. Korkmaz died on July 8 of a cerebral hemorrhage. His ordeal was documented in a video disclosed by Radikalnewspaper.

The government’s tough language follows indications that its hard-handed attempts to fend off further protests are failing. If anything, they may well be fuelling them. Fans of Fenerbahce reminded the government that the battle was not over and may have just begun when they chanted “Everywhere Is Taksim Square! Everywhere Is Resistance!” and demanded Mr. Erdogan’s resignation during a match against Red Bull Salzburg. Supporters of Ankara’s Gencerbigli FC sought to circumvent the ban by chanting ‘Political Slogan’ during a recent match. 

Writing on the T24 news website, soccer journalist Gulengul Altinsay charged that the government was introducing martial law in the stadiums. Addressing the government, Ms. Altinsay suggested that “while you are at it, why not declare in a state of emergency manifesto which slogans are permissible. If that does not work, you can fill the stands with dummies. You have no choice, this nation uses its wits when it is silenced.”

In another twist of irony, the government fears that the one Istanbul stadium named after Mr. Erdogan could become a focal point of protest. That is where Besiktas is playing its home games during the coming season while its own pitch is being renovated.

The issue is not purely symbolic. Municipal elections in Istanbul next March are gearing up to be a litmus test for Mr. Erdogan’s ambitions to swap the prime ministry for the presidency after the next parliamentary election.

“If Erdogan loses Istanbul, his power base could begin to unravel. That is why he is turning stadiums into police states. Sports has become a major battlefield. Besiktas is where it is being fought out. Erdogan is pitting Besiktas chairman Fikret Orman against Carsi who voted him into office. It’s the same strategy he used with the media exploiting their financial vulnerability,” said a prominent political analyst.

James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, co-director of the University of Würzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture, and the author of The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer blog.

Pressure for labor reform in Qatar increases amid calls to move World Cup to winter

By James M. Dorsey

Activists have stepped up calls for a boycott of the 2022 World Cup if Qatar fails to bring conditions for its majority foreign work force in line with international labor standards. The campaign seeks to exploit potential Qatari vulnerability at a time that world soccer body FIFA gears up to decide whether to move the first World Cup to be held in the Middle East and North Africa from summer to winter.

In a strengthening of the boycott campaign waged since Qatar was awarded World Cup hosting rights in late 2010 by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), which has 175 million members in 153 countries, Anti-Slavery International this week declared its support for shunning the wealthy Gulf state.

“It would be a dreadful pity and an enormous shame on all of us if we are prepared to participate in a world cup that has been brought to us by slavery,” said Aidan McQuade, the group’s director.

ITUC secretary general Sharan Burrow said her organization was pressuring major companies from the United States, Britain, France and Brazil that were likely to win contracts for $75 billion worth of World Cup-related projects that include stadiums, rail and subway networks, hotels, and a new city that would house 200,000 people to incorporate workers’ rights in their bids. Foreign workers account for 94 percent of Qatar’s work force.

“It is awkward for Western countries who are promoting their businesses in the Gulf to talk about the rights of migrant workers who may be employed by westerners. There has to be a discussion about this,” said an Amnesty International spokesman, James Lynch.

ITUC has dismissed Qatar’s efforts to improve recruiting, working and social conditions because they fail to encompass internationally accepted principles of the right of collective bargaining and to form independent trade unions. Qatar’s 2022 Supreme Committee unveiled this spring a Workers’ Charter that would be binding on World Cup-related projects. The charter, a set of lofty principles, affirms the right of those working on projects “to be treated in a manner that ensures at all times their well-being, health, safety and security.”

Similarly, Qatar Foundation, has said that it was working on a charter of its own and was introducing sweeping measures that “can guarantee the rights of workers at all stages of the migration cycle − from the moment they are recruited and until they are repatriated to their home countries.” It said its charter and measures were “based upon a holistic and principled approach that combines Qatari Labor Law and international best practice.”

A key bone of contention with activists is the fact that Qatari labor law enshrines the principle of kafala or sponsorship, under which an employee is beholden to his employer. The ITUC has denounced the system that is common in the Gulf as modern slavery. The Supreme Committee has argued that its “commitment is to change working conditions in order to ensure a lasting legacy of improved worker welfare. We are aware that this cannot be done overnight. But the 2022 FIFA World Cup is acting as a catalyst for improvements in this regard.”

Anti-Slavery International joined the boycott campaign as the number of deaths of unskilled or semi-skilled workers in Qatar appeared to be on the rise. It also came as FIFA was gearing up for an executive committee meeting in October that would decide whether to move the 2022 tournament to the winter months because of Qatar’s overbearing summer temperature. The potential move has sparked calls for the Cup to be moved to another country.

The embassy of Nepal in Doha, whose nationals figure prominently in the construction sector that has been boosted by vast infrastructure projects, many of which are World Cup related, reported last month the highest spike so far in the number of deaths of Nepalese laborers. Of the 32 who perished in July, 13 workers in their 20s died of a cardiovascular disease; 11 others were killed in road incidents and another eight in work-related accidents, the embassy’s second secretary, Harihar Kant Proudel, told Doha News.

“There have been cases where we have suspected that there has been a mutual understanding between the doctor and the company, and the doctor has made a false report saying that they died of cardiac arrest – it is easier for a company to say they died of that,” Mr. Proudel said. He attributed the deaths to the fact that “many workers are going without meals, and without enough water, then they are working in high temperatures all day. The weather here is different from our country. Our nationals are not used to it.”

Mr. Proudel’s assertions stroked with conclusions of a recent study in the Journal of Arabian Studies that listed late wages, significant debts accrued to pay labor brokers, and inconsistent access to healthcare as common problems encountered by foreign workers in Qatar. Funded by the Qatar National Research Fund, the study, entitled APortrait of Low-Income Migrants in Contemporary Qatar, said that 56 percent of the workers interviewed reported not having received a government-mandated Hamad health card, needed to access free healthcare. Qatar University meanwhile reported that the vast majority of employers in Qatar illegally confiscated workers’ passport at the outset of their employment.

Source: Arabian Studies Journal

The issue of workers’ rights touches on one of Qatar’s most existential issues: demography. Qataris account for approximately 15 percent of their country’s population. A recent report by the Doha-based Arab Center for Research & Policy Studies, ‘Foreign Labor and Questions of Identity in the Arabian Gulf,’ concluded that fears that any degree of integration of foreigners would threaten family-run Qatar’s political, cultural and social identity made change unlikely.

Source: Arabian Studies Journal

“The issues touches upon the essence of the question of the transition towards a ‘citizenship society. … In the absence of the establishment of a modern state based on the bond of citizenship, justice, the rule of law, and equal opportunity among all components of society, it is extremely difficult to assimilate immigrants. … The Gulf countries, due to the delay in the construction of the modern state on the institutional, legal and constitutional levels, have extreme difficulties integrating the population of their home societies – let alone assimilating immigrants,” the report said.

James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, co-director of the University of Wuerzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture, and the author of The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer blog.

The politics of Indonesian and Turkish soccer: a comparative analysis (with Leonard Sebastian)

Soccer & Society Volume 14, Issue 5, 2013 Special Issue: Football in Asia

Select Language​▼ Translator disclaimer

The politics of Indonesian and Turkish soccer: a comparative analysis

DOI:

10.1080/14660970.2013.792482

James M. Dorsey^a & Leonard C. Sebastian^a*

pages 615-634

Publishing models and article dates explained
Published online: 23 May 2013

Article Views: 17

Preview

Access Options

Alert me

Abstract

With soccer playing an increasingly important political role in both Turkey and Indonesia, this essay seeks to highlight similarities in the politics of soccer in two parts of the world that share cultural and political traits but are geographically distant from one another.

• View full text
• Download full text

Related

• Share on facebookShare on twitterShare on emailMore Sharing Services
• Add to shortlist
• Link
• Download Citation

• Recommend to:
• A friend

First page preview

Close

Download full text

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size

So

The NCAA Has Never Been Regulated by Congress, So Will Congress Finally Man-Up with Proposed New Legislation?

Going back almost five decades, since 1965, Congress has held about thirty separate formal hearings on the NCAA and/or amateur or collegiate athletics, and Congress has produced no less than seventeen reports regarding the NCAA and these related topics during that timeframe, yet Congress has enacted no legislation to regulate the NCAA.*

On September 19, 2011, in my Sports Business Journal op-ed, I proposed that Congress should adopt the following Collegiate Athlete and Employee Fairness Act, which would essentially solve most if not all of the current problems with college sports by inserting the free market into the system.  CAEFA would require that:

1.         The athletic conferences, the NCAA, and any related associations, shall no longer be deemed IRS 501(c)(3) charitable entities and shall hereafter be deemed 501(c)(6) trade association entities;

2.         Any college or university with an athletic department that derives revenue from its athletic program shall operate from within that institution and not from within any separate entity, and the athletic department’s finances shall be audited according to generally accepted accounting principles and publicly and separately reported with its annual IRS Form 990; 

3.         Any college or university with an athletic department that derives revenue from its athletic program shall provide disability, health, and life insurance to its college athletes and athletic department employees; 

4.         Any college or university’s net profit from its athletic department shall be taxed under the unrelated business income tax theory, because making profit on amateur activities is inapposite to amateurism; 

5.         Any entity purporting to regulate college athletes or athletic department employees shall apply the same rights and privileges to these athletes and employees as it does to its members; colleges and universities shall apply the same rights and privileges to all of their students, whether they participate in athletics or not; 

6.         Any entity purporting to regulate college athletes or employees shall not make an agreement with any college or university that limits or attempts to limit any rules or regulations or terms of admissions and recruitment or attendance, a grant-in-aid or letter of intent, or athletic department employment; 

7.         Any entity purporting to regulate college athletics or athletic department employees shall not abridge any rights or privileges afforded by the constitutions and laws of the United States and its several states and territories as may be applicable to that athlete or employee, and no such entity shall attempt to penalize resort to the judicial system via restitution rules, penalties, or otherwise; 

8.         The Uniform Athlete Agent Act and any federal or state analogs are hereby superseded by this Act, which invalidates or withdraws the same and replaces them with the simple and universal truth that all college athletes and employees are entitled to representation of their choice at any point in time for any reason whatsoever under any terms agreed to by the agent or attorney and college athlete, which shall be deemed confidential and privileged; and 

9.         Congress shall establish an administrative law system within the Department of Education to adjudicate any enforcement of any rules or regulations of any entities purporting to regulate colleges and universities and their college athletes or athletic department employees, which shall be fully and totally financed by those entities on a yearly basis pursuant to a formula to be determined by the Department, which shall adopt rules and regulations to carry out this Act, including rules and regulations as to when the entity must provide counsel for athletes and employees, who cannot otherwise afford to retain the same. Appeals shall be heard by the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, and certiorari may be entertained by the U.S. Supreme Court.

On October 19, 2011, Representative John Conyers, Jr., Ranking Member of the House Committee on the Judiciary, called for hearings regarding antitrust and due process violations by the NCAA.

On November 17, 2011, Representative Bobby L. Rush, Member of the House Committee on Energy & Commerce, Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade, along with sixty other members of Congress, called for hearings to evaluate those circumstances under which the NCAA would decide—along with what is the NCAA’s capacity—to independently investigate recurring student-athlete and administrative misconduct and violations of NCAA and member conference regulations.

To date, nothing has come of my proposal or of these calls for hearings on the NCAA by about ten percent of Congress, which is not an insignificant number at the hearing stage.

On August 1, 2013, Representative Charles Dent along with eight co-sponsors introduced legislation entitled the National Collegiate Athletics Accountability Act, which has been assigned to the Committee on Education and the Workforce, and which provides in pertinent part as follows:

Section 487(a) of the Higher Education Act of 1965 (20 U.S.C. 1094(a)) is amended by adding at the end the following: 

‘(30) In the case of an institution that has an intercollegiate athletic program, the institution will not be a member of a nonprofit athletic association unless such association—                     

‘(A) requires annual baseline concussion testing of each student athlete on the active roster of each team participating in a contact/collision sport or a limited-contact/impact sport (based on the most recent classification of sports published by the Committee on Sports Medicine of the American Academy of Pediatrics) before such student athlete may participate in any contact drills or activities; 

‘(B) prior to enforcing any remedy for an alleged infraction or violation of the policies of such association— 

‘(i) provides institutions and student athletes with the opportunity for a formal administrative hearing, not less than one appeal, and any other due process procedure the Secretary determines by regulation to be necessary; and 

‘(ii) hold in abeyance any such remedy until all appeals have been exhausted or until the deadline to appeal has passed, whichever is sooner; 

‘(C) with respect to institutions attended by students receiving athletically related student aid (as defined in section 485(e)), requires any such athletically related student aid provided to student athletes who play a contact/collision sport (based on the most recent classification of sports published by the Committee on Sports Medicine of the American Academy of Pediatrics) to be— 

‘(i) guaranteed for the duration of the student athlete’s attendance at the institution, up to 4 years; and 

‘(ii) irrevocable for reasons related to athletic skill or injury of the student athlete; and 

‘(D) does not have in place a policy that prohibits institutions from paying stipends to student athletes.’.

The media reported this introduction and noted that essentially it was introduced by proxies for Ohio and Penn State Universities, which have both been dealt severe penalties by the NCAA.  According to GovTrack, this bill has only a seven percent chance of making it out of Committee, and only one percent chance of being enacted.

Why new legislation that is not comprehensive was introduced without seeking support from Reps. Conyers & Rush is unclear, but it underscores why any attempt to regulate the NCAA generally fails, and the reasons are litany with just a few being the following:  (A) This never makes Congress’ top ten most important things to do;  (B) those advocating regulation usually have a bone to pick about their college team being picked-upon, which makes their proposals suspect from the get-go;  (C) Congress doesn’t understand the NCAA or how its cabal made up of the conferences, colleges, and universities actually work, which is more an example of modern day fascism;  (D) Congress has no idea how much tax revenue it is missing by failing to investigate this pot of gold;  and (E) Congress generally doesn’t care, beyond Reps. Conyers & Rush and their group, about the racist impact that the commercialization of men’s football and basketball have had on minorities.

If you are the NCAA, do you really care, when you know that none of this will go anywhere?  The obvious answer is no, if history is any example.  With all of the hearings and reports on the NCAA, Congress has never regulated the NCAA directly, although it has chosen to regulate agents and gambling, as if those were of paramount importance, which they are only to the NCAA.  So, if the NCAA wants legislation to help it, it has gotten its way in the past.  But real policing of the NCAA won’t happen unless a movement arises to address the massive inequities of the entire collegiate athletic industry, which must be done on a comprehensive versus piecemeal basis.

Congress should care:  College sports generate over $6BB in annual revenue, gambling on college sports is in excess of ten times that amount, neither the states nor the federal government have delegated the regulation of college sports to the NCAA, but by historical accident and Congressional apathy, the NCAA portends to regulate close to a half million college athletes every year, not to mention all the athletic department employees, while not allowing those athletes or employees membership in the NCAA or any say in how they are governed.  Insult to injury, the NCAA disclaims any legal relationship with college athletes and employees.  Non-profits all, the NCAA and its member conferences, colleges, and universities, this commercial revenue should be taxed under the UBIT theory, but the IRS seems not to care.  How does the NCAA maintain its IRS Section 501(c)(3) charitable, nonprofit status, when it is not incorporated as a nonprofit, and when it engages in political lobbying—both of which disqualify it as a 501(c)(3), before we even get to the fact that it spends almost nothing on its tax-exempt purpose?

Where is the Department of Education in all of this, when the President is complaining about the rising costs of college, which can certainly be attributed to some extent to misallocation of resources to athletic departments?  According to one of the leading experts in college costs, federal student grants now stand at about $49BB, and federal student loans now stand at about $105BB, annually, and all of this does not count non-student grants from places like NIH.  What do we get for this?  A national 55% graduation rate over six years!  Remember when one was expected to graduate from a four year program in four years?!?  Congress should be wondering what kind of Department of Education presides over such a debacle on so many levels.  Congress should care a lot about all of this.

* Historical research for this post was provided at my request by and thanks to Kathleen M. Dugan, Esq., M.L.S., Librarian & Chief Administrator, and Sharla B. Johnston, M.L.S., Circulation Services Librarian, at the Cleveland Law Library.