This blog isn’t an attack on the Ohio State Buckeyes, but something just doesn’t feel right. In the past few years dating back to 2006, the OSU football team has had some pretty unique kickers on their teams. Starting in 2006, Ryan Pretorius began kicking field goals for the buckeyes. During the 2006-07 season, Pretorius was 26 years old. He continued to kick for the buckeyes until 2008, which had him at 30 years of age at the start of the season. The average age of a college football player during the 08-09 season was between 18-23. Pretorius was twelve to seven years older than his opponents; I feel that there is a disadvantage there. To my knowledge, Pretorius played professional rugby before he joined the buckeyes, and this is where I have my problem.
I consider college athletes as amateurs. And even if people don’t consider rugby a major sport in America, it is throughout other parts of the world. If he would have played professionally, he would have had a contract, and gotten paid to play. Even though it was a different sport, I think the NCAA merely looked the other way when it came to Pretorius playing football. It seems like a HUGE disadvantage for teams who have to face a freshman kicker that’s played professional rugby outside the USA.
Next comes another Ohio State kicker, this time Devin Barclay. Barclay, if many of you didn’t know, played professional soccer in the MLS, with the teams: Tampa Bay Mutiny, San Jose Earthquakes, D.C. United, and Columbus Crew. Barclay had been playing professional soccer since he was 18 when he signed a contract with the Tampa Bay Mutiny. Although he didn’t have a successful career in the MLS, he somehow found his way on to the football field and soon became the starting kicker for the Buckeyes.
Although not near as old as Pretorius, I have the same problem with Barclay. He was a professional athlete in a different sport, but still gets to play in the NCAA. I believe that the NCAA needs to change the rules of eligibility so that this kind of thing doesn’t keep happening. There needs to be age limits for college football athletes. It only seems fair to allow players aging from 17-26 to play football. By having players older than that, seems like an unfair recruiting method. Also, I feel the NCAA should uphold its amateur status better, if a player has ever played professionally for any sport, and then they should not be allowed to play an NCAA sport. It may seem harsh, but it’s only fair. In Barclay’s example, he “retired” from soccer, but he still held a professional position on a team. He shouldn’t be allowed to play. These players take away from the integrity of the game. Teams should have to recruit high school or junior college students, not former professional players. I would hope the NCAA does something about this before more players follow this path which I find unethical. And I believe this should go for all NCAA sports, not just football.
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As a fan of college football, and Ohio State, I thought I considered myself pretty affluent in the rules and regulations of the NCAA. However, I too, have been troubled by OSU's use of "older" athletes as kickers. Its my understanding that the maximum age limit for the NCAA is 24 years old. Now that is the age that you have to be when you first participate in a sport, and you would then have four years(or 5 with a redshirt) of eligibility after that. But Barclay and Pretorius don't seem to fit that build.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you 100% that their should be more strict regulations on the amateur status of college athletes. But, these individuals are sacrificing a large amount of money in order to do something that has probably been their dream for a long time. Pretorious gave up his professional career in South Africa(I believe) and sent highlight tapes to colleges all across the United States to try and get a try out. His professional career as a rugby player unlikely gave him an advantage as a walk on football player, considering Ohio State was the only team willing to give him a tryout, and that may be more indicative of Jim Tressel's love for Special Teams than of Pretorious kicking ability.
All things considered, you make a great point. Why should a person be able to play professionally in one sport, but still maintain their amateur status in another? I think its something for the NCAA to investigate a little more thoroughly.
You bring up some great points that I would like to address. First, the age limit. I was under the impression that the age limit was around 25, but I do not know if that is just in Division I. I know there have been students who came back to college as a career change and wanted to play sports, so there have been athletes in their 30s, 40s, and even older, who played individual sports. In some cases, athletes have had military duty (Roger Staubach, David Robinson), or a religious commitment (Sean Bradley) that kept them from going straight to college. As a result, they may have passed the age limit. I think they should be allowed to do that.
ReplyDeleteAs for playing after being a "professional" athlete, each of the cases that you cited were examples of athletes who played professionally in different sports than the ones in which they played collegiately. Of course, both cases that you cited also had transferable skills. There was a case not long ago where a skier (Jeremy Bloom) wanted to sign an endorsement deal so that he could afford to continue skiing in the Olympics, but the NCAA would not allow it because it would have interfered with his participation (as an amateur) on the University of Colorado football team. This suggests to me that the NCAA does not want "current" professionals to be playing in the amateur ranks. The only other case that I know of occurred a number of years ago after formerly professional tennis players decided to go to school and play on their teams. They had to sit out of professional competition for a year before they could play. Again, I don't know if that NCAA rule still applies, but it might. The one thing I can say, based upon my observations of the NCAA, is that they are not always consistent in their rulings.