Grey Issues In Basketball

Dave Bliss & Baylor University Men’s Basketball

In life, people will say things are black and white. Others will disagree and say there is a gray area. The gray area means the area in-between black and white. This area may also be known as “playing between the rules” or “not conforming to the rules”. Some believe playing and working in the gray area is okay while others believe it is unethical.

In this class we have learned about many different issues and areas for concern in college athletics. Administrators, college coaches, assistant coaches, administrative staffs and student-athletes are all affected by each of these areas. They include: alcohol and drugs, student protection, conditioning and weight training, contracts, disease control, documentation, employment, event management, equipment, facilities,

In the past few years harsh penalties have been handed out to the University of Miami, Penn State University and Indiana University. Each of these situations were completely different. At the University of Miami, a booster name Nevin Shapiro was involved with a Ponzi scheme and gave money to Miami basketball and football players. At Penn State, long-time assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky was indicted on child molestation charges. Indiana fired head men’s basketball coach Kelvin Sampson due to recruiting violations involving improper telephone calls and text messages.

The one thing that you hear about very little about while working at institutions is ethics. Each day ethical choices are made in our daily thought process. A great comparison between ethics and compliance was viewed in our Module 6 reading. The article was titled, An Effective Compliance and Ethics Program Is an Ethical Compliance Program by Joseph L. Wiest. A great example of how the two work together was described in Table 1 of the article.

Table