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The legislation surrounding head coach control has been in the lives of compliance processionals for the better part of five years. Since its inception, much of the focus has centered on how a head coach can satisfy its requirement by promoting an atmosphere of compliance.

Bylaw 11.1.1.1 states:

“An institution’s head coach is presumed to be responsible for the actions of all institutional staff members who report, directly or indirectly, to the head coach. An institution’s head coach shall promote an atmosphere of compliance within his or her program and shall monitor the activities of all institutional staff members involved with the program who report, directly or indirectly to the coach.”

As a result, Bylaw 11.1.1.1 places two affirmative duties on a head coach:

1. To promote an atmosphere of rules compliance; and
2. To monitor those individuals in their program who report to them.

NCAA Constitution 2.8.1 requires each member institution to monitor its athletic programs and the Committee on Infractions (“COI”) has extended that duty to head coaches (See Syracuse University, 2015). So, what does it mean to monitor? Monitoring does not mean a head coach is required to conduct a formal investigation. Instead, head coaches are likely required to seek additional information and report the matter to the compliance office or other appropriate staff member when a situation requires it. The COI has been clear in stating that head coaches are required to be active participants in an institution’s monitoring efforts. What follows is a brief review of cases from the COI where a head coach failed to monitor the activities of his or her staff.

University of Louisville (2017)

The COI found the head men’s basketball coach failed to monitor the activities of the former operations director. The COI found that the head men’s basketball coach created a residential environment where violations occurred and trusted the operations directors to abide by NCAA rules and delegated monitoring of the operations directors to the assistant coaches. However, the assistant coaches later testified they did not believe it was part of their job to oversee the operations director.

“The former operations director attended staff meetings and participated in rules education sessions, but was not specifically trained in any manner regarding the duties the head coach assigned him in Minardi Hall.”

University of the Pacific (2017)

The head men’s basketball coach recruited prospective student-athletes from two-year institutions who utilized distance learning courses to meet transfer and eligibility requirements. During his interview, the head men’s basketball coach admitted to failing to monitor the activities of the assistant coaches and he let them “get out of control.” Specifically, the head men’s basketball coach wrote to the assistant coaches and told them it was their job to get it done with regard to the distance learning courses. Afterwards, the assistant coaches were left to accomplish that task by whatever means necessary. The COI concluded that the head men’s basketball coach failed to monitor his staff due to his own acknowledgment of a lack of control over them.

Prairie View A&M University (2017)

An assistant men’s basketball coach assisted a student-athlete in enrolling in an online class for eligibility. The head men’s basketball coach knew the student-athlete would have difficulty paying for the class, but failed to question the assistant coach or student-athlete on who actually paid for the class. This was despite the fact that the head men’s basketball coach received information that a third-party paid for the course on two separate occasions.

The COI concluded the head men’s basketball coach violated the head coach control legislation when he failed to follow up with the assistant men’s basketball coach or on who paid for the course despite receiving credible information that a third-party had done so.

Lessons

• Do no rely heavily on your staff to ensure NCAA rules and regulations are being followed (University of Louisville);
• Head coaches have a duty to follow up on information or situations that come to their attention that might indicate a violation has occurred or will occur (Prairie View A&M; University of the Pacific); and
• Ensure staff member have received specialized rules education and/or training for any duties assigned to him or her (University of Louisville).

Action Plan

• Head coaches should assign a member of his or her staff a “compliance monitoring” component to their duties;
• Head coaches should require staff members to receive specialized education and/or training for those areas assigned to them;
• Head coaches should regularly follow up with each staff member and review those compliance areas assigned to them and seek additional information when necessary; and
• Head coaches should report any items of concern to the compliance office and/or athletics administration.

Like most warning shots, it was loud and flashy, designed to capture attention. Like most warning shots, it drew no blood. And like many warning shots, it isn’t likely to force much change.

In early February, the NCAA used Saginaw Valley State University to launch its latest warning to member institutions — this time the smaller schools that make up Division II.

Springboarding off a self-report from Saginaw Valley on paperwork issues that led to 130 athletes in 15 sports competing improperly over several years, the NCAA warned schools that they must have a strong compliance program — a tall task for small schools.

“The committee is cognizant of the financial challenges faced by many Division II member schools,” the NCAA said in its press release announcing its decision. “However, this case illustrates the need for all Division II schools to ensure that they devote the necessary funds and staffing to establish an effective and reliable compliance program that, at a minimum, can fulfill basic and fundamental responsibilities of membership, including eligibility certification, as exemplified in this case.”

Despite the stern words and a finding of “lack of institutional control” at Saginaw Valley — normally the harshest of rulings the NCAA can make — the punishment was largely a slap on the wrist. Saginaw Valley is forfeiting wins, going on probation for four years and paying a $5,000 fine.

It’s unlikely the NCAA’s warning shot will have much impact across the hundreds of universities that make up Division II. Many of those schools are struggling with decreasing enrollment and see adding more sports teams as a way to grow enrollment. The same schools also often run their athletic departments at a loss financially, meaning they often don’t have big administrative staffs.

At Saginaw Valley during the time when the violations occurred, the university had one compliance officer for its 400 or so athletes.

That meant the compliance staffer could spend 6 minutes on each athlete during a normal work week.

A lack of resources

In early September 2017, the then-compliance director for Saginaw Valley discovered problems with the way the university certified its athletes as eligible. The university reported the problems to the NCAA, which launched an investigation.

Among the problems found:

• From 2013-14 through 2016-17, 69 athletes practiced and competed before being certified, and 13 were certified as early early academic qualifiers before their high school transcripts were sent to the NCAA Eligibility Center.
• From 2013-14 through 2016-17, 14 four-year college transfers competed during their first year of enrollment without sitting out one full academic year, as required by NCAA bylaws. In 2016-17, four two-year college transfers participated and received athletics aid in their first year of enrollment without meeting the eligibility requirements of graduating from a two-year college or receiving a waiver to void the rule.
• From 2013-14 through 2016-17, 16 two-year college transfers participated and received athletics aid without meeting academic eligibility requirements. In addition, 18 athletes enrolling as freshmen were allowed to participate and receive athletics aid without meeting academic requirements.
• In 2016-17, two transfer athletes in football and men’s soccer participated and received athletics aid without earning the requisite nine semester hours of transferable degree credit to certify their eligibility.

Compliance officer turnover

One primary reason for the breakdown of the certification processes was the “persistent turnover in the compliance administrator position,” the NCAA found. “During the four-year period prior to the discovery of the violations in fall 2017, four different individuals filled the role of associate director of athletics for compliance. This constant churn in the compliance office greatly hindered the institution’s ability to implement, maintain and monitor its certification program.

“Further, due to this turnover, communication broke down between the compliance office and coaches, especially regarding the expectations of the coaches in the certification processes. In addition to repeated turnover in compliance personnel, SVSU failed to hire enough staff members to fulfill compliance responsibilities and functions, including eligibility certification.

“Exacerbating this situation was the institution’s assignment of additional responsibilities and duties to the compliance administrator. These additional duties detracted from the compliance administrator’s ability to fulfill compliance responsibilities, most notably, eligibility certification. Because of inadequate staffing, the compliance administrator simply lacked the time to properly certify student-athletes.”

John Decker, Saginaw Valley’s athletic director, agreed with the causes of the problem.

“We didn’t have the staff and we asked (the compliance person) to do too much,” he told the Free Press. “There are a lot of steps to making sure a student is certified correctly. When you miss a step, they aren’t certified and then it piles up. It was more than just a paperwork error — it was bad communication — but it was not an intentional attempt to get around the rules.”

Saginaw Valley now has the equivalent of two full-time compliance officers. It also has established a new committee that includes representatives from the university’s registrar office, housing office and others to make sure all departments are communicating about the athletes and any issues they are having that might make them ineligible.

More than 1,100 colleges and universities make up the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association), which is divided into three divisions, based on size. Division I is the biggest schools, like the University of Michigan and Michigan State University.

More than 300 schools across the country — including Davenport, Grand Valley, Wayne State, Michigan Technological, Northwood, Northern Michigan and Saginaw Valley State universities — make up Division II.

Division II schools are smaller, with an average enrollment of about 3,000 students in 2017, the latest year for which statistics are available. They have, on average, about 400 athletes per school.

The schools don’t offer full athletic scholarships, instead using a mix of athletic, academic and other scholarships to help cover costs for students, who also often must pay a portion of their attendance costs.

Same story, different place

Less than a week before the NCAA announced violations at Saginaw Valley, the organization announced sanctions for Lynn University, a private school in Boca Raton, Florida.

It was pretty much the same story at Saginaw Valley, just in a different place.

There, the NCAA found 51 violations centered on athletes that played in games while not eligible.

“Lynn allowed the student-athletes to participate without obtaining, completing or retaining required documents and without confirming that student-athletes met academic and/or transfer requirements,” the NCAA found. “The violations were caused in part by the compliance officer’s lack of experience and resources.

“This case demonstrates the need for all member institutions to devote adequate resources to the athletics compliance effort. While the compliance officer alone is responsible for her violations, Lynn’s inadequate monitoring of the certification process, and the people involved in it, contributed to the problems.”

Within four months of being hired, the compliance officer, who was described as being “inexperienced,” was the single staffer in the compliance office.

The penalties were much the same in Lynn’s case as in Saginaw Valley’s case, although the compliance officer from Lynn was banned from working at a NCAA school for four years for not cooperating with the NCAA’s investigation and for lying to some coaches about whether students were eligible.

“Moving forward, we are dedicated to enhancing our Department of Athletics compliance processes to ensure absolute adherence to NCAA bylaws,” the school said in a news release. A school spokeswoman said the athletic director was not available to talk to the Free Press.

The NCAA used the violations findings document to, just as with Saginaw Valley, to fire a warning shot at its Division II members.

“The (NCAA) is aware of the financial challenges faced by some member institutions. It is not singling out this institution; in fact, the (NCAA) commends Lynn for taking decisive action once the issues leading to the violations came to light. However, this case illustrates the need for all Division II institutions to ensure that they proactively devote adequate resources to a rules compliance program operated by trained and competent personnel so as to prevent these violations.”

Visionary leadership is widely seen as key to strategic change. That’s because visionary leadership does not just set the strategic direction — it tells a story about why the change is worth pursuing and inspires people to embrace the change. Not surprisingly, then, science and practice have a very positive view of visionary leadership as a critical leadership competency.

But our research finds that the positive impact of visionary leadership breaks down when middle managers aren’t aligned with top management’s strategic vision. This can cause strategic change efforts to slow down or even fail.

When we think of visionary leaders, our first blush response is to think of CEOs. Widely celebrated people like Steve Jobs, Walt Disney, and Oprah Winfrey come to mind. But visionary leadership is not just important for senior managers; it also matters for middle and lower level managers, who play a key role in carrying out strategic change. Their ability to inspire their own teams and create strategic alignment — a shared understanding of and commitment to the company’s strategy — within them is a core element in successful strategy execution.

This is why company leadership frameworks typically list visionary leadership as a key leadership competency for managers. For example, Google’s data-driven Project Oxygen identified visionary leadership as one of the eight traits of stellar middle managers.

However, this emphasis on visionary leadership relies on an untenable assumption: that managers outside the C-suite are always aligned with company strategy. What if they are not?

We studied visionary leadership and strategic alignment in two service organizations in Western Europe (one in the energy industry and another in the transportation industry). Both companies were going through similar processes of strategic change, and creating strategic alignment throughout the organization was a high priority goal in both companies. We surveyed 136 managers and their teams to assess visionary leadership (rated by team members), strategic alignment in the team (determined by computing the agreement between team member rankings of strategic priorities), and the strategic alignment of the managers with top management (determined by computing the agreement between the manager’s ranking of strategic priorities and the CEO’s ranking of strategic priorities). We also interviewed several of the managers and their employees to get a deeper understanding of the relationships found in the survey research.

Our findings unambiguously support the conclusion that visionary leadership is a double-edged sword. When middle managers were aligned with top management’s strategic vision, things played out as the widespread view of visionary leadership would suggest: the more these managers engaged in visionary leadership (by communicating their vision for the future and articulating where they wanted their team to be in five years,) the greater the shared understanding of strategy in their team, and the more the team was committed to strategy execution.

For managers that were misaligned with the company strategy, however, the dark side of visionary leadership became evident. The more these misaligned managers displayed visionary leadership, the less strategic alignment and commitment were observed among their teams.

Out interview findings extended these results. Employees of misaligned visionary managers indicated that their managers created confusion and uncertainty about what the company strategy entailed. This disengaged their teams from the company strategy. As one employee from a team with a misaligned visionary manager explained: “Well, we talk a lot about strategy with our manager. But I don’t see a clear company strategy. I rather choose to focus on my daily tasks and leave it [strategy] for what it is.”

Whereas visionary leadership thus was a positive force when managers were aligned with the company strategy, it became a negative force standing in the way of strategic alignment when the manager’s vision diverged from the company’s.

The importance of these findings lies in the fact that they caution against what is common practice in many companies. Many companies invest heavily in leadership development. Almost invariably, visionary leadership is seen as a crucial leadership competency in such efforts.

At the same time, companies tend to invest markedly less in creating strategic alignment among their managers. Rather, managers are charged with aligning the organization around the strategy as if their own alignment with the strategy is a given by virtue of their position. Research on strategy execution has documented, however, that there are a range of reasons for why managers may not be aligned with company strategy (e.g., they’re too focused on the interests of their own business unit and can’t see the bigger picture). Managers’ strategic alignment cannot be assumed as a given.

How do you ensure that managers are aligned on your company’s strategy? Our experience working with companies around strategic alignment suggests it starts with creating strategic alignment among middle managers before strategy execution efforts begin. This should not be one-time communication but a dialogue; people will only take ownership of strategic change if they are consistently persuaded by its value. Our research suggests that such efforts are well-advised to ensure that companies benefit from developing their managers’ visionary leadership rather than suffer its dark side.