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Reputational Risk in Intercollegiate Athletics

In this episode of SCI Talk, we take on the issue of reputational risk in intercollegiate athletics. Specifically, how should we value reputation as its own currency not unlike dollars for wins? We wrestle with the tough decision of how to balance the very real need for on-field performance alongside a larger mission of universities.

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Guests: John Zinnser, Ken Pendleton, Joshua Gordon

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Apologizing For Performance Enhancing Drugs

I love watching the Tour de France. Unfortunately, the event also serves as a reminder to me of the oft-felt disappointment when great athletes get caught using performance enhancing drugs. Although anti-doping efforts have improved, history has taught us that there will continue to be athletes that attempt to cheat the system with performance enhancing drugs. For the next athlete that gets caught, I invite you to take some time to analyze the way in which they choose to apologize for their actions, if at all.

Mechanics of an Effective Apology

Much has been written about the topic of effective apologies. In a nut shell, the mechanics of an effective apology contains three parts; an acknowledgement of the wrong and who was affected by it, an genuine apology, and then an offer of reparation. For now, I’m only going to look at the first part, the acknowledgement.

Apologies for Performance Enhancing Drugs Fall Short on Acknowledgement

To have an effective acknowledgement, the athlete needs to fully acknowledge their wrongdoing and acknowledge those that were hurt by their actions. Sounds simple, right? In reality, athletes (and the rest of us) mess this part up quite a bit. Common acknowledgement mistakes can include the following:

No Acknowledgement

Some athletes might vehemently deny doping accusations and/or test results, even if they are caught red handed. This usually leads to a complete loss of credibility, especially if they are later found to be guilty or the evidence of their doping was already quite severe. See Lance Armstrong’s many denials for examples of this:

Partial Acknowledgement

This is when an athlete won’t fully admit to the what they’ve done. For example, they might state, “I only did it once” when evidence overwhelmingly shows they used performance enhancing drugs multiple times.

Acknowledgement of Use + Excuse

Athletes will try to justify their behavior by making statements like: “I was going through a hard time in my life,” and “I only used it to get back in shape after injuries,” or “everyone else does it, so how am I supposed to compete?”

Omission of Stakeholder Groups

Often athletes will fail to acknowledge all of the stakeholders who were negatively impacted by their decision, such as fans, competitors, team members, sponsors, family, and friends. Remember, failing to acknowledge a stakeholder group effectively omits them from the apology.

A Good Doping Apology?

So, what would a good acknowledgement statement look like for an athlete apologizing for performance enhancing drugs? Every situation is different, but perhaps a decent one would say something like this:

“I take full responsibility for what I did and make no excuses for my actions. What I did was against the rules, it was unfair, and it cheated my competitors, sponsors, and (insert other stakeholders). I let down fans, supporters, friends, family, and countless others that spent their precious time and money to encourage me and watch me compete. I also let down my team and ultimately disgraced the sport that I love.”

Do you want to analyze an acknowledgement statement? Have a listen to this Marion Jones apology. Did she succeed in acknowledging all of the stakeholders that her decisions impacted? If not, who did she leave out?

The Culture of Silence Surrounding Performance Enhancing Drugs

Why do clean athletes remain silent alongside their cheating counterparts? It is often perplexing that few competitors outwardly and actively join in the condemnation of “enhanced” athletes.

A Class Act

Take Track & Field, as an example. This past week, I had the pleasure of discussing some of these issues with Oregon Track Club Elite middle-distance star Jordan McNamara on SCI TV. He was a class act and a true gentleman throughout our conversation – and that’s what I found somewhat concerning.

Saying the Right Things

Jordan is not alone in publicly saying all the “right” things about focusing on the positive, controlling your own actions, and being proud of one’s own ethics and moral compass. In fact, I’d argue that this is the norm across the sporting world. Few would dare call out their brothers and sisters as it seems to violate our deep sense of sportsmanship that values insular solidarity above all else. But shouldn’t a level playing field trump all?

Process Matters

Any athlete can, ultimately, accept a result that falls short of their goal so long as there is procedural fairness. Did we all have the same basic rules from which we operate? In a sport such as Track & Field, where the difference between elite competitor and Olympic Medalist is less than 1%, I would hope that athletes wouldn’t rely so heavily on on enforcement groups, like USADA, to solve the problem of performance enhancing drugs but take action more directly.

It Can’t All Be Done in the Shadows

Surely, much of the dirty deeds of cheating take place in the shadows and this contributes to the problem. We are often armed with suspicions, innuendo, and questions but absent of clear facts. Yet, history shows us that most cheating athletes had others around who knew more and remained silent. What are the clean, silent athletes costing themselves? I’d argue a lot.

Substantial Costs of Cheating

On an individual level, there is substantial differentiation across that top 1% in terms of financial and other rewards. An Olympic Medalist gains sponsorship, fame, and substantial contracts. Fourth place is a lot less valuable. This parallels at all levels of sport. On a macro level, a sport’s inability to establish consistent trust among its fan base that performances and competition are clean and fair harm the value of the sport itself.

They Look Like The Rest of Us

The face of the enemy does not always look the way we expect. My suspicion is that many of us hold an image of what a cheater looks like and who can do such evil and harm to sport. The reality is that people cheat for lots of reasons and find many creative ways to justify to themselves. They find grey area or join the dark side to level the playing field. They come in all shapes and sizes and many athletes have had cheaters as teammates, knowingly or not.

It’s OK to Be Angry

It’s time to shine a light. I’d suggest to all clean athletes that you should be angry. It’s not fair. Don’t be fatalistic and accept that cheating is an acceptable norm in your sport. If you are doing things naturally, working hard, then don’t be OK with others limiting your opportunity for success.

~ Joshua Gordon

PEDs: Why Should Sports be Fair?

By way of defending himself, Tommy Fitton, who, perhaps, did more than anyone else to propagate the use of steroids, once rhetorically asked, “Life isn’t fair, so why should sports be fair?.”

Is there any field, outside of athletics, that condemns the use of performance enhancing drugs (PEDs)? The only one I can think of, off hand, is the use of Adderall, which apparently is very popular among college students pulling all-nighters before exams. We may not condemn a doctor or lawyer who takes a drug that increases focus, but we are quite rightly concerned about the short and long-term impacts that this drug may have on our still impressionable youths.

I think we condemn the use of PEDs by Lance Armstrong and (allegedly) Barry Bonds, and so many other fallen or unknown heroes, because we still believe that sports are supposed to be pure. “Earth is a task garden,” G.K. Chesterton observed; “heaven is a playground.” Like childhood, sports is not supposed to be subject to falls from grace.

Getting Back to Reality

Were it but true? Wouldn’t it be nice if Fitton was wrong and Armstrong and (allegedly) Bonds were just cynical outliers? Exceptions to following the rules. The reality, however, is that sports has become a task garden that has increasingly little do with playgrounds.

How can we condemn them for using PEDs when sports has so much to do with work, and so little to do with play?

Childhood innocence?

Right from the beginning, many kids are forced to take up sports, compelled to follow their coach’s orders, benched when they don’t, scrutinized if not yelled at by their parents, and often forced to choose one sport. It used to be that sports started out as play and naturally evolved into work, if and only if a child chose to take it seriously. Now it is mostly just serious, like school, right from the beginning.

The lucky, promising athletes advance. The less talented losers are told that they are surplus to requirements. Never mind that they might be maturing slower, The Youth Sports Industrial Complex, which is driven by revenue generation and the promise of college scholarships, kicks them out of the system in order to focus on the few. The lucky few now know, without a doubt, that sports is not play and that this is not a game.

Higher Education?

The pressure, of course, just continues to rise. There is the scholarship, which allows some athletes to raise their family’s socio-economic status. The public acclaim, which is an end-all to Generation Like, and the pressure to be a star and to win, best of all to be the star on the the championship winning team. The latter requires so much dedication and so many sacrifices that the conventional moral restraints often go out the window.

Performance enhancing drugs are just one part an already adulturated equation. By college, most if not all scholarship athletes have already been taught to the gray arts of gamesmanship. such as time-wasting, how to intimidate opponents and deceive referees and commit deliberate fouls. The coaches, who are supposed to be paragons of virtues, verbally abuse referees more than criminals do arresting police officers, and renege on promises they made to athletes by moving to another school if the price is right.

Turning Professional

You know how this all ends. Pro sports have more pressure, more money, and are more cut throat. Not surprisingly, nice guys usually finish last. It would be easy to condemn sports, but it is really not more unfair, maybe even a little fairer, than the rest of life. At least it has a level if somewhat ruthless playing field. Can you say that about the banking industry in the wake of the real estate meltdown or our justice system, which is really just a legal system? Or our political system? Talk about lack of sportsmanship.

Come to think about it, wouldn’t it be surprising if only a small number of athletes used PEDs?

My point is not that we should just get over our outrage and accept the apparently ubiquitous use of PEDs. My point is that we are never going to make any serious headway addressing this issue unless we acknowledge that sports, as a general rule, falls far short of promoting fair play and moral development, and concede that sports mirrors many of society’s failings.

Life is not fair, but sports could be. But realizing this potential will require deep examination and changes in youth and scholastic sports, and a conscious effort to address the harm done by commercialization.

–Ken Pendleton

The Roots of Brazilian Soccer’s Implosion

Brazilians like to distinguish between futebol arte and futebol resultados, soccer of art and soccer of results, but for the last 32 years the people running Brazilian soccer have maintained that it is no longer possible to play the beautiful game. Perhaps Carlos Alberto, who managed Brazil to their 1994 World Cup triumph, after a dreadful 0-0 draw with Italy in the final, expressed the prevailing orthodoxy most succinctly: “Magic and dreams are finished in football.”

The point, Parreira argued, is that Brazil cannot afford the luxury of playing artistically when the rest of the world is satisfied with just grinding out results: “History doesn’t talk about the beautiful game but about champions. Why do we have to play beautiful football and the others don’t? If we can play the beautiful game we will do that but we want to be the champions.”

The assumption underlying Parreira’s claim is that Brazil had a choice, between art and pragmatism, one that other countries would or could not entertain. Brazil had to turn its back on being stylish because the rest of the world was so mundane.

Brazil continued to win, and Brazilians and the rest of the world largely clung to a myth–that Brazil was a cut above everyone else–until Tuesday. Brazil did not lose 7-1 to Germany because their artistic aspirations were exposed as naive. Germany, the nation most associated with efficiency and instrumental rationality, had better passers, subtler movement, more creativity–vastly superior attacking players. Brazil didn’t have Neymar, and without him they were bankrupt, bereft of ideas.

The fact that a nation with a population approaching 200m, that is obsessed with soccer, that has produced more talented attacking players than any other, has exactly one player who can invent the game is not an accident. It is the result of 40 years of corruption, arrogance, neglect, and a horribly misguided philosophical turn.

The face of Brazil’s rise to soccer prominence in the late 1950s was Pelé, a free spirit named Garrincha, who appeared to be more concerned with having fun than winning, and a samba-like attacking rhythm. But the reality was more complex. Their tactics were revolutionary and their preparation was incredibly professional. Opponents were thoroughly scouted; the planning of their trip to Sweden for the ’58 World Cup was detailed to a fault; the medical needs of the players were attended to for the first time in many of their lives; and the selectors even employed a team psychologist.

The battle lines were effectively drawn then. The psychologist João Carvalhais did not think the manager Vicente Feola should select either Pelé or Garrincha: The tests Carvalhais administered, which he honed on bus drivers, led him to conclude that the 17-year-old Pele was ‘obviously infantile’ and that Garrincha, who could not even fill out the forms correctly, had ‘zero aggression’ and was not fit to be a bus driver.

Feola decided Pelé was sufficiently mature and that Garrincha was fit to be a soccer player, Brazil won two World Cups, and became the global symbol of the idea that soccer could still be a game and make everyone who wasn’t Argentinean smile.

Carvalhais may have been rebuffed and for a time Brazil seemed to strike the perfect balance between work and play, fitness and skill, organization and spontaneity. But the professional back room staff kept advancing their agenda. The fear expressed was always the same: small Brazilian players, however skillful and creative, are not going to be able to compete with bigger, stronger, faster, fitter, more tactically organized, cautious, and disciplined Europeans.

The result was a search for a new kind of player. Certainly, there was no place for a Garrincha, who was ‘impervious to instruction’ and ‘just does whatever is going through his head at the time’. The deep-lying creative midfielders also vanished, replaced by robust men who could carry pianos and take games and opponents by the scruff of the neck.

At the same time, the Brazilian national league descended into corruption and incompetence. Teams scheduled 90 games a year, nearly double the number played by European clubs, and transferred players at an astonishing rate. By the late 90s more than 50 fouls were committed in the average match. Winning now required players who were incredibly fit and could withstand constant physical challenges. Games were won by the teams that were well organized, played directly, took advantage of set pieces, and were pragmatic to the point of being cynical.

Up until recently Brazil was still producing more than its share of creative players, but most of them were attackers, not deep-lying midfielders. And the emphasis was now on controlling games and waiting patiently for opportunities to counter-attack.

Eventually, even the Brazilian well was bound to run dry.

Whenever the idealists asked why paradise was lost, the realists reminded us that futebol arte was no longer possible. Even when evidence to the contrary was clearly on offer. Spain had won the 2008 European championships but the prevailing view in Brazil was that they could not possibly win the 2010 World Cup because of their reliance on 5′ 7″, 150 pound, ball-playing midfielders.

The fact that Spain won in South Africa and added the 2012 European championships did not change anyone’s mind. Brazil assumed it was superior, appointed a management team that stuck with the tried and true emphasis on physical everything, and refused to even consider the idea that there was another way of interpreting the way the sport had evolved.

The irony is that the two most successful teams in Europe have moved in the opposite direction. The Spanish changed, abandoning fury for tiki-taka; the bull came to see the wisdom of becoming the bull fighter. And the Germans went through an even more dramatic transformation. They completely overhauled a system, from the youth level to the national team, that had been in place for 40-plus years and placed an unprecedented emphasis on producing skillful players.

The good news is that Brazil can also overhaul their system and way of thinking. But they will have to overcome organizational barriers, such as reducing the number of domestic matches by shortening or eliminating state competitions. They will have to overhaul the youth academies, which have fallen well behind the ones in Europe. And they will have to open the door to the possibility that getting results and playing artistically can still be reconciled.

In other words, Brazil needs to learn, or relearn, what it taught the world in 1958.

–Ken Pendleton

Sports Conflict Institute Creates Knowledge Center for Athletes, Coaches, Administrators, and Supporters to Better Understand, Prevent, and Resolve Conflict in Sports

The Sports Conflict Institute (SCI) announced that it has developed and launched a knowledge center for athletes coaches, administrators, and supports to better understand, prevent, and resolve conflict in sports.

Sports Conflict Matters

According the the SCI website, “Competitive goals are often thwarted by destructive conflict on and off the field. Managing conflict effectively has become a core competency for athletes, coaches, administrators, and supporters. Sports operating 24 /7 in the public’s eye and rarely does a problem go unnoticed or unreported. To an extent, a degree of conflict is part of the narrative that makes sports compelling. Yet when the consequences outweigh the benefits of this conflict becomes destructive to the goals of organizations, teams, and individuals. There are many types of sports conflict, a number of reasons that destructive conflict occurs, and significant costs to administrators, coaches, athletes and supporters.”

Key is Minimizing Costs

“We are an organization determined to minimize the costs that conflict plays in the lives of those involved in sports. Success on and off the field is often determined by how challenging moments are handled. It all starts with access to good information and we’ve decided to develop and curate this as a service to the sporting public,” said Joshua Gordon, Founder of SCI.

Sports Conflict Institute Knowledge Center

The Sports Conflict Institute Knowledge Center is made available free of charge and does not require registration for access to any of the articles, audio, videos, tools, and weblinks provided. The Browse By Topic function allows for filtering on a range of topics that include athlete transitions, bullying, intercollegiate sports, LGBT, sports law, team dynamics, and a range of other subjects.

About SCI

SCI supports competitive goals in athletics through understanding, preventing, and resolving destructive conflicts that occur both inside and outside the lines. SCI serves as a resource center and provides a range of services to help manage risk and optimize performance. Conflict is inevitable, but how we respond determines whether success follows or costs mount.

Unmanaged Stress and Distractions Threaten Athletic Performance for Top Athletes

What was Usain Bolt’s biggest threat at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games? Was it Tyson Gay, then reigning world champion in the 100m and 200m? Asafa Powell, whose world record Bolt had broken barely 3 weeks before the Games, perhaps? While Gay and Powell were both identified as strong opponents that Bolt had to overcome in order to become Olympic Champion, finding suitable food turned out to be a vital concern that almost toppled his Olympic quest before the race had been run.

Life is Complex

The life of a competitive athlete is complex. “You’ve prepared all your life for a chance to perform on the world’s grandest sporting stage, and finally, you have your chance. After travelling across the world to a foreign country, however, you realize that the upcoming competition is far from the only thing on your mind. Rowdy athletes in the Village who stay up late partying, unfamiliar food, homesickness and even the distraction of being among some of the fittest and best-looking athletes in the world are all factors that can potentially crush an athlete’s Olympic dream,” commented Dr. Don Murray of the Sports Conflict Institute. Usain Bolt stated in his biography that he “struggled to squeeze into the shower” in Osaka, Japan during the 2007 World Championships and “did not eat well for a few days” when in Beijing, China for the 2008 Olympics, because he found Chinese food “odd”. Importantly, Bolt eventually found a substitute food – Chicken McNuggets, the diet which fueled him to two world records in the 100m and 200m.

Challenge Is Not Just For Olympians

Such challenges apply not only to Olympic athletes, but across all levels of competition. Seemingly trivial factors such as logistics, social media and even sexual opportunities have the potential to disrupt rest, nutrition, and state of mind – ruining an athlete’s campaign at a major Games before he even reaches the starting line. Said Singapore national 10,000m record holder Rui Yong Soh, “When I travel to a foreign environment, there is a great deal of stress in the form of unfamiliar food and living conditions. When I travelled to Vietnam for a regional competition in 2008, four of my teammates fell sick before the competition even began due to sweltering heat and unusual food. Spectators do not quite see this aspect of the sport, but there are many external factors an athlete has to deal with when travelling for competitions. If you don’t travel well, you won’t perform well.”

Strains of the Games

It is these very challenges that drove the development of the Strains of the Games tool by Dr. Murray. “The Olympics, or any competitive athletic event, are a time of intense pressure, excitement, and recognition, along with the sheer excitement of competing on the world stage. All athletes look for ways to best prepare for that kind of pressure. Strains of the Games serves as a mental rehearsal for what might happen, by looking ahead and anticipating the future. Aside from the competition itself, there are a host of activities, events, and distractions an athlete will face. Strains of the Games helps athletes, coaches, officials, and other stakeholders to identify the potential challenges which athletes face heading into a major Games, and prepare for these potholes accordingly.”

IAAF World Junior Championships

Strains of the Games is being used in preparing global ambassadors charged with supporting athletes competing in the IAAF World Junior Championships in Eugene, Oregon July 22-27, 2014. “With athletes coming from nearly 180 different countries, there are so many threats to competitive success. We’ve been working with students from the University of Oregon who will be ambassadors to these talented athletes in helping them understand the many stressors that competitors will face to go well beyond the heat of competition itself. This understanding by athletes, coaches, and supporters is critical to ensuring that distractions don’t become the determining factor in who medals and who doesn’t,” noted Joshua Gordon, founder of SCI.

About SCI

SCI supports competitive goals in athletics through understanding, preventing, and resolving destructive conflicts that occur both inside and outside the lines. SCI serves as a resource center and provides a range of services to help manage risk and optimize athletic performance. Conflict is inevitable, but how we respond determines whether success follows or costs mount.

SCI supports organizational and individual goals through education, research, and service focusing on sports conflict. Closely connecting classroom learning to real world problems challenges the value of abstract theories and ensures their relevance in a rapidly changing world.

For more information, please visit http://www.sportsconflict.org

Luis Suarez Biting Incidents Raises Concerns of Mental Health in Athletes

“For the third time in his career, Luis Suarez appeared to bite an opponent. This raises a number of issues regarding mental health and other preventative measures that could be taken – for example, why doesn’t he wear a mouthguard? But, perhaps the most disturbing part of this has been the reaction of the Uruguayan players and public. Right after the incident, his teammates tried to cover up the bite marks on Giorgio Chiellini. After the game, his teammates focused on Suarez, himself, being hurt by the collision and tried to equate biting as normal physical contact. They then went on to argue that replay should not be used to judge the incident. Building on this, Uruguayan officials and journalists allege that there was an English conspiracy, a European conspiracy, and equated FIFA’s ruling to suspend Suarez with fascism. There were even allegations that the photographs were photoshopped,” explained Dr. Ken Pendleton of the Sports Conflict Institute (SCI) when reached by phone (see ESPN’s The 10 best reactions to Luis Suarez allegedly biting Giorgio Chiellini on 6/24/14).

Former Player Chimes In

Former Liverpool, Aston Villa and England striker, Stan Collymore opined on Bleacherreport.com that, “Suarez should be punished, but he should be punished in relation to who he is. It’s more ludicrous to suggest that he just likes to bite people than recognising that he has impulse issues—issues that, while contributing to his genius as a footballer, also make him act out so unacceptably. For me, an evaluation should be made of his mental health.”

Mental Health a Real Concern

Athletes and their mental health are often a neglected part of the support systems in place for athletes. Timothy Neal of Syracuse University highlighted at the PAADS Athlete Development Summit in New York City that, “the athlete has unique stressors and triggers. They’re away from home, they miss holidays, they miss family events, and they’re in the spotlight.”

The Fallacy of the Angry Athlete

“Often there is a fear of interfering with the impulses and aggression of an athlete. There is a fallacy of the angry athlete that carries a deep belief that the type of incident we see from Suarez is simply part of the package involved in competitive sports. Unfortunately, this belief can serve as a barrier to providing supports for athletes’ mental health and destigmatizing mental health challenges that are far more prevalent that the sporting public is aware,” notes Joshua Gordon of SCI.

Barriers to Help

“Whether it is Suarez’ defenders or his attackers, both serve as potential barriers to understanding why he is struggling with impulse control and how best can he be helped,” continued Gordon.

“The problem is that it’s difficult for club doctors and professionals footballers to come forward with mental health issues because they’d get slaughtered as weak. We have lots of situations with athletes who deny they are struggling with stress-related illness when they’d easily come forward with the diagnosis of a physical problem,” concludes Collymore in his article.

Gordon summarized, “It’s easy to blame Suarez and he certainly should be accountable for his actions. But to stop there and not examine some of the systemic barriers to truly receiving help for such issues won’t change anything.”

Is Athletic Performance Enhanced by Creating an Enemy Image of the Competition?

While watching the USA Track and Field Championships from my home late last week, I was struck by the difference in how two athletes interacted with their fellow competitors following their respective wins in the events in which they were entered. Those athletes were Galen Rupp in the 10000m and Bernard Lagat in the 5000m.

Reveling in Victory

In the 10000m on Thursday night, Galen Rupp waited until late in the race to take the lead for the first time, sprint away from the competition, and then coast in the last 100m before sharply pumping his right fist upon breaking the finishing tape in first place. He stood and reveled in his achievement briefly, while a string of other competitors began to stagger in behind him. Then, without so much as a nod to the competition, he proceeded to strut through his solo victory lap and interact with some fans.

Exemplary Sportsmanship

Fast forward to Friday night in the 5000m; Bernard Lagat waited until late in the race to take the lead for the first time and sprint away from the competition in the final 100m. He finished, turned around, and immediately began congratulating many of his fellow competitors, patting them on the back and shaking hands. He then began interacting with fans and signing autographs.

Competitor or Enemy?

As these two examples illustrate, athletes often have very different relationships with their competition. Some athletes and coaches prefer to build an enemy image of their competitors to drive their training and performance. They choose to forget the many similarities they have with their fellow competitors and instead see each competition as a “good” versus “evil” encounter, thus treating their sport as a war to be won. The problem with this approach is that when the competition has ended, athletes often forget that there was no war to begin with, only sport.

Performance and Sportsmanship

Do all athletes possess the ability to maximize their performances while still displaying high levels of sportsmanship to their fellow competitors, or are enemy images necessary for certain types of athletes to get the most out of their performances? What do you think?

Author: Jeff Sather

Changing the Game for Intercollegiate Athletic Programs and the NCAA

There is no shortage of problems on and off the field of play. National headlines highlight concerns about recruiting, sexual abuse, off-field violence, academic fraud, bullying and other issues that undermine the NCAA’s stated mission to “support learning through sports.” In the past decade, over 44% of programs in NCAA’s DI have committed major rules violations. According to a study on the NCAA website, 77% of male and 88% of female student-athletes agree with how the national media portrays college athletics.

The NCAA model of intercollegiate athletics faces challenges on a number of critical fronts. College sports are approaching $11B in revenue annually. Lawsuits, such as the O’Bannon trial, question whether the system exploits student-athletes – 85% of whom who live below the poverty line. Rutgers, Oregon State University, and Boston University have received more national attention for allegations of coaches bullying student-athletes than for any academic or athletic accomplishments, all while costing these institutions millions of dollars in revenue.

“Athletic departments are unique on college campuses. They operate in a fishbowl with extreme pressures to perform competitively and financially. It’s a perfect storm for stress and destructive conflict. Mismanaged sports conflicts have severe consequences for the stakeholders of a sports team, with negative impacts on competitive performance, reputation, and financial well-being necessary for success. Seasons are lost, careers are cut short, fans are betrayed, and millions of dollars are spent on investigations and crisis management,” noted Joshua Gordon, Sports Conflict Institute founder.

In response to the growing need for effective ways to understand, limit and resolve destructive conflict on and off the field of play, the Sports Conflict Institute (SCI) is partnering with Pacifica Human Communications (PHC) to better serve intercollegiate athletic programs to cost-effectively manage issues and create benefit for the student-athletes, coaches, administrators, and their institutions.

“Organizational ombuds programs provide the opportunity to neutralize conflict. Frankly, the sports industry is decades behind other sectors in leveraging conflict management systems to reduce the high costs from ad hoc response to issues. Sports are cutting-edge in so many ways that it makes sense to bring innovation to how they handle challenges,” commented Gordon.

This alliance brings together the leader in sports conflict management and key innovators in organizational ombuds systems. “The key is equanimity— to manage disturbance without greater disturbance,” commented John Zinsser, PHC co-founder.

“We are excited to partner with SCI and the opportunity to influence how teams manage conflict so headlines turn from scandal to the inspiring stories of sport,” said PHC co-founder Andrea Schenck. “SCI has done important work in the field, and we are thrilled to join their team. Sports have their own culture, hierarchy and power structure. Those structures are important for a successful team, but the downside is that individuals can’t easily bring forward issues in such a culture.”

“The insular nature of a team makes it tough for a coach or player to seek outside help or get another opinion, which is what makes an organizational ombuds program so well-suited to help manage the headline exploding issues in today’s college sports,” said Zinsser. According to the NCAA, student-athletes’ trust in coaches remains below 50% for most sports.

An ombuds’ independence, neutrality, informality, and confidentiality enables them to create a safe place. Going to the ombuds is like ‘home base’ in tag – the ombuds program’s independence means it stands alone and it’s neutrality means the ombuds represents fair process. Being informal means many options and choices are available to the person with the concern, while confidentiality means the issue raised is off-the-record. “All benefit from an organizational ombuds because there is an easier path to needed help or answers; relationships and reputations are protected because concerns and problems get addressed earlier before the issue has become insurmountable; and with stress and conflict minimized, focus and energy can be channeled to winning,” explained Schenck.

Conflicts stemming from athletics are tearing at the social fabric of campuses across America. The old models are failing and fading. The specialized, high stakes challenges of big time athletics need a different approach. A dedicated, to-code organizational ombuds who can quickly, safely and effectively support all involved to help themselves to better outcomes is working in other venues. It’s time college athletics got in the game.

About Sports Conflict Institute, LLC:
SCI supports competitive goals in athletics through understanding, preventing, and resolving destructive conflicts that occur both inside and outside the lines. SCI serves as a resource center and provides a range of services to help manage risk and optimize performance. Conflict is inevitable, but how we respond determines whether success follows or costs mount. SCI supports organizational and individual goals through education, research, and service focusing on sports conflict. SCI Founder Joshua Gordon has over 20 years of conflict management experience.

About Pacifica Human Communications, LLC:
With international reach, PHC has helped Fortune 500 companies, U.S. government agencies, academic institutions and individuals overcome the challenges created by under-considered and under-managed conflict. Co-founders John Zinsser and Andrea Schenck deliver benefit from intentional and informal conflict management.