Ohio State’s Monitoring of Athletes’ Spending Raises Privacy Concerns

It involved spending habits and whether they should be monitored and who should monitor them.

Ohio State, as part of this compliance makeover, “strongly encourages” athletes, especially football and men’s and women’s basketball players, to open checking accounts. University officials, including assistants, help those athletes open the accounts, set budgets and set up direct deposit. They also monitor spending, as first reported in The Chronicle of Higher Education, although not on a line-by-line basis.

The university described this policy as financial education, a level beyond what the N.C.A.A. requires but in a positive, trailblazer sense. Those who study college sports said that although portions of the policy made them uncomfortable, it could provide a blueprint for future compliance efforts at other universities. Critics saw this as a violation of privacy, a way for Ohio State to protect the big business of football under the guise of education.

Ultimately, that debate framed a question that holds national implications for college sports. Namely, how much oversight is too much?

“Part of me says you do what you’ve got to do when you’re a big-time college athletics program,” said David Ridpath, an assistant professor in sports administration at Ohio University and a member of the Drake Group, a network of professors who lobby for academic integrity in college sports. “The flip side is it’s pathetic that we have to do this. I don’t like the Big Brother aspect of this. Do we have to monitor everything?

“I guess it’s the next logical, unfortunate step.”

Ridpath sympathized with Ohio State, a university where the football team finished 2012 undefeated but ineligible for the postseason because of a scandal that involved players’ trading memorabilia for cash and tattoos. That helped prompt the overhaul, which stretched across all university compliance departments.

In February, Ohio State created an Office of University Compliance and Integrity to centralize its compliance efforts. It also added staff members and increased its budget. The steps marked an aggressive approach.

The compliance department for athletics fell under that centralized umbrella. Jason Singleton, a former basketball player who worked as an investigator for the N.C.A.A., was hired to join the department. His job is to educate local businesses — like barbershops, nightclubs and tattoo parlors — on N.C.A.A. rules. The athletic department compliance budget is more than $1 million annually.

One piece of that transformation concerned those checking accounts. Gene Smith, Ohio State’s athletic director, said several athletes came from disadvantaged backgrounds and had never before opened one. He said players would receive lump-sum Pell Grants, then spend that money on items like new phones or jewelry, or spend it all at once. Ohio State will teach those players how to balance their checking accounts and budget their money. Athletes will be taught how to read the fine print of apartment leases before signing them. It will bring in local bankers to speak to them.

“This is about education,” Smith said. “It’s not about Big Brother. It’s about helping young people become managers of their assets. It’s a financial literacy program.”

Smith stressed that Ohio State would not ask players to “show me your grocery list and go over every line.” But where he saw this as educational, others saw more oversight, a way to protect the Buckeyes from rule violations, which tarnish the reputation of universities and lead to millions of dollars in lost revenue. Players who do not budget properly, Smith said, “would be more likely to look for opportunities to solve their financial problems.”

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