Collegiate tennis is at a crossroads. So Inside Tennis had a candid conversation with Dr. Timothy Russell, the chief of the college game.
Bill Simons
There’s nothing like college tennis.
But now, many feel it’s in turmoil. Maybe that’s an exaggeration, but so much is changing.
Yes, college products like Emma Navarro, Ben Shelton and Danielle Collins shined this year, and collegians have long been a driving force in the American game. But now, conferences have radically changed – UCLA and USC are in the Big Ten, UC Berkeley and Stanford are in the ACC.
And schedules are brand new. The individual championships are in November. The venerable Ojai tourney will be re-shaped and the name, image and likeness (NIL) payments and the often disruptive transfer portals are in place. Lawsuits are on the horizon and athletes could become employees. Tumultuous times – yes?
To sort this all out, we spoke with Tim Russell, who, after leading the Intercollegiate Tennis Association for nearly a decade, will be replaced by the popular Dave Mullins in January.
Not surprisingly, Russell adores the college game. He reminds us that, “It’s a combination of individual and team play. It has a rich history and has moved the game forward with new rules and protocols. The competition is fantastic, the pressure is real. It has so much connective tissue. It’s a pathway to the pro game and it develops championship human beings. Everyone should go to college. You get so much support and you can hone your skills. Ultimately it’s all about higher education.”
But Russell also waves plenty of red flags: “We are at a very critical moment – there are tectonic shifts. Nobody likes change, but higher education and college tennis are changing, and whether this enterprise thrives or collapses remains to be seen.
“The driving dynamic now is football, basketball, money, TV and NIL. Our leaders need to look at unintended consequences so there aren’t any adverse impacts, and Olympic sports aren’t damaged.
“I’m not a fan of everything that’s happened over the past two or three years. Everyone’s been talking about athlete well-being. But the conference realignments were completely driven by football money and TV. I’m not a fan of UCLA having to fly cross-country to play dual matches at Rutgers and Maryland. It’s a waste of a student athlete’s time. But nobody has asked me.
“The Conference of Champions, the Pac-12, disappeared literally within two days. That should be a warning. To lose the Pac-12 and its 110-year history I find very unfortunate.
“It all came down to which conference commissioner got the best TV deal. Now the Big 10 and the SEC could just break off into a super conference.”
Russell also noted that until this year there was a big scheduling headache. The NCAA team and individual championships were always held back-to-back in late May.
So some players wouldn’t even go to school in the fall, and, because of the French Open, it was hard to get the NCAA tennis championships on TV. More importantly, right after the incredibly intense team championships, the singles and doubles tourneys seemed to be diminished. They were a kind of afterthought.
NCAA officials were unhappy that each year about a dozen of the top players would regularly drop out of the individual championships. “Now, having the individual championships switch to November tells everyone that college tennis is about singles and doubles in the fall and it’s about team championships in the spring.” says Russell. “That’s a clear marketing message.”
But what’s not so clear is what will be the impact of the new NIL deals and transfer portals that allow players to switch schools. Tim concedes that, “Some student athletes should be able to monetize their name and likeness, but the current NIL has become nothing more than what it was supposed to not be, a pay for play system where players are asking how much will you pay me to play at TCU or Oklahoma State or wherever.
“Anyone with a brain knew exactly what was going to happen. Student-athletes should be able to move, like coaches, but the execution has been terrible. Going to five or six schools in a row doesn’t give you the best education. NIL and transfer portals may be well intended, but again, the execution has been terrible, and if they’re not revised, it could damage collegiate athletics.
“But the real issue is that it could be a very bad thing if student-athletes became employees. We may lobby against it. It’s not that it only undermines the tradition of student athletes, and that 37 states have different labor laws, it’s that if you have to pay athletes $15 an hour for 20 hours a week, that quickly adds up and I don’t think they’re all of a sudden going be able to come up with $2.5 million.
“People would then begin to cut scholarships, budgets and athletes and tennis could become a club sport. If athletes became employees they’d have to watch it. If you had a bad game you could be fired. You have to be careful what you ask for.
“Now when you are recruiting, you not only need smart parents, but an accountant and an agent. The focus of all these new conversations is basically directed at the top football players. But does the No. 5 girl on Claremont’s D3 team really need to be dealing with all that?”
Russell also spoke to the ongoing controversy of many foreign players being on American teams. He observes that tennis is a global sport and colleges are always trying to have an international reach. Plus, both colleges and their tennis teams are “richer for the presence of international players.”
He notes that while there are 20,000 college tennis players and 300,000 high school players in America, there are just not enough good American players to fill the college spots. He said, “Not everyone gets to go to medical or law school.”
When asked why there are so few college championships in California now, he shares that he’s “heard rumblings that the Big-10 might actually hold their conference championship at Ojai,” and he likes the idea of the NCAA Individual Championships being played in California.
His favorite college tennis teams of all time are California based. He’s a huge fan of Steve Johnson’s championship runs at USC, which were led by Peter Smith. He admires longevity and gives hearty shout-outs to Stanford’s teams headed by Dick Gould and Lele Forood.
Still, he feels that the best college teams of all time go back to the vintage squads of USC and UCLA back in the 1960s and ’70s. His favorite college tennis venue is the University of Georgia. and when it comes to choosing just one college player he’d like to watch, he mused on Ben Shelton, Danielle Collins, Steve Johnson and Stan Smith, but ultimately picked UCLA’s Arthur Ashe. “It’s because college tennis creates championship human beings, and Arthur emulated so much greatness about the human spirit.”
