Interview: Brittany Collens on taking on the NCAA
Brittany Collens is former collegiate tennis player turned pro. While playing for the University of Massachusetts Amherst, she and her team won the Atlantic 10 Title in 2017. However, just recently, the NCAA stripped the team of their title after UMass self-reported a clerical error in scholarship distribution to Collens and one other tennis player. Collens has formed a petition to turn over the NCAA's decision and restore the A10 title to her team, as well as to better protect all student-athletes going forward.
To join Collens's fight, sign her petition on Change.org
This episode was produced by Tressa Versteeg. Shelby Weldon is our social media and website specialist. Burn It All Down is part of the Blue Wire podcast network.
Transcript
Jessica: Welcome to Burn It All Down, the feminist sports podcast you need. Jessica here. This week I talked to former collegiate athlete, now turned pro, Brittany Collens, who is fighting the NCAA. Before we get into it, I do wanna point out that towards the end of this interview you will hear her mention that her former university, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, has so far put up $100,000 into going up agains the NCAA. Please keep that in mind as you hear more about what got UMass in trouble in the first place. Now, I’ll let this week’s guest introduce herself.
Brittany: Well, my name is Brittany Collens and currently I am a professional tennis player from Boston. But I was on the UMass tennis team, graduated in 2017.
Jessica: Okay, 2017. So you’ve been a professional tennis player then for 3 years.
Brittany: Yeah, just about. I started a little bit after I graduated, took some time to train and stuff.
Jessica: Let's talk about that 2017 season, it was a big one. How did that 2017 season end?
Brittany: Yeah, the way we describe it is fairytale ending for the seniors, for the entire team. We won the A10 title conference championship for the second time in school history. I think it was like 20 years between the first one and the one we had won, and it was our coach Judy Dixon’s final year before retirement after being with the school for 25 years.
Jessica: Wow. I read it came down to like the final point of the final match, is that true?
Brittany: Yeah, it was a crazy ending because we were losing, we were on set to lose to the same team that we had lost to before and it was a slow comeback, like, one person at a time. We took the lead, and had that match lost it would’ve gone to a tie and then a sudden death kind of thing, and thank god my best friend Anna came in strong and clinched it for us.
Jessica: Wow, that’s amazing. What a team effort, it sounds like.
Brittany: Yeah, individual sport but you need every single person to be on their game and we kind of come together, so it’s nice.
Jessica: Yeah, that’s really cool about collegiate tennis. I’m a huge tennis fan but of course I’m the kind of fan who’s watching the pros at grand slams and, like you said, it’s very individualized, so the idea of this collective team is such a fun part of how college tennis works.
Brittany: Absolutely.
Jessica: So let’s talk about the big thing that’s happened recently. So, your school accidentally gave you and another teammate a bit too much money when they were doling out scholarships in 2015-2016. Can you explain exactly what happened and how much money we’re actually talking about here?
Brittany: So, it was kind of a little bit misleading when the headlines came out because most of the headlines said, like, “UMass received $9100 in impermissible benefits,” but that was over the course of 3 years between 12 student athletes. When we talk specifically about the tennis team it was my best friend and I, we accidentally received $252 for what they call a telecom fee, one-time, in 2015-16. The telecom fee is a stipend for on-campus student athletes to basically be reimbursed for a phone jack, like a landline. [laughs] So, basically we were not entitled to this because we moved off campus in the 2015-16 year, so the issue is we were deemed ineligible from that point forward because we received a stipend we were not entitled to. So I think it’s $504 in total for the tennis team.
Jessica: Wow. Okay, so we’re talking like a little bit of money. I mean, in the scheme of college athletics. [laughs] Not a lot.
Brittany: Yeah, not a lot.
Jessica: So the NCAA, which is the governing body of collegiate sports in the US, how did the NCAA find out about this?
Brittany: Yeah, this is the part that hurts. So, UMass self-reported it as they were self-auditing themselves and once they find this small error they went to the NCAA because there’s kind of an initiative that they provide saying if you come forward and self-report we can kind of keep it internal, it doesn't have to blow up, depending on what happens, right? So I first think they came to an agreement. They said thank you for self-reporting; UMass did a self-imposed $5000 fine and probation I think for two years. The NCAA first was like, great, thank you so much for coming forward, agreement. Then I guess later the Committee on Infractions came back and said, well, no no no, these students were ineligible so we’re going to vacate all the seasons that they had participated in from that point that they were paid, including our A10 title. So that's the part that kind of hurts is that it doesn’t really incentivize anyone to really self-report again because it was such a minor clerical error and they doled out the harshest punishment that they don’t even give out to major offenses done over and over again. The NCAA currently right now, if you look at Arizona, Kansas, they’re not stripping titles away, so, tough. [laughs]
Jessica: Yeah, I feel like we could name lots of schools [laughs] where we feel questionable about how the NCAA has responded to all kinds of reports.
Brittany: Absolutely.
Jessica: Can you take me back to the moment when you first heard not only that the NCAA was punishing the team but that it was revoking your Atlantic 10 championship from 2017? How did you find out and how did you feel?
Brittany: Yeah, I thought it was a joke. Which is so sad. I got a text message from one of my coaches with the headline, like I said, this $9100 UMass is in trouble with the NCAA. I didn’t even open the article, I just texted back, like, “Haha, funny, guys.” Then they texted back, like, wait, you were on the tennis team during those years. I was like, wait, what tennis…? It’s impossible. Tennis never gets in the news at all, let alone for doing things wrong. So I realized it wasn’t funny and it became kind of like…First emotional, because I didn’t understand, to pretty angry because like I said all the injustice here and I kind of just got right to work with my teammates spreading the news. “Hey, obviously this isn’t fair, let’s do something about it and speak out.” So there was a wide range of emotions from when I had found out. I had no idea, right? None of us had any idea that this was even an investigation. We found out like two weeks ago. So it came as shocking news, for sure.
Jessica: How did you figure out that it was your scholarship that was the actual important thing for the NCAA?
Brittany: Yeah, so when I started reading the headline and going through the news and trying to decipher it was a little bit confusing. But when they said two student athletes on the tennis team who had moved off campus I realized at that time it was only my best friend and I, so there was no one left other than ourselves. So I got on the phone right away, I called our current head coach at the time, Judy Dixon, and started to synch up with our athletic director and kind of say what's going on. That’s how I found out, by kind of just reading it in the headline.
Jessica: Wow. That’s so strange on some level–
Brittany: Bizarre.
Jessica: –that you had to detective your way into figuring out that you had something to do with this. So, you’ve started a petition. Tell us about that – how you decided to do that, who is it directed at, and what do you hope to accomplish with it?
Brittany: Yeah, 100%. So, we don’t play necessarily a role in the appeal, the legal part. That is kind of UMass’s thing. But that night I wrote to Ryan Bamford, the athletic director, and said hey, this is what I wanna put out. I wanna put out a petition that lets student athletes’ voices be heard to the NCAA. It goes directly to the NCAA, Change.org kind of tags them in it. Hopefully closer towards the appeal we can bring them an actual list of names that say we don’t agree with you. When we had started it I think it was initially to just get the result overturned so that we could do something on behalf of UMass tennis. However, it's kind of grown into this thing of student athletes needing protection from the NCAA because this is a clear example of how they don’t protect their student athletes. They labelled us as cheaters, essentially, by putting blame on us. So we found that a lot of people were signing it not just to defend us but to call for reform within the NCAA. I think one of our biggest accomplishments is to have Senator Chris Murphy retweet it out and offer support. I’m speaking to his team now about how we can actually bring this to legislation and congress and how we can use stories like this to hopefully better protect student athletes in the future so that this doesn't happen again.
Jessica: It seems strange to me that as the athlete involved in this that the NCAA…Have you spoken to anyone there? Have they reached out to you? Are you just totally separate from the process despite being one of the people that quote-unquote “cheated?”
Brittany: Yeah, so no one’s reached out to me. I’m kind of hoping that as this grows with huge support from people like Dick Vitale and Brad Gilbert and so on, like, many well-known people out there. So no one’s reached out to me so far but I’ve been trying myself to kind of get into the NCAA. For instance I’m speaking with a representative from SAAC which is the Student Athlete Advisory Committee, and it's important to note not just the ones that are on campus but there is a higher up SAAC for D1, D2 and D3 and according to the NCAA they represent the student athlete voice and they make suggestions for legislation. Essentially they’re saying that they hold the NCAA accountable for protecting student athletes, so I said who better to start with than the people who are supposed to be protecting us. You know, with the general consensus that everyone’s on our side on this one. We haven’t met a lot of opposition. I thought I’ll speak to them, and so I’ve started a dialogue with some members on this committee to see where they’re at and how they feel about our situation and if they actually do kind of possess the power to go up to the NCAA and say this isn’t right. If they don’t, how do we get a committee to have that kind of power, where the NCAA does have to face someone? That's kind of why I’m trying to work with senators and representatives to see if from that angle we can get something done.
Jessica: Do you know what UMass is doing in response to this? Are they going through just the regular NCAA appeal process at this point? What is the school actually doing in response?
Brittany: Yeah, special shoutout to Ryan Bamford, the athletic director. He has been fighting this hard. They have started the appeal process, it takes a couple months. It’s sad to say but also, you know, they didn’t need to spend any money defending us but this kind of shows what kind of program UMass is. They’ve spent over $100,000 in lawyers and fighting this, which…For $504 or a total of $9100, and all of a sudden we’re out $100,000 for a state school that really doesn’t bring in a lot of money anyways. So the appeal process kind of goes for the next couple of months and who knows if it’s gonna be overturned but I think it just shows a lot of character for that side of things, the legal side on UMass’s behalf that that’s what their student athletes mean to them. We’ll just I guess wait to hear, but for our job it’s just so important to be getting signatures on this petition, spreading the word that we have this petition on change.org that we can actually bring to the NCAA for the first time, something that has names to it and lots of names, and say we all agree that this is wrong – not just for the tennis team but the student athletes as a whole. So that’s what we’re doing on our end while UMass kind of does the legal stuff for us.
Jessica: When you were actually at UMass and a student, how would you describe your thoughts about the NCAA? What was your relationship to it? Is it just kind of this thing that exists out there that you know there are rules but you’re not really thinking about it all the time? What was your relationship as an actual student athlete?
Brittany: Yeah, kind of exactly what you just said. I don’t really…There’s no face to it, especially for the smaller teams, women’s sports that don't get a lot of recognition. I was just appreciative for the fact that I was able to play on a full scholarship and have this opportunity after, as many of us are, after training your whole life leading up to that point. So I definitely was and still am appreciative of the NCAA in that regard. The goal I think is a good idea, I just think it’s mismanaged and there need to be like I said some sort of reform so that the goal comes back to the student athletes and not…I know they have to make money, but I think that’s kind of how it's run right now and instead I think the priorities need to be back to collegiate athletes and the ones they’re supposed to protect.
Jessica: How do you feel about the NCAA now? What has this been like in the last month or so when you think about this organization?
Brittany: Yeah, I won’t lie, I’m angry. As I’m kind of educating myself more on stories similar to ours I’ve become a little bit more [laughs] angrier each time, I’ll say. I definitely think there's a lot wrong, and I will never not be appreciative of the opportunity that I was given but I don't think just because we’re told to be appreciative that doesn't mean we can’t speak up and say what’s wrong. So I’m not their biggest fan right now. I hope that there's a chance that they can demonstrate, starting with our petition, that they do care about student athletes. I’m not entirely sure that they will overturn it but I think that it could be a great step towards mending the relationship. But we’ll see.
Jessica: When you talk about reform with the NCAA, what specifics are you talking about? How do you think this situation should have gone differently? What could change so that this isn’t gonna happen in the future?
Brittany: Yeah, I think there’s a lot of things. Our story touches on a lot of different areas, right? Amateurism, being overpaid, small women’s sports teams – all these things. I’m trying to educate myself now on how, like you said, how does reform start. What does it look like? I think the first thing needs to come back to this initiative to self-report. If you’re gonna self-report I don’t think…It just doesn’t make sense, right, to come to an agreement and then all of a sudden the agreement’s off the table because somebody else swept in. So, I think the initiative to self-report needs to be dealt with differently, and I think it comes down to the NCAA needs somebody to govern them. There needs to be somebody that they have to face so they can’t just do whatever they want, you know? Follow the rules here, but not there. I think that the only way to do that is working with our government and having them step in, redistributing the money. I’m not sure, when it comes to paying athletes…As a tennis player I don’t bring in money, I know that. I just take money, and so I’m not sure I’m entitled to be paid, whereas I do know that I don’t think the NCAA should be making millions off of players that do have an image out there and fans. I think the money can be redistributed in ways that can go back to mental health for student athletes and different things like that, where it kind of takes some of the power with all the money up in the NCAA and kind of redistributes it in a way that kind of benefits the student athletes.
Jessica: It’s interesting to hear you say all this because what I’m hearing is that they need to center the students, which is so wild on some level because that is the message the NCAA is telling us all the time, that they exist in order to help the student athlete – which is its own…That phrase alone has its own baggage with it, right? But then you telling me as a former college athlete that’s now dealing with this institution that reform need to be to put the student at the center just feels…There’s a lot of change that has to happen. [laughs]
Brittany: A lot. I agree.
Jessica: Yeah.
Brittany: 100%. I mean, yeah, I just think that like you said the message that they put out, that sounds great, but it’s clearly not what they’re doing, right? There’s so many examples to showcase that and a lot needs to change so that their supposed goal of “come play for us from all over the world and we’ll give you an experience and set you up for success” – that’s what needs to happen, and unfortunately we’re just not there right now.
Jessica: We’ll definitely be posting the petition in the show notes for the show, so on our website, but also on our social media when we put this interview out there. So if you’re listening and you care about this issue please go search out the petition and sign it. Will you tell me a little bit before we go…This has been great, and thank you so much for your time. You are a professional tennis player – what is your day to day life like? Tell me where you are, are you on the tour? How does it work for you at this point?
Brittany: Yeah, 100%. So, I am on the tour. I’m more on the opposite spectrum of the grand slams that you will watch. I have played some players that you might know, like about a year ago I was practicing with Iga Świątek, who just won the French Open.
Jessica: Oh yeah! Okay!
Brittany: So, yeah, there’s definitely some crossing between kind of where I’m at climbing the ranks and, you know, the top of the top. But my day to day, I’m in Austin right now playing essentially a professional tournament without points. It was a professional tournament last year, but with COVID it’s really hard. So my day to day besides doing this for the petition revolves around getting up, eating, training; probably on a light day 2 and a half hours, on a heavier day 4 hours; getting a gym session in. Tonight I'll speak with my mental health coach who will kind of go over the mental part of the game and, yeah, basically everything for me revolves around tennis and how to better myself on the court, whether it's in the gym or actually being on the court hitting. So I’ve been doing that since a little bit after I graduated and hope to keep climbing the ranks and hopefully when COVID gets better can play more tournaments.
Jessica: How much are you traveling? Because I think of tennis as an incredibly international sport.
Brittany: Yeah.
Jessica: People are basically ending one tournament and getting on a plane and flying somewhere else. Is that true, or have I made that up in my head?
Brittany: No, you’re 100% right. Right now is a little calm because of COVID and stuff and the restrictions, especially being an America it’s really hard to even go to Europe or any of that kind of thing if you’re not inside the top 100 right now. But I’ll say when I was traveling, for instance, I started my week in Romania, and I think that was on Sunday. By the time it was Wednesday I was trying to make a plane to go to the Netherlands, and by the time Sunday had come around again I was on my way to Portugal and taking trains and buses. You’re definitely right, depending on whether you’re doing well or you lose the first round. It’s really just hopping on planes, buses and trains all across the world all the time, which I’m so thankful for because it's just an amazing experience. I meet so many people and you learn so much. It's actually probably the best educational experience I’ve ever had.
Jessica: It sounds like The Amazing Race, which I’m bringing up [laughter] because my family is watching old seasons right now. Where has been your favorite place that you’ve visited?
Brittany: Ooh, that is the toughest question that everyone asks me. I’ll give you two different answers because I think it’s important. So as far where I fell in love, Australia. I got to go all over Australia right after the Australian open and play their exit tournaments, which was amazing. I love the culture and it’s beautiful and so many different kinds of climates and environments over there. But I would say I also love, I’ve been to Tunisia and Egypt a bunch of times and I loved it for such a different reason. That goes back to the education, like, just learning about culture. I think it’s just because it’s taught me to be so appreciative for what we have over in America, especially at a time where probably a lot of people aren’t appreciative of what we have. It was beautiful there, and I just loved learning about something that we don’t normally get to hear about. So I definitely loved Tunisia and Egypt.
Jessica: I have such wanderlust right now. [Brittany laughs] All I wanna do is talk about all the places that I might be able to go one day, so that sounds great. Well, good luck here in Austin, and good look with the petition.
Brittany: Thank you.
Jessica: And thank you so much for being on Burn It All Down, Brittany.
Brittany: No, thank you so much. We really really appreciate it, it means the world to us.