drakelead Big-time college football and men’s basketball programs ought to be a target for future FIPSE (Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education) college sports reform proposals. These programs have become a cauldron of profligate spending and corruption driven by the college sports entertainment industry. They not only threaten the integrity and the preeminent global position … Read more
R. Gerald Turner, co-chairman of the Knight Commission and president of Southern Methodist University, said “The recession is accelerating the need to make hard choices about college athletics, but the fundamental problems will not abate when the economy improves…. Through innovative solutions, we can take measures to reign in everincreasing athletics spending and preserve all that … Read more
In his classic 2000 book, Beer and Circus: How Big-Time College Sports Is Crippling Undergraduate Education, Murray Sperber coined the term beer-and circus—a take off on the political, bread-and-games strategy of early Roman emperors aimed at distracting the populaces from foreign and domestic policy failures—saying it is the best description he has found for the … Read more
Doug Lederman opened a recent Inside Higher Ed news report by saying what has been obvious for many years (if not decades), to wit: Members of college and university governing boards interfere inappropriately “in the hiring of coaches and other decisions, emphasizing sports to the exclusion of other, arguably more central, institutional matters.” »Read more
The open letter to the president addressed the challenge to get academics over athletics priorities re-established at America’s colleges and universities that are held captive to the NCAA’s commercial interests—asking for assistance from the executive branch of government to see that compliance to federal requirements for the NCAA’s tax exemptions are enforced. »Read more
Notwithstanding the fact that NCAA Bylaws stipulate that intercollegiate sports are to be subordinate to the academic mission of their member schools; professionalized college sports have severely compromised academic integrity and warped the academic missions at our nation’s colleges and universities that support big-time football and men’s basketball programs. In other words, the athletic tail has … Read more
Unfortunately, too many authors focus on students as the violators of academic integrity—missing the greatest and most consequential violators of academic integrity: the colleges and universities that support big-time football and men’s basketball programs. These schools appear to have an even vaguer sense of what is meant by academic integrity. They have learned long ago that … Read more
Many of America’s public colleges and universities are part of the big-time college sports entertainment business. These schools have opted to invest heavily in athletic facilities. In so doing, they not only have compromised their academic missions, but also now find themselves in a position where they must service very large debts during economic hard times … Read more
Perhaps even more important to the plausibility of bigtime college sports as an alternative to pro sports are the related financial advantages of operating from a nonprofit base. The NCAA cartel could continue with its successful amateur charade and operate its sports entertainment businesses as nonprofit organizations with minimum payroll expenses though their continuing use of … Read more
Why hasn’t Congress or college presidents and trustees demanded appropriate measures of transparency, accountability, and oversight into the operations of the National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) and a refocus of attention and resources on academics rather than athletics? Why the difficulty? A major reason is there is simply so much money to be made by so … Read more