drakelead The House Committee on Ways and Means needs to zero in on intercollegiate athletics. A hearing would expose the NCAA’s secretive ways to the light of day. Furthermore, a hearing would call attention to the need for corrective actions that stress transparency (with related academic disclosure), accountability, and oversight – »Read the full article
The government’s favorable tax policies, viewed as entitlements by the NCAA and its member institutions, not only help fuel the athletics arms race, but also enable coaches as well as school, NCAA, and various big-time conference officials to gorge at a huge tax-free money trough. Putting an end to this practice could prove to be … Read more
Given the enormous broadcasting revenues at stake, the NCAA faces a conflict between its sometimes-contradictory roles as promoter and governor of intercollegiate athletics. Consequently, the NCAA cartel is incapable of reforming itself to stem the growth of commercialism. Worse yet, reform is impeded by greed, fanatic sports fans, a mostly apathetic public and inconsistent government … Read more
What’s next in the vast array of tactics used by schools to compete at the highest levels of big-time college sports? Leading the way in this latest workaround, is a school tarnished by a well known men’s basketball scandal in the late 1990s in which sports officials engaged in academic fraud to try to help … Read more
Unfortunately, the demand for academically qualified athletes, especially for the superb athletes, far exceeds the supply. Thus, in order to stay competitive in a win-at-any-cost environment, schools are forced recruit and employ superb athletes who are not only academically unqualified, but also unlikely to have a desire to obtain a legitimate education. They simply want … Read more
After a century of ineffective efforts to reform college sports, there is a growing concern over out-of-control commercialization that is driven by the college-sports entertainment industry to further its financial interests – exploiting college sports and its participating athletes while limiting access to higher education by real students. Accounts of the problems and issues surrounding … Read more
In this 2003 brief with a foreword by Theodore Hesburgh, Frank Splitt discusses a blueprint for faculty driven reform of intercollegiate athletics. »Read the full paper
They are quick to appeal to the privacy provisions of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) to avoid disclosure of any information that could prove damming or embarrassing, especially in the case of the academic performance of the athletes in their money-making sports programs. »Read more
The NCAA’s use of the phony collegiate model and ’student-athlete’ term to defend their tax-exempt programs and modus operandi has served the NCAA well in the past, but at great cost to America’s institutions of higher education. This model and terminology have, to various degrees, spawned a culture of academic corruption in colleges and universities … Read more
According to Walter Byers, who served as NCAA executive director from 1951 to 1987, the term ‘student-athlete’ was coined by the NCAA in the 1950s to counter the threat that its newly implemented play-for-pay, grant-in-aid athletic scholarship policy could result in NCAA athletes being considered paid employees by Workers Compensation Boards and the courts. The … Read more