It is difficult to differentiate between the behavior of the Catholic Church when it was confronted with many hundreds of worldwide pedophile cases and the behavior at Penn State University detailed in the July 12, 2012, Freeh Report that made liberal use of phrases like “extremely poor leadership,” “irresponsibility,” “creating dangerous situations for children,” “repeatedly concealed … Read more
No doubt, Ridpath’s book will be considered by NCAA , college, and government officials as well as media supporters and other defenders of the status quo, as just the latest in a very long list of revelatory books on the corrupt college sports entertainment business – books they seem to believe are akin to attacks … Read more
University athletics benefit from in what can be likened to a stealth entitlement. Donors can usually write off gifts for athletic facilities and the right-to-purchase tickets. For example, federal tax revenues are lost because more than 1,000 university sports departments are eligible to extort deductible gifts as a condition for ticket sales. »Read more
It’s Time to Expose the Big Lie Congress has been reluctant to strip the NCAA and its member universities of their tax-exempt status and so help limit the seemingly uncontrolled growth of professionalized big-time college sports entertainment. »Read more
The challenge before us is to get academics-over-athletics priorities re-established at America’s colleges and universities that are held captive to the NCAA’s commercial interests in its sports entertainment businesses. Such interests appear to be first and foremost to the NCAA, not the interests of college athletes and American taxpayers. Simply stated, the NCAA has a … Read more
Simply stated, the big lie is that, for the most part, college athletes at big-time schools are counterfeit amateurs—passed off as legitimate students.[6] The objective is to create the illusion that NCAA and conference operations fit the academic mission of the participating schools. These athletes generate billions of dollars for said untaxed business operations—a tax … Read more
Over the years, it has been a given that higher education in America is the envy of the world. However, Murray Sperber’s 2000 book, Beer and Circus: How Big-Time College Sports Is Crippling Undergraduate Education provided deep insights into the debilitating impact of big time collegiate athletics programs on the overall quality of education at the … Read more
Cheating scandals such as the one at the University of North Carolina are not limited to a few rogue universities. On the contrary, some violations of academic integrity are to be expected in any school that requires athletes to give so much time and attention to sports that an army of tutors and academic support … Read more
Although faculty and faculty organizations, such as the Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletics (COIA) and The Drake Group (TDG), do not have vested interests in maintaining the status quo, occupy the moral high-ground, and have repeatedly advanced compelling arguments as well as strategies for reform, they do not have the wherewithal—financial resources and unified leadership—requisite to … Read more
Emmert appears to be holding to the NCAA’s party line that has been characterized by frequent mention of mythical “student-athletes,” the denial of its responsibility for the professionalization of big-time collegiate athletics—with its emphasis on revenue generation that not only fosters corruption but also compromises academic integrity—and the use of wealth and power to maintain … Read more