The Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics was established in 1989 by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Under the strong leadership of its founding cochairs, the Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh and Dr. William C. Friday, the Commission set forth to put pressure on the NCAA to clean up its own act before Congress stepped … Read more
This is an opportune time to not only take advantage of the work done by the UC-Berkeley faculty, but also to exploit the fact that many of America’s colleges and universities are now beginning to recognize that their presidents are apparently powerless to curtail out-of-control spending by their athletic departments »Read more
The challenges to meaningful reform have indeed been great. The clarion calls to university presidents, trustees, administrators and faculties have fallen on mostly deaf ears. Faculties responded as best they could but the opposing constituencies are truly powerful; and the perceived monetary and psychic rewards for maintaining the status quo are considered too great to … Read more
Big-time football and basketball will not likely change any time soon—witness current discussions as to whether athletes in these money sports deserve to be paid given the substantial funds the sponsoring universities derive from their athletic prowess. The best higher education can hope for is that eventually universities will cut loose their programs in football and … Read more
One might ask why Senators and other members of the U.S. Congress are not working on provisions to pare back the unjustified tax breaks that the cartel—the National Collegiate Athletic Association and its member colleges and universities—as well as its supporters have come to accept as entitlements. All of the cartel members are nonprofits that don’t … Read more
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