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
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
In early 2006, the book, College Athletes for Hire: The Evolution and Legacy of the NCAA’s Amateur Myth, by Allen Sack and Ellen Staurowsky, was recommended to House Committee on Ways & Means staffers. Why? Because it provided a good sense of the magnitude and the ubiquitous nature of the NCAA cartel’s powerful legal and … Read more
The NCAA’s bedrock amateurism principles of many years ago — which required colleges and their business partners to treat athletes like other students, and not as commodities — were long ago undermined by unrestrained commercialism and related academic corruption. »Read more
The Drake Group supports the introduction of strong TAO (transparency, accountability, oversight) measures at the NCAA and in the athletics programs at its member institutions to help restore academic integrity in higher education—reducing the level of academic corruption that enables America’s colleges and universities to pass off athletes who are academically, socially, and/or time disadvantaged, … Read more