Abstract: Both the most casual reader of the local sports pages and the professional consumer of information related to higher education in the United States today recognize that we are witnessing an increasing disconnect between what higher education professes to be about and the dollar-driven, big business of intercollegiate athletics. Fans (short for fanatics) see themselves as supporters of an institution if they buy tickets for a football or basketball game despite being wholly ignorant of-and generally unconcerned about-the fundamental educational issues with which the institution grapples. Some, believing they are helping a particular athletic program, provide no-show jobs for student-athletes or press gifts upon highly visible stars (or their families), particularly in the two sports that produce revenue: football and men's basketball. If one thinks back to the headlines about recruitment, no-work courses, bending of admissions criteria, and athletes declaring themselves headed to professional sports before they even set foot on campus, it becomes clear that most abuses we associate with intercollegiate athletics center on these two sports. These are the sports that grab the headlines, provide the ticket sales, require the luxury suites, and generate the television revenues. These are the sports that result in coaches' salaries that are many times that of anyone else on campus, faculty member or administrator. Football in particular generates so much revenue that it is possible for an institution hungry for a return to its glory days to successfully lure a coach to its campus from the professional ranks, and, in the process, to break through the $3 million salary barrier. In this context, the competition for star athletes who are capable of generating the level of play that will justify 100,000-seat stadiums is intense. Some observers of intercollegiate athletics believe that because college sport has become a business, it should be treated as a business; that is, allow schools to provide whatever they wish for prized student-athletes, with perhaps some salary caps built into the system, and hire them to represent the school as the professionals many believe them to be. However, most observers believe there is still much to be gained by not treating college sport as professional entertainment and there should be some means of regulating the dimensions of recruitment, minimum academic requirements for eligibility, determination of championships, etc. Astride this enormously complex and volatile mix sits the National College Athletic Association (ncaa), which determines polices and, when it deems it appropriate, penalizes the institutions that participate in college sport at the highest levels of competition. Of the more than 3,000 colleges and universities in the United States, only those involved in Division IA attract the national attention that results in penalties that matter: loss of scholarships, inability to play in post-season games or to appear on television, or retroactive loss of income generated while using players deemed ineligible. The degree to which the NCAA has come to be seen as having shifted its focus from the protection of student-athletes to the generation of income for itself and its member institutions is apparent in the fact that the House Ways and Means Committee, the Congressional seat of legislation related to federal tax policy, has required the NCAA to respond to a number of questions, the burden of which was to ask if the NCAA had abandoned its educational mission to the extent that it could no longer justify its status as a tax-exempt organization. This ongoing discussion seems not to have reached a conclusion, although most observers believe that the NCAA will weather that particular storm. In recent years, recurring scandals that appear in our papers and on our television screens have forced the NCAA to focus more of its energies and attention on matters related to the well-being of the student-athletes whose feats we applaud in games but whose academic lives go un-remarked upon until they are involved in some situation that renders them ineligible or draws negative publicity to their institutions. …
Publication Year: 2007
Publication Date: 2007-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 1
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