Standing in sharp contrast to the public’s reaction to the financial meltdown, oil drilling accidents and the like, the lack of public reaction to the reported cheating and academic corruption scandals at schools supporting big-time football and men’s basketball programs is stunning. The academic mission at many schools has been hijacked by the professional college … Read more
By all accounts, Emmert is a pragmatist who is unquestionably capable of making his predecessor, the late Myles Brand, and the NCAA’s school-president apologists appear as comparative lightweights. »Read more
President DeFleur could very well serve as the poster person for presidents beleaguered with problems and issues surrounding their professional sports entertainment businesses. The Binghamton scandal shows what can happen if someone blows the whistle on cover-up behavior by their institution—misleading, lying, and withholding facts to not only protect its NCAA franchised businesses, but protect related jobs … Read more
A close examination of the NCAA’s rule changes over the past 50 years or so will show that these changes have not been to support or reinforce their stated purpose and principle of amateurism, but rather have been to increase their market size and revenues by professionalizing their big-time football and men’s basketball programs at … Read more
Most Americans have been led to believe that sports programs are an extracurricular activity—an integral part of the fabric of the postsecondary education experience. They have also been led to believe that these programs play a significant role in America’s higher education system with beneficial impacts—helping to knit together the disparate supporters of these enterprises … Read more
Like the Yosemite and Yellowstone national parks, the athletics programs at America’s institutions of higher learning can be considered to be precious resources. As we learned from their tireless advocate John Muir, the parks can enrich the life experience of their visitors. Similarly athletic programs can enrich the life experience of college students. Unfortunately, both resources are … 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
Unfortunately, too many authors focus on students as the violators of academic integrity—missing the greatest and most consequential violators of academic integrity: the colleges and universities that support big-time football and men’s basketball programs. These schools appear to have an even vaguer sense of what is meant by academic integrity. They have learned long ago that … Read more
We live at a time when everyone seems to know about wrongdoing in the world but no one is willing to admit it, let alone do something about it. For the past few decades, government and school officials have known, or should have known, that college athletes have full-time jobs in the college sports entertainment … Read more