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
The latter question is likely on the minds of the Drakes as well as other reform-minded organizations and individuals. Will Secretary Duncan provide the leadership to change America’s dysfunctional system of higher education the mission of which has been hijacked by the sports entertainment industry, or, will he continue to flag problems but only provide … 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
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
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
Cheating in college athletics not only makes cheating in professional sports pale by comparison, but also has more serious long-term consequences. There needs to be more intense scrutiny re: the efficacy of the NCAA’s drug-testing program as well as a demand for more transparency and accountability in the operation of the NCAA and the athletic … Read more
There are striking parallels between the uncontrolled, greed-driven, anything-goes operations and excesses on Wall Street, with its misrepresentation of material assets in the form of disadvantaged financial instruments, and those in the NCAA’s college sports business, with its misrepresentation of material assets in the form of disadvantaged academic instruments — so-called student-athletes. In articles exploring … Read more