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
Many of America’s public colleges and universities are part of the big-time college sports entertainment business. These schools have opted to invest heavily in athletic facilities. In so doing, they not only have compromised their academic missions, but also now find themselves in a position where they must service very large debts during economic hard times … 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
Like Harry Markopolos, who for nine years tried to persuade SEC staff that Madoff’s operation was a fraud, The Drake Group has been working to persuade the Congress that the unregulated operation of the NCAA is disingenuous at best. Here’s the story. »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
Apparently, no one anticipated the horrific downside to putting athletics oversight in the hands of sitting presidents who are literally caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place—between a public demanding high quality entertainment and governing boards who have the capacity (and all too frequently the inclination) to fire presidents who rock the university … 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