Increased television exposure allows previously lower-level competitors to recruit against traditional football powers. Also, NCAA limits on the number of football scholarships have created greater parity among the big-time football programs each of which is competing for ‘food’ in the form of talented recruits as they strive to swim in the ocean of money generated … 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
The NCAA’s continued success at professionalizing big-time college athletics, while thwarting serious reform puts academic corruption and cheating on par with prostitution, illegal gambling, and speeding violations as acceptable forms of social misconduct in America— it’s OK so long as you don’t get caught. »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
It seems that there is no end to the means to which the NCAA and the KCIA will go to defend the NCAA’s big-money turf and the status quo in collegiate athletics. The Kirwan-Turner opinion piece had a clear ring to it—prompting a question: Isn’t the pot calling the kettle black? »Read more
With but few exceptions, America’s colleges and universities are in the process of deteriorating while on their government subsidized quest for sports related revenue ‘gifts’ —compromising their integrity and warping their academic missions along the way. There are no visible means to reverse what appears to be a downward spiral into a pervasive ‘beer and … Read more
After some 80 years of failed reform, it appears that America’s sports culture has triumphed over the academic mission of its colleges and universities as well undermined the educational mission of our nation’s high schools. As evidenced by the plethora of scholarly articles and books on college sports reform, there can be little doubt as … Read more
There is an apparent triumph of America’s sports culture over the academic mission of its colleges and universities as well as to the undermining of the educational mission of our nation’s high schools, and, that unless and until Congress gets involved, America’s system of higher education will continue to be held hostage to the collegiate … Read more
Sol Gittleman, a former provost at Tufts University, wrote to me with reference to Brad Wolverton’s article, “Rise in Fancy Academic Centers for Athletes Raises Questions of Fairness,” saying: “This would be a joke, if it weren’t for articles that state how public universities are losing out in hiring to the well-heeled privates. So, while … Read more