In April of 2015 the Big Ten Conference circulated a white paper, Education First, Athletics Second: The Time for a National Discussion is Upon Us, that proposed freshmen ineligibility for Division I football and men’s basketball players. The white paper argued that freshman ineligibility would benefit athletes academically, but that it should only apply to … Read more
Listing eleven current conditions that threaten the financial stability of college athletics programs and the academic integrity of higher education institutions, The Drake Group issued a request to NCAA Division I college and university presidents and chancellors to support H.R. 2731 (a bi-partisan bill currently before Congress) that would mandate the appointment of a Presidential … Read more
Alan Page is an associate justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court. Most people realize that Page, a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, had a stellar athletic career while playing for the Minnesota Vikings. What many people do not know is that in 1988, Page and his wife Diane founded the Page Education … Read more
Check out a blog by a member of The Drake Group, listing the top issues that NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision athletic directors should be worrying about. Read more.
The revised Form 990, “Return of Organization Exempt from Income Tax,” filed by many public charities and other exempt organizations, has the potential to fully expose the Achilles’ Heel of the NCAA and its member institutions – the extremely weak, if any, educational basis for the current financial structure of big-time college sports. This would … Read more
Absent an antitrust exemption, which only the Congress can provide, the NCAA will continue to be the target of antitrust lawsuits whenever it tries to implement educationally defensible reforms that have commercial consequences.
Our goal in this report is to provide information on whether NCAA restrictions on athletes’ free participation in the lucrative market for their images, likenesses and names is necessary either to uphold the principles of amateurism or to preserve the activity of intercollegiate athletics. The Drake Group is a national organization of faculty and others, … Read more
In 2004, several members of the Drake Group carried picket signs on the sidewalk in front of the Hyatt Hotel in San Antonio where the basketball coaches were staying during the Final Four. Liz Clarke from the Washington Post described the Drake members as “graying university professors trying to sell something radical. The product they’re … Read more
As a reading specialist at UNC-Chapel Hill, Mary Willingham met athletes who told her they had never read a book and didn’t know what a paragraph was. She said she saw diagnostic tests that showed they were unable to do college-level work. But many of those athletes stayed eligible to play sports, she said, because … Read more
Dr. Fritz Polite, a clinical professor of sport management at the University of Tennessee (Knoxville) and his co-editor Dr. Billy Hawkins from the University of Georgia have completed a book titled Sport, Race, Activism, and Social Change: The Impact of Dr. Harry Edwards’ Scholarship and Service (University Readers: Cognella Publishers, 2011). According to Polite, a … Read more