… about the syndicates that run football and basketball at American universities, defenders of the racket have been fighting back.

In this opinion piece, the writer argues that university football should break free of the NCAA altogether:

… Now before you think they will set up a wild, wild west operation, remember that university presidents will be figuring this out. They lose their jobs when the football program is out of control and brings harm to the school’s reputation.

Presidents lose their jobs (for which they are paid, say, $600,000, while the football coach is paid four million) when their team loses games because the president puts the school at a competitive disadvantage by trying to introduce financial and academic reforms. (“All this ugliness is allowed to happen, in part, because university presidents, so-called educators, have ceded control to coaches who are treated as deities and are accountable to no one.”)

Without the NCAA, this writer argues, each school will handle rule-breaking its own way. For instance:

[W]hen a backup offensive lineman on a championship team cheats on an online course, gets caught and is declared ineligible after the fact, that single player [won’t] cost his school numerous scholarships, years of rebuilding and possibly a national title… [It’s all just a] a few wayward teens and a couple unscrupulous agents…

Have to take issue with one, too.

Cheating, bar fights, football titles – it’s about teamwork. It’s not going to be just one guy. A university football player doesn’t walk into a bar by himself and beat the shit out of someone. His teammates are there to kick in the guy’s balls once he’s down.

The same principle applies to cheating, a group effort involving academic tutors distributing tests in advance or calling out answers to the players while they’re in the exam room together. Often the faculty is in on it. It takes a village.

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Despite our differences, I share the opinion writer’s contempt for the NCAA.

I just think the writer needs to give more thought to the perennial question of order vs anarchy.

Right now you’ve essentially got the Myanmar junta reining in the syndicates. State-sponsored violence, as well as corruption and repression are rampant, to be sure, but blood isn’t absolutely flowing in the streets.

Once you lose central control, rival gangs will go at it very hard for dominance, and UD fears that the university’s ethos of quiet deliberative thought may be imperilled.