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Unpresidented

Who must answer this call and begin the reform? That’s easy – college and university presidents. They must take a stand and expect severe, unjustified criticism. They must summon courage to defend the best part of the academy and return athletics to a wholesome place in American higher education. And those of us who love college competition and want to restore it to health must encourage them, support them and take on their critics. While they do the right thing, we must cover their backs!

There’s a sweet, dreamy, retro feel to the prose of John A. Roush, president of Centre College. When the subject is big-time university sports, “metaphors of illness are apt,” he writes; and the only cure is presidential courage. He ends with this defensive play where we all huddle around the presidents and keep them safe while they expose their rears to severe criticism…

Shouldn’t that be the job of the stupendously rich NCAA? Don’t they have the money and the power to protect university presidents as they defend what’s left of their schools against the plague?

Well, of course the NCAA has that power.

UD proposes that we all write opinion pieces in which we dream aloud about their using it.

Margaret Soltan, March 26, 2011 6:38AM
Posted in: sport

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3 Responses to “Unpresidented”

  1. Mr Punch Says:

    Presidents ceded control of the NCAA to ADs a generation ago; and in any case the athletic powerhouses are in control because they (through the men’s basketball tournament) pay for everything. No help there.

    The only power within higher education capable of reining in athletics is accreditation – but it’s too blunt an instrument.

    The BCS system, which virtually assures that all schools in the AQ conferences will at least break even, eliminated the economic imperative for systemic reform. The Ivy experiment basically failed (in part because the issues changed), so even piecemeal reform looks unlikely.

    Maybe the IRS really is the only hope.

  2. Michael McNabb, Attorney Says:

    There is a solution that would enable a university to disentangle itself from the big business of major sports while allowing those programs to continue. Organize the football and basketball teams as separate corporations. The university would grant a license to those corporations to use the name of the university for the teams. The fee for the license would be a percentage of the revenues the corporations generate from ticket sales, broadcasting rights, advertising, etc. The university would use part of the license fee to support the non-revenue sports it decides to retain, such as track and swimming. This is a solution that would enable the sports fans to continue to enjoy the games and would enable the university to focus on its academic mission–the reason for its existence.

    Even the NCAA is beginning to recognize that universities cannot sustain the current financial system for sports. See Up, Up and Away at http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/08/18/ncaa.

    See also Restoring the Balance: Dollars, Values and the Future of College Sports at http://www.knightcommission.org.

    For a spectacular example of the misplaced priorities on sports (and the concurrent destructive effect on academics) at the University of Minnesota see section 5 of University Inc. Part II at http://ptable.blogspot.com/2011/02/draft-as-university-transforms-itself.html#links.

  3. david foster Says:

    Seems to me that the selection and retention criteria for university presidents make it unlikely for them to do *anything* requiring high levels of courage. If a president rocks the boat and pisses lots of people off–even/especially people who *need* to be pissed off–with the idea of markedly improving education at that institution, how long will it take before his initiatives begin to have a real impact AND for that impact to be recognized and him to get any credit for them? 10 years, maybe? If the time constant of being able to improve results in a recognizable way is greater than the time it takes your enemies to get rid of you, then transformational against-the-grain change is unlikely to happen.

    See related thoughts from Captain Reginald Whinney, RN, on what he calls “promotion jobs.”

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