“The NCAA is starting to crumble internally. It is losing legitimacy in the eyes of its constituents, especially the athletes.”
The problem with this comment, from the head of the Drake Group, is that is misdescribes things in a pretty basic way.
The NCAA is stronger and richer than ever. With the new billion dollar tv deals, and with its retention of its absurd non-profit status, the NCAA is thriving beyond belief, and will continue to do so.
Why will it continue to do so? Because almost no one in this country – and certainly no one with any power – cares about what’s going on in big time university athletics. People want their games. They want them bad. They couldn’t care less what else the games bring.
University presidents know this. Tom McMillen, in the same article, says “You have coaches making salaries that are often 25 times more than what the college president at his school makes” as if he thinks this will get a rise out of someone. It hasn’t. It won’t.
What UD means is… If it were going to, it would’ve. Know what I mean? If I said There are dozens of universities in America which barely exist except as lucrative athletic programs, would that upset you? Galvanize you to action?
Or look at it this way: UD loves Barack Obama. Can’t wait to vote for him again. But Obama is a jock who loves big time university sports and – far as I know – has done nothing but heap praise on it.
And Congress? LOL.
This doesn’t mean you stop protesting the situation. It means you need to be honest about how deeply bad it is.
August 28th, 2011 at 3:37PM
I think you’re right, except that … well, the one group that really does care about all these issues is the athletics people, and some of them do seem to be getting very tired of the NCAA’s hypocrisy, albeit from “the wrong side.” Seems to me that there’s a decent chance the big time conferences (SEC, Pac-23, Big 10)-will pull their football programs (only) out of the NCAA, freeing themselves from interference and shutting the other schools out of the money. “Crumble internally” indeed.
August 29th, 2011 at 6:58AM
Actually, most D-I universities could move a step up from barely existing if they ditched their money-losing athletics programs.