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The NCAA IS the universities.

The reporter who broke the story about the University of Miami and Nevin Shapiro says to NPR:

But the reality is the NCAA is comprised of – it’s the universities. It’s the institution. It’s the presidents. It’s the power conferences and the conference commissioners, and in some way, shape or form, it’s – there’s no getting around the fact that they are all in bed together. You’re asking a governing body to look over universities that essentially help to establish that governing body’s power in the first place.

So it’s a little bit of an awkward marriage between the people who are expected to enforce are also made up by individuals who at – you know, at some point in their lives typically had worked within university structures, and I think that’s sort of what creates a lot of the gray area that people tend to attack when they go after the NCAA.

That’s the important thing. That’s what makes all of the university sports scandals so particularly, so intensely, disgusting. The NCAA isn’t a bunch of jocks acting like jerks with whom academic leaders are in constant conflict… because, you know, jock/intellectual… they’re naturally at odds, etc. … No. The NCAA is American university presidents. They run the fucker.

Here’s the NCAA logo.

Here’s what it should be.

Margaret Soltan, August 31, 2011 3:50AM
Posted in: sport

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4 Responses to “The NCAA IS the universities.”

  1. francofou Says:
    August 31st, 2011 at 7:31AM

    The mind body problem is solved! The body controls the mind. How simple, after all.

  2. Margaret Soltan Says:
    August 31st, 2011 at 8:45AM

    Rather say, francofou, that – as in a sci fi thriller – the body has taken over the mind.

  3. dmf Says:
    August 31st, 2011 at 9:25AM

    is there something about the reflective nature/socialization of academic work that keeps faculty from acting like an immune-system?

  4. francofou Says:
    August 31st, 2011 at 9:33AM

    The belief that the mind could control the body is a mental trick to give itself the illusion of power (cf. K. Marx et alii). The body doesn’t need tricks. It just knocks people down, especially if they are carrying an ovoid ball (metaphor alert).

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