When I wrote last month on the latest blow, and maybe the final one, to amateurism in big time college sports (“Memo to the NCAA–It’s Over”), little did I know that within the past ten days would begin the unfolding of what will almost certainly be the most complete overhaul of college sports as we have known it for at least three quarters of a century. With Oklahoma and Texas moving from the Big 12 Conference to the Southeastern Conference, the die is cast for the final chapter of any semblance of amateurism in college football. I can remember in the mid 1980s when Jackie Sherrill was then head coach at Texas A&M and at a news conference he outlined what he predicted would be the inevitable evolution of Division I football into four major conferences of 16 teams each with a playoff leading to a national championship much like college basketball. I agreed with him then and, voila, here we are.
Around the time of the last major overhaul of conference alignments about ten years ago, the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics announced its third report entitled “Restoring the Balance: Dollars, Values, and the Future of College Sports”. While not as provocative as its first two reports in 1991 and 2001, it was certainly timely, dealing as it did with the impact of the enormous and rapidly increasing funding of college sports that was overwhelming all other considerations on strategy and conference affiliations. The Commission offered three principles for reform: 1) require that financial reports be public and transparent; 2) reward institutions that make academic values a priority; and 3) treat athletes as students first and foremost–not as professionals. The Commission further recommended that the financial reports filed by each institution with the NCAA be made public and include an additional measure comparing spending in athletics and academics, with athletic revenue distribution more closely tied to academic values and standards.
How is that working for us? I think the Knight Commission must have moved on from college athletics after the third report. Might as well have. A quote from one of the articles on the OU/UT issue this past week says it all: “The college game is nothing but the NFL hiding behind the veil of education”.
So sad!
Not sad; merely the unraveling of a long-lived line of nonsensical misrepresentation.
Best read Charles Murray’s recent “Facing Reality”: the average (mean) IQ of black Americans is 85. Yes, they are athletic and yes, there are the Clarence Thomases among them but the data are clear. You think an IQ of 85 is college material? Colleges are OK with that; they are paid with student Federal loans, and the unable drop out shortly, but the schools can claim they favorably admit A-As.
When I was playing high school ball, we were warned by our coaches to avoid taking rodeo payouts, because that would cancel our armature status. Now here we are 55 years later with paid collegiate athletes, paid Olympians, professional athletes making hundreds of millions of dollars, poached high school athletes on scholarships, men competing as women and parents fighting at t-ball games. It’s a wreck and only going to get worst.
True, and it has been proceeding unabated for over 40 years without anyone yelling STOP!