Posted on 09/06/2021 5:48:05 AM PDT by karpov
A decade ago, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill was engulfed in a sports scandal that made national headlines, brought down a chancellor who seemed destined for a lustrous career, and caused the school huge expenses in litigation and for public relations experts. For the Carolina faithful, those events are now just a bitter but much faded memory. The university has made the needed changes to avoid any repetition so everything is all right.
At least, that is the conventional wisdom. One UNC graduate who has his doubts, however, is Andy Thomason, author of a new book, Discredited: The UNC Scandal and College Athletics’ Amateur Ideal. Thomason was a UNC student during the scandal, serving as editor of the Daily Tar Heel. After graduating from UNC, he took a job with the Chronicle of Higher Education where he is Assistant Managing Editor.
Thomason retains his devotion to his alma mater, but is troubled by the “everything’s okay now” perception. He doesn’t know how right he is.
The key to understanding Thomason’s thinking about UNC’s scandal, and indeed the whole of America’s craze for big-time college sports, is the utter absurdity of the “amateur ideal.” The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has long insisted that sports are clean and wholesome because the participants are “student-athletes.” That is, they are first and foremost students pursuing their education, and only secondarily are they players of football, basketball, hockey, or whatever sport.
Thomason shreds that myth.
(Excerpt) Read more at jamesgmartin.center ...
College sports need to upgrade academic requirements so that “student-athletes” are just that.
The latter would look more and grade more like the study body. The game will still have plenty of stars and colleges would not be allowed to use academically challenged or lazy athletes especially with the new NIL rules.
If you want to use NIL then prive you belong with an academic work ethic
College sports need to upgrade academic requirements so that “student-athletes” are just that.
The latter would look more and grade more like the study body. The game will still have plenty of stars and colleges would not be allowed to use academically challenged or lazy athletes especially with the new NIL rules.
If you want to use NIL then prive you belong with an academic work ethic
That UNC didn’t lose its accreditation shows just how corrupt the system is. Entire departments that didn’t exist, paper entities only just so athletes could “graduate.”
About 60 “student athletes” at each major university make tens of millions of dollars for their universities playing football or basketball, the money sports. Most get a shoddy education in silly majors and some laundry money for their efforts. In addition many incur life long injuries that in later life leave them crippled or demented. They receive none of the money the universities made off their performances. Huge salaries are paid to coaches and administrators. Of course there is no corruption and every dollar is accountable. Try to imagine the results of a forensic audit of those funds at any of these big time universities who BTW just love to spout the latest woke nonsense when they are not counting and dividing the money.
For the forgetful and for context, the article should have at least a line or two as to briefly describe what the scandal was.
Issues with college sports??? STOP the PRESSES!!!
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Heck, Bullwinkle even had an episode called Wossamatta U. about his college football experience.
It’s a Faustian bargain . . . it’s a way for some athletes who clearly wouldn’t qualify for a school academically to get a shot to see if they can actually accomplish SOMETHING. It’s a way for many of the glamour colleges to make good money off them (before you complain, realize that the new conference cable packages like the B1G Ten Network, The SEC Network, ACC Network generate ENORMOUS cash flow for the member schools).
And now the athletes themselves can sell their images and positions for large money. Which might one day actually take the place of the scholarship. Will some ‘enterprising’ college coach set up a system for their recruits to earn more money from the ‘selling of the player’s image’ than what the scholarship pays so the scholarship is not needed? That’s the true wildcard of unintended consequences by the courts ruling the athlete can now cash in on their own.
I never was big into sports.
Now I am totally out.
Can’t even enjoy women’s volleyball because one of the players might be a man.
What is going to happen is that only about 50 schools are going to be able to afford to compete at the Division I level. The other schools will either have to drop football or go to a lower level. Because if you aren’t competing with the big boys, nobody is going to be interested in your program.
Baseball certainly has its own ethical problems, but at least it doesn’t corrupt colleges by using those colleges as its player-development league. (Yes, there are college baseball teams, and yes, they are probably no more ethical than any other sports program. But at least kids who have no business being in top-level colleges don’t go there ONLY to participate in a player-development league.)
The accreditation board had a chance to do something the NCAA never could have the willpower to do: Penalize UNC Big Time. UNC was handing out completely fraudulent diplomas. But they skated, with barely a slap on the wrist.
Let’s put away the myth that college athletics give opportunities to inner-city kids to go to top-ranked colleges. Those kids are NOT getting college educations.
And no, I don’t hate college sports. I actually find NCAA basketball to be MUCH more fun to watch than NBA. But it’s not worth destroying America’s premiere colleges over.
College Basketball is going to become more like college baseball, because more and more the NBA is getting their players from the Euro Leagues rather than from the colleges.
You mean they aren't taking advantage of the opportunity.
>> What is going to happen is that only about 50 schools are going to be able to afford to compete at the Division I level. The other schools will either have to drop football or go to a lower level. Because if you aren’t competing with the big boys, nobody is going to be interested in your program. <<
Would it be such a big problem if FBS was reduced to only flagship schools? If Ohio taxpayers didn’t have to waste money on so many different Ohio universities trying to compete to be Ohio State’s also-ran? If a football conference looked like this?
Akron
Kent St
Bowling Green
Cincinnati
Toledo
Miami, Ohio
Ohio U.
Dayton
Wright St.
Why should Cincinnati have to spend 40 million dollars just to say, “Hey, we’re Ohio’s SECOND most famous state university!” Why should Dayton have to say, “We’re ‘only’ a basketball college, because we don’t have 40 million dollars to waste, like Akron and Kent St do”? Just simply, “THE Ohio State University is the chosen state university football big-shot university,” and forget about the competition to be also-rans.
(I write this as someone who hates Ohio State and enjoys NCAA basketball greatly.)
>> You mean they aren’t taking advantage of the opportunity.
<<
Um, maybe? It’s hard to tell the coach, “Screw off, I need to study” when the NFL or NBA looks like such a more promising opportunity. Or maybe I’m wrong about that. Either way, they’re not benefitting from the college “education.” They’d do much better to be playing for the Tampa Yankees than for UCF.
They aren’t really given an opportunity. The schools don’t want them risking their eligibility on hard classes they might not pass. Best case scenario they’re steered to low end courses most high school kids could pass without studying. Worst case they aren’t even given their own schedule. They don’t really have much choice, the coach controls their scholarship, rock the boat and lose it. Their job the sport, that’s why they got the scholarship, the “education” is purely a cover. That’s why it’s past time to be paying them straight, above the table. Money is something that will be useful to them when they don’t make the big leagues. A fake education does nothing for them.
I observe what’s going on with soccer in Europe and see that happening here with college football.
The rich clubs are sucking all the air out of the sport. Smaller clubs are folding, these are clubs that have been around for over 100 years. Once, there were over 700 professional soccer clubs in England, playing at various levels. Eventually it will probably be less than a hundred.
One sign of hope was when the fans revolted against a proposed European Super League, which basically would have taken all the biggest teams across Europe and had them compete in a separate league, outside of their domestic leagues.
So instead of teams like Chelsea having to play teams like Aston Villa every week, they would play Barcelona or PSG, of course this would have further killed the small clubs.
I don’t buy that. There is still plenty of time to study even with a full schedule of practice and games. It’s just a matter of cutting out all the unnecessary extra-curriculars. Plenty of examples of football players, even those who made it to the NFL, who got a legit degree on-time.
Pottersville or Biff Tannen's Pleasure Paradise Casino & Hotel...take your pick.
Crumbling empire's last throes.
North Carolina skated because the NCAA didn’t want to gore their cash cow basketball team. Period.
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