Everyone except the NCAA and the athletic department and possibly the small proportion of NCAA football and b-ball players who make it into the pros.
I am a graduate of UNC. It is infuriating to read about the crap that has gone on in Chapel Hill. Everyone with any authority as turned a blind eye (at the very least) to stuff that folks should go to jail over.
Who benefits? Well, the NCAA benefits with lucrative TV contracts. The athletic departments (including coaches who make millions per year) benefit. A very small proportion of the basketball and football players benefit when they enter the NBA or the NFL.
Who loses? Well the players who do not make it to the NBA or the NFL are the biggest losers. They get no education. They work their asses off to entertain a bunch of students and mostly wealthy alumni. With the UNC mess, the taxpayers of North Carolina lose by subsidizing farm teams for the NFL and the NBA with kids who have no ability to do college work. Kids who have the ability to thrive at places like UNC, but do not get in because UNC admits kids who lack either the ability or the preparation to do college level work, lose. About 99.9% of the students lose because the value of their diplomas is lessened. Certainly there are others who lose by the scandal of college sports.
There are about 20,000 students at UNC. About 20 of those students will ever play in the NBA or the NFL. that is 1/10 of 1% of the so called students. Add to that about 50 - 75 coaches and athletic adminstators. So for about 100 people, UNC has sold it soul. About 70 kids who will never make it to the pros have spent 4 years of working their asses of and not getting squat in education. About 100 kids who had the chops to do the work at UNC were rejected to make room for the kids who could not or would not do the work who play b-ball or football.
When the NCAA passes a rule to the effect that every NCAA basketball player and every NCAA football player must be projected to be within one standard deviation of the overall student body’s projected first year performance based on SAT scores and high school gpa, I might be willing to pay attention to college sports again.
Thanks for that, Tom. Appreciate your perspective.