Last week I read another article that talks about the NCAA being over-commercialized and awash in money, and about colleges and universities being awash in debt created in part by burgeoning athletic budgets in some cases made worse by badly overpaying coaches.
Associated Press writer Jim Litke was the latest to take on the question of whether or not college athletes – at least those in the “revenue” sports – should be considered professional and actually be paid for their efforts.
The article may have had some valid points, but probably creates more questions than it answers.
If the NCAA is to funnel some of its small change down to the member institutions so that athletes can be paid, would that money go to all members schools, or only the really big ones, such as those in the Football Bowl Subdivision.
And would that money go to all athletes at the affected schools, or just those who play the sports that generate substantial revenue?
Would individual athletes be paid equally? Or would someone – God, please don’t let it be the NCAA or the federal government! – actually come up with a cute little formula based on each athlete’s performance to determine who gets more and who gets less?
What needs to happen here is that we need to keep separate the bloated, greedy and largely ineffective nature of the NCAA and the concept of the amateur student-athlete.
This is truly wishful thinking, but it would be nice of coaches at the “big” schools would make the selling of a college education and the value of a college degree the focus of their recruiting efforts rather than selling the idea that their school would provide the best path to a professional sports career.
And when it comes to paying coaches, the bigs are right up there with some of the major corporations we’ve been hearing about lately, those greedy rascals now fighting to be bailed out by all of us as taxpayers.
I’ve always believed that the interest in athletics in this country has been badly over the top for years and only seems to be getting more ridiculous.
If the NCAA wants to funnel money to member institutions to help soften their debt problems, that might make some sense. But again, who decides how much goes to which schools?
The bottom line, in my mind, is that college athletes should not be paid. What they need to focus on is generating a good education, which is being given to them – to at least some degree for most of them – not on generating an income while allegedly attending college.
The whole thing is nuts. With all due respect to John Calipari and the other major college coaches making millions of dollars, these salaries are way out of line. The idea that there are only a few men and women out there who can really coach is ludicrous. And this has nothing to do with how much they make compared to university administrators and professor. It’s just too much.
So how do we get a handle on this? I have no clue. Or do we just let the whole thing keep going down its current path until the whole thing simply implodes and we can start over.
Common sense should prevail, but as we’ve seen in so many other situations when money is involved, it seldom does.
More to come on this later.
- Bill Schwanke
