The NCAA's history shows just how corrupt it is
by Paragon SC on Sep 13, 2011 4:39 PM PDT
in General NCAA
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PrintI was sent this link today. I saw it on twitter but really didn't pay it too much attention until the person who sent it to me told me I had to read it...
That the NCAA has lasted this long is mind boggling.
The NCAA today is in many ways a classic cartel. Efforts to reform it—most notably by the three Knight Commissions over the course of 20 years—have, while making changes around the edges, been largely fruitless. The time has come for a major overhaul. And whether the powers that be like it or not, big changes are coming. Threats loom on multiple fronts: in Congress, the courts, breakaway athletic conferences, student rebellion, and public disgust. Swaddled in gauzy clichés, the NCAA presides over a vast, teetering glory.
There is a lot here to digest...this article is long.
But how the NCAA actually got its power and then abused its power is the foundation what they are today...
Only one year into his job, Byers had secured enough power and money to regulate all of college sports. Over the next decade, the NCAA’s power grew along with television revenues. Through the efforts of Byers’s deputy and chief lobbyist, Chuck Neinas, the NCAA won an important concession in the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961, in which Congress made its granting of a precious antitrust exemption to the National Football League contingent upon the blackout of professional football on Saturdays. Deftly, without even mentioning the NCAA, a rider on the bill carved each weekend into protected broadcast markets: Saturday for college, Sunday for the NFL. The NFL got its antitrust exemption. Byers, having negotiated the NCAA’s television package up to $3.1 million per football season—which was higher than the NFL’s figure in those early years—had made the NCAA into a spectacularly profitable cartel.
The NCAA was all about money then, just like they are now.
As the article goes onto show the NCAA became so enthralled with power that they went to far in trying to lock up all the TV money, while parsing out just a small fraction earned to its member institutions. They got the taste for money with the NCAA basketball tournament that started just a few years before.
There is so much here that I don't know where to begin.
The writer did an excellent job at reviewing the history of the NCAA. He shows just how behind the times they are and that for all their posturing, how they really haven't and still don't have the student-athlete's best interests in mind.
Please, go read this great piece!
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This article is a mindfuck
Reading what Walter Byers (the first executive director of the NCAA and basically it’s creating/guiding force) did and later said about his actions in positioning the NCAA to push around and profit from its member institutions with no real authority or basis feels a LOT like reading about L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology.
“If a man really wants to make a million dollars, the best way would be to start his own religion.”
- L. Ron Hubbard
If you want to make billions of dollars these days, you must indoctrinate your followers (member institutions) into following arbitrary, fictional ideals that you created (the “student-athlete” or thetans, take your pick) and the belief that they are accountable to your inane rules and must give you a significant cut of their earnings or they will be “unclean” (or ineligible).
One of the bigger take-aways from this piece is that the concept of the “student-athlete” was created and perpetuated so that schools would not have to pay players workers compensation for injuries suffered while playing football, because they were not paid employees of the university. That alone is pretty disgusting.
I’m only half way through this beast, but there are numerous fascinating tales about NCAA corruption, pettiness and general disdain for allowing college athletes to behave in any sort of human manner. I know that anecdotal evidence is generally a poor tool for making a larger point about widespread problems, but damn if there isn’t a mountain of cases where the NCAA has shown itself to be a reckless and capricious organization capable of ruining peoples lives on a whim. It is sickening and tragic that this organization continues to act unilaterally without any true oversight.
This article should be required reading for everyone on CC
It’s a devastating exposé that touches on the BCS, March Madness, the College World Series, even the Olympics.
It also predicts that several concurrent lawsuits against the NCAA, coupled with the recent scandals at major schools and the coming super-conferences, may destroy the organization as we know it.
This isn’t the kind of article you can skim on your iPhone while waiting at stoplights. But it’s an absolute must-read.
This link is pure money!
Now I know how easily I can rant. It’s not my M.O.- but it just is what it is. (the NCAA and “haters” simply vex me so!) So I take great pleasure in reading this article – as it elucidates exactly what I’ve been conveying on this site (and more) for quite some time.
Anytime the powers that be are shown to complicit in the status quo at the NCAA- it helps me in a way that confirms I’m not an arrogant simpleton with cardinal-and-gold colored glasses. I’d like to think I’m fair-minded and somewhat reasonable.
My opinions on the NCAA are wrought from being educated, not simply butt-hurt over USC’s sanctions.
Paul Dee and Mark Emmert are easy targets simply because they allow themselves to be. Nancy Potuto and Julie Roe Lach are just as guilty in allowing the NCAA to run roughshod over the rights of schools, coaches, and student-athletes. If you ask me, they are even more responsible than the actions and inactions of either Paul Dee or Mark Emmert.
by BixBeiderbecke on Sep 17, 2011 12:03 PM PDT reply actions
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