It’s the thorniest of issues, to be sure. College sports bring great pleasure to millions of people, but …
As Tarheel fan “Bob Lee Swagger” writes,
Most everyone agrees that ?Big Time? college football and basketball are getting dangerously close to a critical mass crisis situation.? Canaries in the coal mine like ?the Colorado sex scandals? are appearing more frequently.? The ?big money driven? reality of both sports is undeniable.? The hypocrisy of the ?student-athlete? concept is acknowledged by even the most head-in-the-sand naivet? among us. Could we throw out the soiled bathwater and still save the baby?
I confess I’m a huge fan of college football and basketball, but I agree that the current culture of big-money college athletics is rife with corruption, hypocrisy, and in general the kinds of things that sully institutions of higher learning. But what to do? The NCAA is proposing penalizing schools whose graduation rates aren’t up to snuff, but that “snuff” will vary according to the institution, and graduation rates can be influenced by crib majors such as “Leisure Studies” and those that require far fewer credit-hours for graduation. In short, even that well-intentioned plan invites shenanigans. Just as all the other well-intentioned plans before it.
In his article, Swagger proposes some interesting fixes. I’m not sure what to think of them, but I certainly think they’re worth debating.
