One of the many Letters to the Editor of mine The Poop Sheet never published was sent back around 1992. In it I said that the ACC had made a very costly miscue at its founding and since in making basketball the league's #1 focus and promotion. I said that inn doing that, the ACC Presidents/Chancellors thought they were getting the best of both worlds: that they were getting truly BIG Time, and thus professionalized, basketball while avoiding taking on Big Time football, which they felt must be dirtier and more injurious to academics and good manners. I said that th4e day was coming when either the SCC would embrace and promote football 100%, Ala the Big Ten and SEC, or els the ACC would start dying as even long time basketball-first schools would leave the ACC for the bigger money of conferences that are football-first. I noted that the new TV contracts that had spurred conference expansions guaranteed that - that the ACC win the basketball national title 20 years straight could not stop it.
There are only 2 positions in this matter that make sense: One is to go Ivy League, as in no scholarships for any sport, which necessarily drags down all sports a good deal; the other is to go whole hog in football and acquire the money and power to save the ACC from BT and SEC predation. Anything else is that 'trying to have your cake while eating to too' thing. Anything else than one of those 2 extremes is a contradictory waste of time. UNC must choose and act fully.
I also think that the reality is that no state U with any meaningful sports history in either revenue sport can ever make the Ivy choice. That would hugely piss off countless alums and non-alum fans of the schools' sports. Many of them would send their grievances to various state legislators. There would be much political fighting.
I hear what you're saying and it's interesting and probably on target for what it is, but I'm not sure how it follows and ties into what I posted.
Look back at how it all started. Colleges had
actual students form teams that competed with each other intramurally. There was no compelling reason to award athletic scholarships to anyone. But then those people decided to compete with other schools, and all of a sudden the idea of recruiting a ringer athlete for the sake of such intercoll- competition came into play, and that athlete was necessarily portrayed as a student even though his main purpose was to contribute athletically.
Gee, what could go wrong with that?
The NCAA was formed primarily to create and enforce safety standards but its role also became controlling the ability of a college to build intercollegiate teams full of scholarshipped (and otherwise compensated) ringers who were not actually students....because sure as hell, that is exactly what started to happen, the human desire to compete and win being what it is. In other words, it was somewhat a pretense from the get-go, and the NCAA was tasked with stamping legitimacy on it.
But you can't polish a turd and make it all bright and shiny for the satisfaction of those who were completely interested and invested in actual education. But at least you can keep it from smelling so bad, so that the general public and sympathetic (competitive) academics can support it. The NCAA has always existed to keep shit from stinking....that is, to make essentially compensated athletes appear to be mere amateurs....members of a school's student body just like other students. It's purpose has been to maintain the facade of amateurism so that the schools could reap whatever rewards there were for doing so.
Gee, what could go wrong with that?
I have maintained for a long time now that such a hypocritical pretense couldn't be maintained forever. If you compensate someone for performing a task, they are not amateurs, and the NCAA's heavy-handed attempt to stamp out any spark of that coming to light became ridiculous, IMO. I said why not just admit that they are athletes being paid with a scholarship under enforced parameters, and let the show go on without stifling a schools ability to compete and ruining a player's career just because he had a conversation with a pro agent, e.g.
But the legalities finally started breaking through the crust of the contrived amateurism, and that's where the problem lies. I don't necessarily agree with the laws in question, and I also admit I am not all that familiar with the entire legal landscape that has created the fiasco we are dealing with. But there has to be a saner way of allowing colleges to compete with each other for the sake of benefitting from the loyalty of alums and other fans. I am the last person to try to impose limits on what any person does to improve his/her lot in life, but I also think that those freedoms shouldn't be imposed on others....others being colleges in this case.
But that is what is happening, and I am at the point that I want institutions of higher education to be just that and not much more....unless some common sense can be returned to what should be a well-structured and enjoyable pastime.
Resolving any problem, especially by applying common sense, dictates that we see the problem for exactly what it is, and attack its root cause. Otherwise we just end up putting band-aids on top of other band-aids. Which is typical and probably what we'll see happen here.
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