Universities pay top coaches millions of dollars to coach winning teams, so should it be all that surprising that increasingly more colleges each year get busted for setting student athletes up in bogus classes and majors? In fact, rarely, if ever, are college coaches financially rewarded for producing scholar athletes, yet almost every coach has countless financial incentives for wins on the field or court. What this means is that whenever college athletic departments can turn a blind eye with eligibility classes/majors and keep top-tier athletes on the field, that is often what happens — UNC is this week’s example.
Jamming a square peg in a round hole
The real problem is the NCAA still pretending to be amateur athletics, even though everything about the NCAA has become professional sports. When college coaches are paid millions of dollars in salaries (ironically, trumping the salaries of university presidents — their bosses) and universities dump tens of millions on athletic facilities, you can easily see why integrity is often overlooked and replaced by a “win at all costs” mentality. Student athletes, therefore, are revenue generators who make the whole system go — without them, crowds dwindle and television revenues shrink, making their eligibility of paramount importance to universities.
College classes, sadly, often get in the way on the road of revenue colleges travel. When star athletes teeter on being able to stay eligible, there are usually countless “dummy” classes out there that will provide the easy A needed to continue to play. Colleges for years now have countered that the athletic scholarship provides student athletes freedom and autonomy to take the classes they wish, but it’s also not a coincidence that many student athletes end up pursuing degrees with little or no value. The brutal truth is that eligibility is priority #1, and classes and majors fall in behind that goal.
It’s the system, not the people
I don’t blame the individuals (athletic departments or student athletes), but instead fault the system. With so much money to be gained the university employees often do what is expected of them (steering student athletes toward easier classes and majors), and student athletes often do what they are suggested to do (take classes that aren’t very difficult so that they can stay on the field). I know many administrators and countless student athletes, and my general impression is that they are locked within the parameters of expectations, and not necessarily “bad people” for focusing on eligibility. UNC is not alone, as there will be many more schools caught for bogus classes in the years ahead — unfortunately, this situation will never get better until the NCAA amateur model is revisited and improved upon.
www.drstankovich.com
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ac9PPNtKuQ[/youtube]
