CBSSports - Nice Rip on Kelly & the Current State of CF

I have posted similar thoughts before and agree wholeheartedly.   I can clearly envision a future schism in college athletics related to the revenue sports where a group of P5 universities breaks off to return to a primarily amateur model for football and basketball.  This is the Ivy league approach, but at greater scale.   I would love to see such an effort led by schools such as Michigan, Notre Dame, Virginia, Duke, Washington, Wisconsin, and similar schools where the academic mission has primacy while the athletic heritage and support is constant on a large scale.

College athletics as "NFL/NBA-lite" is not that interesting and much harder to invest in emotionally.   It leads to the crazy system we have now.    

Fans contribute to this. If you own any Michigan football swag or memorabilia, you’ve contributed to the frenzied money grab that is college athletics. This is primarily football and somewhat basketball driven, which is why they get paid the most. I venture to guess that most on here don’t own a Michigan rowing or lacrosse jersey. 

Agree that money is a big issue. I would say, though, that the NCAA is also part of the problem. Used to be that they would actually punish school that cheated the rules (the infamous death penalty). That is no longer the case and hasn't been for a long time which has lead to a wild west approach in recruiting. The leadership void of the NCAA has led to a playoff that has done a lot to break the sport, has completely bungled the NIL stuff, has done nothing to address the destruction of the conferences (which continues to be terrible for the sport). Of course, a lot of this is connected to money chasing too (none of which goes to the athletes). 

At the very least, the NCAA has just stood by while the sport rips itself apart and has made itself look entirely foolish in the process. 

You can't and shouldn't stop money from flowing into something valuable.  If the universities banded together to take less money for broadcasting rights, that money would still exist and just be even more unfairly kept out of the hands that generate it.

Money itself is not a problem.  The institutionalized hoarding of money by coaches and administrators perpetuated by an unjust removal of rights for a high percentage of the people who generate it is a problem.  The NCAA is a sideshow to this, but it's influence is on the wrong side, so it is a part of the problem.

You're also wrong to argue against the concept of a full scholarship for athletes.  Why should athletes who provide value to their school while often coming from disadvantaged backgrounds not be given a scholarship?

 "zero interest in graduating or even attending class"

Cardale Jones aside I think a lot of or even most players want to get an education.  A bigger part of the problem is schools like UNC who cheat their athletes out of an education.  UNC should never be allowed to have a sports program again. 

It irks me that Michigan discourages the football players from being Engineering students because it is too hard to do both.  

Pro sports are a lottery, but your effort buys you more tickets.  If I was on the bubble of being able to make $1M+ a year right out of college that is the only thing I would focus on.  So yeah,  the money is sort of incompatible with academics.

Many people have been programmed to believe the amount of money one makes equates with being a successful person.

The SEC cares not about your ethic.  And major universities are banging at the gates to get in.  What's crazy to me, and I say this as a lifelong college football fan, is this model of university sports teams, v. club teams in the community. I've lived all over the world and have never seen a nation that has university sports, except, to a limited degree, in South Africa. To me, the club-level is a better model. 

I agree with everything until your last sentence, with which I partially agree.

Since Miles Brand became its president (and possibly before), the NCAA has embraced the idea that revenue-generating college sports must be a "massive marketing billboard" that generates revenue for the support of the non-revenue sports and, possibly, the university's general fund. Brand explicitly and aggressively applied this conception of the athletic department to his conception of the entire university. For Brand, money-making departments of the university (the hospital and medical system, the academic departments that produce valuable IP, the football and/or men's basketball team, et al.) should be organized to maximize their ability to produce revenue for the university, which would be used to subsidized "money-losing" departments (like all of the humanities departments and most social sciences, et al.).

The NCAA staff and leadership, including Mark Emmert, venerate Brand and have adopted his vision of college athletics as the justification for the existence of the NCAA and for its policy approaches, which, always and everywhere, are tailored to protect the economic value of the NCAA's product, not to provide "student-athletes" with a good experience. The NCAA views the maximization of revenue at all costs as a necessary aspect of its service to universities.

For what it's worth, I think that Brand's conception of college athletics and of the university as a whole is widely accepted across academia and is the source for many of the worst problems associated with contemporary higher education. I came to Michigan for grad school in the mid-80s and have lived in and around Ann Arbor for just about the entire time since. UM has changed dramatically since then, often for the worse, and I attribute most of those changes to its aggressive pursuit of revenue-generating enterprises, both athletic and academic, at the expense of its core mission of educating students and developing knowledge. 

This is why athletic departments everywhere try to ignore allegations of sexual misconduct against athletes (see Robert Anderson, MSU, OSU). This is why university administration does the same thing when there are sexual misconduct or other scandals in the academic departments or university administration (see Martin Philbert). Shameful or problematic conduct has to be swept under the rug because, above all, the university's all-important commercial functions and brand image must be protected. These are dramatic examples, but they do represent a broader problem of sacrificing the interests of students and staff at the altar of revenue.

From my perspective, the NCAA isn't the main problem; the NCAA is just one instance of a broader problem with how the university understands its purpose, and that problem is money.

Buh-Buh-Buh-Bingo!  We all are footing the bill, too.  

Nice gig where you can bitch about the hand that feeds you all the way to the bank. That Dodd is right doesn't lessen the sanctimony. 

I've searched my soul and have zero sympathy for Notre Dame. 

And if the playoff committee keeps ND out of the playoff in part because they don't have a coach, Kelly will go down in history as a legendary asshole, and it couldn't happen to a better school

Howard, I wouldn't be surprised. The guy spent 20 years in the NBA, only he would know if he aspires to that, and he isn't going to tell us.

Harbaugh, I think if admin didn't show support he might leave, otherwise no.

Edit: but to your larger point, yes. That's one of the reasons I didn't sour on Harbaugh like so many others have.

Jim Delany, from his Manhattan apartment, just prior to his lunch at the St. Jermaine Hotel, disagrees with you.