"NCAA's Leadership Failure in Governing the Commercialization of College Sports"

From the New York Times


Review by Mac Mountcastle in KIN 332 (Section 1)

The National Collegiate Athletic Association or NCAA was designed for one main purpose. The NCAA is there to regulate the fairness and safety of competition, also bring the college athletics into higher education for the student-athlete gets a high standard education. However, with college sports becoming more commercialized, especially in football and basketball, it has been difficult for the NCAA to regulate the college sports. Around the country football and basketball are the two main sports that fund the other sports offered by the university. One big debate in this article is where it talks about “making these commercial athletic enterprises non-profit organizations for tax purposes”, considering all the revenue they bring to the rest of the university. As far as Sports marketing goes the elite college conferences have just recently signed billion dollar deals to gain publicity on national television during their football games. This causes risks of violations, because of what the article says “imbalance of compensation” being that coaches and Athletic directors are compensated when the players are left out. This could lead to paying of the players when the teams are making all the money in revenue from ticket sales. Maybe even the booster supporters of the team pay the players, which is in turn still against the rules. This whole article boils down to the point that the amount of money a college generates in revenue needs to be well regulated. The NCAA should be able to tell all universities that only a certain amount can go back to Athletic Directors and coaches, so the coaches do not know what is available to them. That way coaches cannot offer recruits money when they do not know what the college is receiving in revenue. The NCAA needs to make it so they regulate how each university spends revenue towards sports especially football, and basketball. The article comes right out and says the entire problem, which is “more money equals more problems”. If the NCAA can govern the money flow the problem would be solved.