perfidy

Returning to Johno's previous question about what to do about student athletes, I'd say it is a problem. It's a problem for student athletes in Division 1 in that athletics does take a lot of time away from academic study. It makes studying and completing assignments much more difficult. The seasons are long, especially for basketball, and it consumes a lot of a student's year. So what are the options? Well, obviously, seasons could be shorter. Of course, universities might carp about this because tournament play and bowl games are advertising opportunities and money-makers. But they can still have their post-regular season play, just limit the amount of time it takes. If that means fewer games have to played during the NCAA tournament, so be it. It might also help to return to more geographically restricted divisions. That would reduce time on the road for college athletes.

The other problem occurs with economically disadvantaged athletes. Universities kind of pull a bait and switch, in my opinion, with some athletes. Universities offer a free ride on tuition in exchange for participation in sports. Well, that's good for disadvantaged athletes who might not have otherwise have the opportunity for higher education. But when they're broke, they are tempted to take gifts that the NCAA does not permit. In some cases it might well be greed. But a friend of mine recently mentioned a story about one college athlete, who came from a very poor family, and didn't even own a jacket. A booster apparently bought the kid a jacket, the NCAA said that was not permitted, and I don't remember if the kid had to leave the team, lost his scholarship, or anything like that. But for the kid to even get in trouble because someone bought him a jacket so that he wouldn't be so cold outside is screwy.

So, disadvantaged student athletes with scholarships get free tuition, but free tuition doesn't cover everything. Maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea to grant disadvantaged student athletes stipends, if circumstances justified it. But that might be unfair to disadvantaged students on other scholarships without stipends. That problem might not have a solution. But at the very least, the NCAA could reduce the length of seasons and the amount of geographic travel to give student athletes more time to be students.