Taking
away $60 million in fines and dozens of future athletic scholarships as well as
past victories, the (paid) president of the NCAA harrumphs, “Football will
never again be placed ahead of educating, nurturing and protecting young people.”
Purists
can all rest easy now. College sports have been cleansed to continue under NCAA rules that turn institutions of higher learning into profit centers where
student athletes, with no compensation or insurance, labor for the glory and
financial gain of celebrity coaches and TV networks.
Joe
Paterno’s statue is down, and all is well in the land of Saturday afternoon slavery
except for those Penn State players who signed on for the possibility of future
fame and wealth, only to be undermined by nasty news of a child predator in
their midst.
Someone
is paying a price for all this unpleasantness, but as usual, it’s not those who
profit from it most.
Another
NCAA official declares that college sports’ win-at-all-costs mentality has “got
to stop...We’ve had enough.”
Of
what?
Update:
Suitably enough, it is a columnist from the business and finance pages of the
New York Times who makes the most apt comment on the Penn State penalties.
Joe Nocera points out that “at big-time sports schools, football is always placed
ahead of everything else. The essential hypocrisy of college sports is that too
many athletes are not real students--and no one cares. Coaches make millions
and lose their jobs if they fail to win.
“Universities
reap millions by filling stadiums and making attractive television deals. They
serve as the minor leagues for the pros. Everybody knows this--including the
N.C.A.A. The notion that the Penn State case is going to change all of college
sports is absurd. College football almost can’t help but corrode academic
values.”
Yet,
even in a bad economy, the amount of money involved keeps mounting.
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