This week you are reading George Sage's arguments regarding power, ideology, and intercollegiate sport. Sage describes the NCAA as a cartel. What evidence does he use in this argument? How has power changed or shifted over time in intercollegiate sports regarding governance? How has this process helped create the situation at Texas that Zirin blogged about last month? Explain how amateurism is an ideology that maintains the hegemony in intercollegiate sport and keeps power in the hands of the NCAA. Last, discuss how you are connected to the NCAA through the sport-involvement model provided in class two weeks ago.
For thinking homework I want you to think about television networks, advertising, and the role of ideology in Super Bowl commercials. Please check out this clip in your spare time and be prepared to discuss your thoughts as related to your chapter on the media (Sage, Ch8).
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Sage describes the NCAA as a cartel because it controls all the sources of revenue and it all goes back to the NCAA instead of being distributed to the real workers which are the athletes. He also says athletes are unfairly treated because they are unjustly compensated for the money that the bring in for the university at which they attend and the NCAA itself.
ReplyDeleteControl over intercollegiate sports has shifted a large amount over the 160 or so years since its inception. It started out with students controlling the sports and the adults were kept out of the decision making and were forced to become just fans. However, around the 1870's, power began to shift away from the students to advisory athletic committees which began to control all aspects of intercollegiate sport. In 1910, the NCAA was formed to provide control and order, and by 1920, students had lost all of the power and the NCAA began to take the form that we know today.
The NCAA taking control of sports and turning it into a large commercial business paved the way for the situation at Texas to take place. The Texas football program is responsible for bringing in large amounts of money to the University, so they in turn reward the coach with a raise. If the NCAA was not the big business that it is, the raise would totally be unjustifiable. The school would not be able to justify giving 2 million dollars to the football coach, while cutting budget in every other department.
Amateurism is the key to keeping the NCAA the big business that it is. The NCAA says that the players should not be compensated, because it would take away from the purity of the competition. However, it already is unpure as the NCAA and the universities rake in large sums of money off of the player's participation. The athletes are compensated only with a scholarship, which can sometimes only be about 1/10th of the money they bring in for the school. By saying that amateurism is the essential to keep college sports in order, the NCAA is able to maximize the profits that they make off of the sports, while paying the athletes zero dollars.
I am connected to the NCAA as a primary, secondary, and tertiary consumer. I pay money to go to NCAA events, and I buy NCAA licensed clothing and apparel. I also watch many NCAA games that I can not attend, and I also follow up on those games by reading about them in the days following them. I am a part of the NCAA model as I do contribute to their profit model by paying money for tickets and licensed gear, which help contributes to their gross profit.
Sage describes the NCAA as a cartel because they profit enormously from intercollegiate sports games without having to pay the athletes for their hard work. College sports have a non-profit status and because of their affiliation with the NCAA and their respective colleges they are tax exempt as long as they don't generate any "excess revenues." Of course the colleges and the NCAA do make money, they just spend the money to "further the purpose of the organization" (Sage, 227) so they can remain exempt from taxes.
ReplyDeleteWhen intercollegiate athletics first started out, everything was organized and ran by the students for the students, including any business management. They were unassisted by faculty or administration. However, during the 1870s faculty, alumni, and administration thought the students could no longer handle the growing responsibility of governing themselves, so they stepped in (Sage, 230.)
Because the NCAA and each college athletic program has to use any profits they make to advance their program, they created the perfect environment for the situation at Texas to take place. Because the team has continually done well and generated much revenue, the program took those profits and decided to pay the coach more, since the players can't accept compensation for playing. They want to ensure that the team will continue to perform well and generate profits, so they raised the coach's salary as an incentive to do so.
Amateurism is how the NCAA generates their revenue. They say the athletes can't be paid for playing and that they should participate in their sport solely for the enjoyment and personal benefits, therefore denying the commercial and capitalistic nature of intercollegiate athletics. The only things the athletes can legitimately receive is a scholarship, which doesn't even come close to comparing to the amount of revenue they help generate. By defining the athletes as amateurs, they can maintain their hegemony and keep power in their hands.
I'm connected to the NCAA mostly as a secondary and tertiary consumer. Once in a while I may go to a game and be a primary consumer, but I mostly watch the games on T.V. Even though I don't usually spend money on tickets to go see games in person, I still contribute to their profits by watching the games and buying merchandise of the teams I support.
The control of intercollegiate sports first began with the control being in the hands of the students and athletes. Then the control turned to the hands of advisory athletic committees. After this the NCAA was created to control all of intercollegiate sports.
ReplyDeleteThe situation at Texas is possible because the football program has continually been successful generating a lot of income for the school. It is against NCAA rules for a player to accept money for their athletic abilities but however it is not illegal for a coach to be payed more based on the success they are helping create with their team.
The hegemony is kept in intercollegiate sports through the ideology of amateurism. The NCAA does this by not allowing the collegiate athletes to accept any type of compensation for their athletic abilities. This means that the athletes are competing and participating for the sake of their love for their sport. So athletes receive none of the large amounts of money they help bring in. This keeps all the power in the hands of the NCAA.
My connection to the NCAA is mainly primary since I am an athlete myself. I am expected to follow all the NCAA rules and regulations.
So I am directly affected by the NCAA each and every day. I also attend some NCAA sporting events that I do not compete at. I am also somewhat a secondary and tertiary consumer do to the fact that I will sometimes watch NCAA events on TV. or will hear about the results from another source like a friend or teammate.
Sage describes the NCAA as a cartel in that it is a profit driven organization that turns its athletes into a commodity for its own profit. The athletes do not get any share in the revenue they earned since they are considered amateurs, despite being a “part of a business industry” (Sage, 235). To make his point, Sage includes hard facts that demonstrate the NCAA’s position as a cartel: Major universities often have over $25 million in athletics budgets as well as football bowl games that make more than $55 million a year to universities participating in them (Sage, 226).
ReplyDeleteWhen NCAA sports first began they were run by the students. During the 1870s faculty and administrations stepped in to help govern the athletes and by 1910 the NCAA had been formed (Sage, 230). Now the student athletes no longer have a say in how they are governed and the organization has become profit driven.
This process has helped create the football controversy at Texas. From a financial standpoint, the University of Texas is doing very well in athletics and since it is against NCAA policy to reward its players and pay them for their hard work, the university naturally rewards the coach. From a business standpoint, this makes perfect sense with the exception that the players do not receive any of the revenue. Of course, part of the reason that Mack Brown is receiving what many consider to be an unreasonably high bonus is because his players are not receiving anything.
Amateurism is an ideology put forth by the NCAA so that it can continue to profit from the athletes it governs. The idea of amateurism is that athletes play their sport for pure enjoyment. Hegemonic ideas and manipulation the NCAA utilizes to maintain this notion are by convincing its athletes that the NCAA has their best interests at heart and is trying to protect them. Of course if things were turned around and the athletes were the ones in power and receiving all the profit they could argue that NCAA officials should govern them because it is fun and not for the money.
I am connected to the NCAA as a primary producer and primary, secondary, and tertiary consumer. I am a primary producer because I am an athlete that competes in the NCAA. As a primary consumer I purchase tickets to go to a game. When I watch a game as it is unfolding on TV I am a secondary consumer. Reading about the game the next day in the paper or online makes me a tertiary consumer as well.
The NCAA is referred to as a cartel by Sage. This is because according to Sage, the NCAA started out by being controlled by the students. The students had the say in the sporting events and how everything would be handled. This eventually changed when alumni and other authority figures decided that it was too much responsibility for students to handle. This was the start of the change in power. From then on the students have lost all power.
ReplyDeleteThis helps create the Texas situation because this change has led to the NCAA becoming big business. It is making a very big profit of it's sports which is allowing for higher pay rolls as well.
I am effected by the NCAA in a primary way because I am an athlete. I am also affected in a secondary way because I watch different sporting events on t.v. or read about them.
Sage describes the NCAA as a cartel because the organization makes tremendous amounts of revenue and does not have to pay the workers, which in this case are the athletes. Major athletic events generate huge sums of money for the competing teams. According to Sage, these amounts include: $30 million for bowl games, and $1.37 million for the Final Four tournament. Also, the NCAA has annual profits of over nine million dollars and an annual budget of approximately 89 million. Sage states, “the big-time collegiate sports industry organizes athletics not, as one might expect, to meet the students’ personal and social needs for physical recreation, but strictly on market principles (the pursuit of capital accumulation)” (168). He also refers to the division 1 level as “all about capital accumulation and the bottom line.”
ReplyDeleteFor tax reasons, the NCAA and colleges must hide their profits. The extra revenue must be for benefiting the organization. Unfortunately, this extra revenue may go to treating special guests to important games, rather than benefiting the school the athletes play for. A perfect example is the situation at Texas. The coach’s salary is being raised while the rest of the University is facing budget cuts. The extra revenue continues to benefit the NCAA rather than the school itself.
The first collegiate sporting event was in 1852, with a simple boat race at Harvard. The first athletic competitions were founded purely on student initiative. The first of the intercollegiate programs were formed and managed by students, who organized athletic associations. Sage explains the association’s mission was to sponsor competition, outline rules, and determine eligibility criteria. Eventually the student’s association was taken over by faculty members. In 1910, the NCAA was formed and athletes no longer had any control. The association originally created by students was no longer under their control.
The NCAA gets away with making so much money and not paying athletes through the ideology of amateurism. With this belief, athletes are playing for the pride and glory. However, this pride and glory brings in millions of dollars to colleges and the NCAA. In fact, many universities have athletic budgets of over 12 million dollars. This organization claims that a free college education is a fair payment. College athletics are not commercial entertainment, and athletes must be “untainted by money.”
I am a primary, secondary, and tertiary consumer of the NCAA. I purchase tickets to many NCAA sporting events and I purchase NCAA apparel. I watch many sporting events TV and I read about them almost daily.
According to Sage, the NCAA behaves as a cartel through holding down wages (via amateur ideals) of athletes to increase its benefits, and by restricting intercollegiate competition for players by not allowing players who switch colleges to compete in athletics for a year.
ReplyDeleteThe power has shifted over the history of intercollegiate sport, which started with student governance and power in 1852. In the late 1870s student control began gradually declining until diminishing all together in 1905, when the Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States was formed. The Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States was then renamed the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in 1910. Since then, the power and governance of the NCAA has been sustained with little opposition due to amateurism ideology. Amateurism, the idea that sport is played for personal, social, and emotional gratification rather than profit, has allowed the NCAA and corresponding universities to achieve large profits by limiting the payouts to student athletes to academic scholarships. As collegiate athletics are nonprofit organizations, "excess revenues earned must be spent to further the purpose of the organization" (Sage, 227), thus this excess revenue can be spent on higher staff salaries, resulting in situations like the one in Texas Zarin described.
I am normally a secondary or tertiary consumer of collegiate sports; however, I was a primary consumer last week due to the requirements of our Event Comparison Paper.
The NCAA is seen as a cartel because it makes all the money that is brought in by the players (workers), who do not get compensated because of their amateur status. Previously, the players had more power and then the roles changed because the administators and faculty "thought that the job was becoming too large for the students to handle (pg. 230)." The NCAA was then created for "institutional control and order (pg. 231)." From here on the NCAA governed over its players.
ReplyDeleteThe NCAA taking over and turning sport into "a big business," created the situation that is happening at Texas. The football program brings in a lot of revenue, which is then used for an increase in the coaches salary, for recruiting, and other things that will benefit their program. None of the money can go to the players because of the NCAA rule that says that the players cannot be compensated for their athletic ability, beyond their scholarship. This idea of Amateurism is how hegemony is kept in the intercollegiate athletics. They are supposed to be playing for the love of the game, which in reality, they are there to make money. "It's a business here. We're here to make money for the the University. When we're not useful for the coaches they don't pay as much attention to us," stated an athlete (pg. 236).
I am a primary producer because I am athlete here at the University. I am also a primary consumer because I attend many other sporting events. Since I watch games on TV and read about them on the newspaper I would be classified as a secondary and terterary consumer as well.
He talks about how the NCAA now has all the power, but all the power used to be in the hands of the students. The student used to make all the choices of how to raise money and spent it. Now all that power is in the hands of the NCAA. When player come to University they sign all theses paper saying all kinds of stuff. I know there is a paper you sign saying the NCAA can use your name and picture in marketing and advertising. In a since they are making money off of you as a cartel would.
ReplyDeleteThe power is no longer in the hands of the student. College sports have gotten so big and so much money is involved that the NCAA has taken over. The NCAA is no running it as a big commercial business.
All this money is being made from sports and to make it seem like thses big athletic programs are not making any huge profits they increase the pay of the coaches. They also do other things like buy equipment and better facilities to lower the “revenue.”
It makes the games seem fair. If no school can pay it athletes then it’s like you can’t out bit another school for an athlete. As the book says “…their participation should be motivated primarily by education and by the physical, mental, and social benefits to be derived…” Its give the rest of the nation a since that all this sport is uncorrupt, and money has nothing to do with it. Unlike professional players who will switch teams for better pay.
I am a primary producer because I run track here at the university. And I am a Secondary and tertiary consumer because I watch live games on TV and I also catch the high lights on sports center after they have been played live.
Sage describes a cartel as an “organization of independent firms that has as its aim some form of restrictive or monopolistic influence on the production or sale of a commodity as well as the control of wages” (Sage 142), which is college sports in this case. As a cartel the NCAA has the right to set prices and “wages” associated with collegiate sports. Sage also refers to a cartel as providing wealth and power for a select number while at the expense of many others. Finally Sage states that cartels make “individuals act in a way which is good for the whole” (142). The NCAA clearly coincides with these criteria that Sage uses to describe a cartel. The NCAA “pays” athletes via scholarships, which are minimal to the millions of dollars they provide through their athletic abilities. “Intercollegiate athletes make the labor of many into the wealth of a few” (Sage 180). Athletes must act in appropriate standards set forth by the NCAA. Any violation of these standards can result in suspension or termination from college sports. Collegiate sports in America have changed dramatically since they first started over 100 years ago. College “sports were founded on student initiative, unassisted and unsupported by faculty, administration or alumni” (Sage 170). Americans initially followed the lead of how the British ran their collegiate sports: students only (Sage 142). The students in Britain played the roles of athletes, coaches, and field maintenance and fund raisers. There was no adult intervenetion. College sports ran this way in America until a rowing meet between Harvard and Yale in 1855 (Sage 171) required a governance body, which was run by students, in order to set forth some rules. But even with this student body dictating some rules, college sports were still fairly unorganized in America. Within a couple decades the idea of having few rules would no longer be the practice. Alumni, administration and faculty got involved for reasons ranging from money to claiming the students needed help in order for them to focus on school (171). There was a realization that collegiate sports could generate revenue and that was all it took for the schools to get involved and start making the decisions that students once made.
ReplyDeleteAs a coach from a state known primarily for its football, Mack Brown is a celebrity. Recently he took the University of Texas to a bowl game that will inevitably bring millions of dollars to the University of Texas. For his success some high ranking officials at Texas have decided to increase his pay to five million dollars per year (Dave Zirin). If college sports would have never incorporated non-students in their system this would not be an issue. But since coaches are non-students and certain officials at Texas believe paying Mach more money the school will have a higher revenue, this has become a debatable issue.
When I came to the University of Iowa, I quickly learned that athletics are a big business. Sages goes much more in depth in his assessment of the NCAA as a huge, money sucking cartel. He introduces this idea by saying that it “is about economic exploitation, dominance, power, and control by one segment of the college sport industry” (Sage, 228). This one segment is made up of the NCAA and the colleges that make it up. Together, they work to control the huge amount of money generated by the athletic events, at the expense of the consumers, who must pay to view the events, and the athletes, who provide the entertainment (and therefore the money), yet they are essentially unpaid. The NCAA has set up rules to prevent athletes from easily moving from school to school as better and better offers come their way. This helps keep the cost to schools down, as they do not have to constantly be competing to get or keep every athlete.
ReplyDeletePower and control in collegiate sports has entirely hugely changed to get it to where it is now. When the first intercollegiate college sports governing groups started in the late 1800s, and were all made up of students. All aspects of the competition—the organization, hiring of officials, hashing out of rules, was originally controlled by the students within the competing schools. However, in 1905 the Intercollegiate Athletic Association (forerunner to the NCAA) was started, and from then on, control was concentrated into fewer and fewer hands. This led to those people being in more complete power and controlling the money, which can lead to the situation in Texas.
The basic idea of amateurism is that the athletes do a ton of work, yet are not paid in the normal sense of the word. Athletes “cannot sell their skills on the open market to the highest bidder because of the rules against wage payments that all universities must observe” (Sage, 240). Student athletes may have their schooling paid for, but when the amount of work put in by the athletes is figured with the amount their school costs, the amount they would be making is well below the poverty line (Sage, 240). These circumstances also can lead to the situation in Texas that Zirin blogged about last month. Because the money generated by the athletes is not going back to them, it easily can go to the coaches, directors, and other high ups in the industry. They additionally are allowed to be in commercials, be part of brand endorsements, and be on things like talk shows which give them more money and more freedom. By putting the athletes at such a disadvantage in comparison and making them dependent on these people, the hegemony is maintained.
I am connected to the NCAA in several ways. I am a primary producer, as I am an athlete. Additionally I am a primary, secondary, and tertiary consumer of the NCAA. I go to live events (primary), I watch them on TV (secondary), and I hear about results in conversation (tertiary).
The NCAA acts as a cartel in the fact that it is no longer has an educational premise. While they have the commercials saying that "over 90% or something like that will turn pro in something other than sports" the fact of the matter is is that education is sitting in the backseat to athletics taking hold of the proverbial steering wheel. College sports has become a business and the NCAA exercises its power by allowing the pay of coaches to increase because it allows fame and recognition to their school. If a school does well in sports the recognition spreads nationally and officials at universities see this as good ways to get students to go to their schools. The problem with college athletics becoming a business is that it forces tuition prices to go up even though education and athletics are pretty much unrelated.
ReplyDeleteHegemony from amateurism is simply that since these are "kids" playing sports at a collegiate level and are not getting paid, the NCAA has the decisions to make. Scholarships are a basic way for athletes to get through school and depending on the sport, if a student can get drafted and have a full ride due to their athletic exploits than they have pretty much gone to school as a gateway to their professional career.
I would consider myself as a primary consumer in the fact that tuition costs affect me as a member of a university and secondary because of the amount of sports successes and downfalls I see from the University of Iowa on a daily basis.
When someone looks at the NCAA from different perspective, it's very easy to consider it a cartel. The NCAA is made up of hundreds of schools with a wide variety of athletic teams. The NCAA has turned these sporting events into money making machines, however. When you look at all of the NCAA events, such as the NCAA basketball tournament, or the NCAA Track and Field Meet, there is so much money to be made off of these events. But the "working class" of the NCAA, can not be paid for their performance in sporting games. Their "payment" is in the form of athletic scholorships, but it is the NCAA who has made the rule saying you can not only not recieve compensation, but there are an astounding number of rules that prevent student athletes from recieveing a number of services. Since the primary workers of the NCAA don't have to be paid, this leaves a lot more revenue for the NCAA.
ReplyDeleteOn the subject of scholarships, it is interesting to note that the sport that gets the most scholarships are football, easily the most revenue generating sport in the NCAA. Obviously this is in part due to the fact that football tends to produce the largest rosters in the NCAA. But the sport with arguably the second largest, track and field, only gets 12 scholorships on the mens side, to be split up among the team. Track, although a sport that has its own degree of popularity, doesn't generate near the income of football, therefore its "working class" will not be paid as much so to speak.
The NCAA can be considered a cartel because of the fact that it truely is a group of firms that organize to control production,sales, and wages (Sage 196). The fact we already know that proves it is that the NCAA is a big commercial business. One other way it may be considered a cartel is because the NCAA increases benefits for the powerful few at the expense of many. Power in the NCAA has changed drastically from student power and games to big-time sport. Big-time sport saying it is commercialized. When it became commercialized it transferred into a business, a business wanting money. As in Texas's case. Texas is having to cut wages and programs but they still wanted to increase coach Brown's compensation by $2 million. Amatuerism as an ideology maintains hegemony by commerciallizing the NCAA. By commercializing the NCAA it puts power in the hands of few. Social organizations are stratified on the basis of power, they have the powerful holding unequal shares of benefits. I am connected to the NCAA as a primary and secondary consumer. I attend some live sports events, but mostly just watch them on tv.
ReplyDeleteBlog #3 Allison Szott
ReplyDeleteSage is descriptive when associating the NCAA as a cartel. He clearly emphasizes that Intercollegiate Sporting events benefit the universities greatly because they create large revenues and overall “capital accumulation” (Sage 227). This money does not go to paying the players who ultimately draw the focus to the events, instead since college sports have a “non-profit status” any excess revenues “must be spent to further the purpose of the organization” (Sage 227) in order to remain tax exempt. There is no struggle to find a reason to spend this excess money. Sage states that “athletic departments […] spend the money on higher staff salaries, new staff positions, faculties, equipment, recruiting” (Sage 227) and more. Other evidence that proves that intercollegiate sporting events draw in excess amounts of money include, “Many major universities have athletic budgets exceeding $25 million” or that “NCAA-sanctioned football bowl games generate more than $55 million each year to participating institutions” (Sage 226).
Power has changed and shifted over time when regarding sport because it used to be student run organizations. Sage stated that “neither the faculties nor other critics assisted in building the structure of college athletics” (229) and with this the sports themselves provided love and devotion from its players because there were no other reasons to take part in the event other than self enjoyment. As time passed student control was eliminated and “university administrations, faculties, and alumni sought greater participation in the management of college athletics” (Sage 230). Today there are different divisions of college sport, Division I, II, or III. Division I focus’ on the sport being an entertainment to viewers and schools earning a profit from their teams competing.
The situation at the University of Texas is a clear representation of how these non-profit organizations chose to spend their excess money. Texas in specific chose to compensate their head coach as an incentive for him to continue to coach a well -structured and successful team to ultimately give rise to a greater amount of revenue the following year. Also, Texas may have chose to give such a large sum of money to their head coach because if they did not, the coach could be persuaded into coaching for another team where he would be given such a large compensation. Intercollegiate Athletics at this level are competitive in how they can in the end earn such a considerable excess sum of money.
By only offering amateur athletes a scholarship as a means of compensation for competing for their university, the NCAA organization as a whole remains in tact because otherwise the athletes would earn a large deal of the profits and take away from the yearly revenue. “The colligate sport industry does this through an ingenious deployment of ideological hegemony codified in the NCAA Manual” (Sage 233). Here it states that the athletes should be “motivated primarily by education and by the physical, mental, and social benefits” Sage 233).
I am personally connected to the NCAA by occasionally being a primary consumer and attending these sporting events (mostly IOWA). However, most of the time I am a secondary consumer when I watch the events on T.V.
Sage's definition of a cartes as "something of a organization of independent firms that has some form of restrictive or monopolistic influence on production…” (Sage 142). The NCAA is exactly this on collegiate athletes. The NCAA is this to athelets because the athelets make all the revenue in collegiate sports but the only version of pay athelets see is through scholarship. The amount of revenue generated through college sports is extremely high, but since college athletes are not allowed to obtain any sort of revenue, a rule set in regulation by the NCAA, any athlete that aquires revenue through thier sport they become ineligable to participate in thier sport. So all the money that comes in through these sports is then spent of furthering the program or the atheltic's department as a whole at a specific school. Things like staff saleries are increased this way, just like a the University of Texas. The coach obtained a 2 million dollar bonus to salery while other departments were getting cut. However, the coach, was largly responsible for all the football money that came in for texas this year, which was a lot because of their 2nd place finish. The required amateur status is set in place because if athletes in college could see a portion of the money spent on college athletics, first of all they would be making more then a full scholarship if they were good, and second, it would take money away from the NCAA, hense why sage labels them a cartel. They want to control and obtain that money.
ReplyDeleteI am directly connected to the rules of the NCAA because i am a collegiate athlete so i must abide to all the rules set in place. Although i am in a sport that generates basiclly no revenue ever, i am definetly not fond of all the rules set in place by the NCAA such as GPA standards, and things like transfer rules. I never really thought of the organization of the NCAA as a "cartel" like this but after reading about what Sage had to say, it definetly seems like the NCAA are a bunch of money greedy pigs, but they are the smartest "cartel" i have ever heard of. The amount of rules and restrictions set in place by the NCAA is absolutely insane. They are able to control everyone in the world of college sports and then sit back and take whatever they need.
Sages labels the NCAA as a cartel because of the way they came in and completely shirted power. At first the Student-Athletes were in charge getting competitions and activities up and going, however as we read, people did not believe that they were doing a good job in doing so. So the NCAA came in and took over. Sage has some extremely compelling information that helps support his ideas of the NCAA being a cartel. For instance the NCAA will not shirt over to a playoff system for college football. Even though the system in place now is being criticized and bad mouthed because every year there are teams that deserve a shot at the title and don’t get it, reasons being that these bowl games that the NCAA puts together bring in an enormous amount of money to the NCAA and the schools. Sage talks about doing it for the love of the game, however it certainly does not seem like the NCAA is in it for the love of the game or they would make a playoff system.
ReplyDeleteThe NCAA keeps all the power in college because of the rules they put into effect. Every athlete is considered an amateur, thus making it impossible to receive any kind of benefits from anyone, other than a scholarship. I believe some people make the mistake in thinking athletes who have full scholarships are spoiled. These athletes work for what they have. Some people don’t actually know how much time they are putting into their sport and on top of academics. The NCAA has student athletes by the throat with all the rules and regulations that they have.
As for the situation at Texas with Mac Brown....Personally i don’t believe there is a situation. Mac Brown is an extremely well respected man in a football state. He's one of the most successful football coaches in the nation and he deserves what he gets. The amount of money that, that program brings into the school I would believe is enormous.