Amid the celebration of the Connecticut University victory in the NCAA basketball tournament the team’s star player, Shabazz Napier, used the moment to broadcast a message: “I want to get everybody’s attention right quick. Ladies and gentlemen, you’re looking at the hungry Huskies…. This is what happens when you banned us.” Napier was referring to the one-year postseason penalty the National Collegiate Athletic Association issued in 2012 for the team’s failure to meet minimum academic requirements, requirements as minimum as infrequent attendance in “Mickey Mouse” courses.
However, the comment brings to the surface questions about academic priorities in big-time college sports where the expression “student athlete” is an oxymoron. Connecticut’s opponent in the NCAA finals, the University of Kentucky, started five freshmen, who it is rumored couldn’t find a classroom with a map. Coach Calipari’s basketball program personifies the “one and done” players who are there for one year and then seek professional status.
It is instructive that Calipari earns millions each year, certainly more than the president of the University of Kentucky. For him, winning is all that counts; the players are there for a one year NBA tryout and to yield wins for the team. By any reasonable assessment this practice, countenanced by the NCAA, is hypocritical.
For years, the NCAA argued that its athletes are students first and it has resisted altering its amateur model. But that model, underscored by conditions at Connecticut and Kentucky, seems wildly incompatible with actual conditions. The NCAA may tout academic requirements, yet during the basketball tournament at least two weeks of possible instruction was missed by the players. Colleges have been dismissing this situation for years pretending that no one would notice. In the age of social media that is no longer possible.
The real tragedy, as I see it, involves these college stars who do not make the pros. While there is a lot of talk about “being prepared for the next phase of life” many of these athletes aren’t prepared to do anything. The oft proclaimed “amateur” status of big time college basketball players is a sham.
What has driven the word amateur from the equation is television entertainment and the money associated with it. The dollars gravitating to universities on the big time list are staggering, including, of course, the multi-million dollar salaries paid to coaches. A once cherished notion of a serious student who loves playing sports as an integral part of education is gone. Sports are supposed to support education, not the reverse.
There are many educators, and I am among them, who believe it is time “to untie the knot” that binds sports to higher education. William Bowen, former president of Princeton, contends that “the system creates an incentive structure that captures even fine people.” Either that system will change on its own or it will change because of external pressure such as the unionization of college athletes. But change is just over the horizon as the widespread criticism of hypocrisy in college sports would suggest.
Americans love their sports as the ratings for March Madness indicate. There is something else most people admire and that is the integrity of a college experience. When that is corrupted by greed, the reputation of higher education suffers.
Watching great athletes at play is entertaining. Yet the tie between these gifted sports figures and education is increasingly elusive. As I see it, the time has come to excoriate big time college basketball and football by setting the record straight and either professionalizing the college games or down-grading their importance.
Herbert London is President of the London Center for Policy Research, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and author of the book The Transformational Decade (University Press of America). You can read all of Herb London’s commentaries at www.londoncenter.org
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.