Commercialism and professionalism are as old as college football itself. Commercialism entered the game in the 1880s during a Thanksgiving Day championship in New York.

By 1920, 50,000-seat college stadiums were part of America’s landscape, coaches were hired, and young, talented boys not interested in a college education were recruited to promote the college brand.

Football has Reflected the Spirit of America

American football was a distinctive sport only played in the United States; it evolved away from rugby. Football was a spectator sport with extra benefits for the fans:

• pageantry,

• cheerleaders,

• pep rallies,

• bonfires,

• tailgating,

• marching bands, and

• Homecoming weekend.

Football played an essential role in developing the American educational system acting as a bond for the students and the local community. American football created a very unique social and cultural experience. The games were like a Folk Festival providing a sense of community with meaningful rituals and adding sheer pleasure for millions of Americans each weekend.

The racial revolution in college football took place on two major fronts in the South through the school bus school breakdown of segregation and in the North through a series of rebellions by black athletes. Whether the 1960s opened, not one football team when the Atlantic Coast, Southeastern, or Southwest conference was integrated. Desegregation in college football crept from the border states southward over the decade, first in the Atlantic Coast Conference, beginning with Maryland in 1963, next in the southwest conference beginning with Southern Methodist and Baylor in 1966, and finally in the Southeast Conference beginning with Kentucky in 1967 and ending with Georgia, Louisiana State, and Mississippi in 1972.

But First, Football had to overcome many obstacles to reach THE national status as most popular sport in America.

1905

In the early 1900s, numerous articles by college presidents in national magazines like Harpers and the Saturday Evening Post brought public attention to injuries and abuses in college football games. College football was a brutal sport that, according to legend, left famous heavyweight boxing champion John Sullivan to explain that there was murder in that game.

On October 9th, 1905, President Roosevelt said that either ball reform or evolution was necessary. From this threat, in 1910, the NCAA was formed. But like all other reports, there was an initial rush of publicity, and then the matter was dropped. The first constraint was that the reform organization dealt almost exclusively with contact and rules on the playing field, with little attention to player eligibility.

Starting in 1906, the NCAA’s official position stated that compensating young men for mere athletic prowess would violate the fundamental academic mission of educational institutions and amount to professionalism. Football players were paid for campus work or by generous alumni and boosters for jobs that were phony.

 The powerful image of college sports athletic departments by the 1920s is best described in terms of a medieval metaphor. Duke’s and Barons ran their athletic territories loosely controlled by university boards and presidents.

And during this era, the university president was not even the king in his campus castle. When presidents resisted external examination of campus athletic programs, it usually was for one of two reasons. Either the university president was afraid of big-time college sports power or, at the other extreme, he was embarrassed to reveal his lack of control over the campus sports enterprise.

The university presidents chose a strategy of avoidance and accommodation when queried about the violence, educational improprieties, recruiting issues, and academic responsibility of student-athletes.

1926 Bulletin #23- a manifesto against commercialism

The reform ritual for bulletin #23 was predictable. It is impossible to restore the past. What occurred in the late 1800s in football was not considered illegal. Rather the college game was unregulated because there were no rules to break. The unresolved problem was that varsity athletic departments were affixed to the institution but not integrated into the curriculum. 

1926 and bulletin #23

#Number 23 was not the first sign of national concern about problems of intercollegiate sports. Numerous gridiron heroes` enrolled in classes to play football and dropped out of school once the season was over.

It was thought that these athletes could not be ignored or quarantined but were the reason the entire intellectual atmosphere of the American campus was collapsing.

The Carnegie Foundation wanted to fix this problem and conducted a study of national scope on January 8th, 1926, when its executive committee accepted the NCAA’s invitation to investigate intercollegiate athletics and its relation to modern education. The primary investigator was Howard Savage.

This report became the cannon that set the standard for reform proposals and policy analysis about the place of intercollegiate sports in American colleges and universities. #23 exposed the sins of alleged commercialism and professionalism at dozens of institutions.

“Savage’s coauthor’s devoted chapters to the administrative control of college athletics, the place of the professional coach, recruiting, subsidizing athletes, the position of the press, the values in college athletics, and the growth of professionalism in college athletics. “

Savage, in 1929, called for the restoration of student control of athletics. Savage argued that the abuses of the period 1905 to 1929 represented an erosion of a once admirable intercollegiate athletic arrangement. It had fallen into dispute because of institutional commercialism and cheating.

The report’s authors and the president of the Carnegie Foundation agreed that the heart of the problem facing college sports was commercialization, an interlocking network that included expanded press coverage, public interest alumina involvement, and recruiting abuses. Football players who left school after the season cost Bona fide students a chance to make the football team. #23 stated that commercialism in college athletics must be diminished, and college sports should be returned to full-time students with the goal of offering youth the ability to exercise their body and mind to foster habits to lead to good health and a wholesome character.

The report said that athletes are far from the most important features of college days. What remains confusing is precisely how critics of commercialized college football were expected to correct this situation. How were college education and athletics to coexist?

In fact, this report did not offer an acceptable resolution The only accomplishment of this report was to amuse the American public and the media. In other words, the report turned out to be unsatisfactory to the very public that clamored for change. The report chastised the media for fostering the commercial existence of college sports.

Instead of blaming the players, many in the media laid the blame for the commerciality of college sports on the professional coaches, whose major concern is not the institution and the educational process but their salary, prestige, and professional standing.

College administrators should have but did not take much of the blame for establishing a publicity Bureau designed to keep the College in the news. The result was that the commercial and profit interest of the press, the college, and the community intersected. The report showed little concern for athletic scholarships as a means of offering educational opportunities to working-class families.

The report concluded that commercialism is a negligent attitude toward the educational opportunity for which college exists.

Indeed to many #23 was laughable and impossible to administer. Clean and sportsmanlike games, chivalry, and magnanimous competition were impossible to regulate through mere administrative provisions.

The contradiction and lack of interest played out in various ways. Many institutions also believed that skilled athletes deserved a college education, stating that in and of itself, playing sports was an educational process that could help those with no financial means to attend college.

#23 changes were not possible because the report assumed that university presidents would take responsibility and purge abuses and transfer or restore programs to undergraduates. Instead, the report was tagged as naive and unenforceable, and many of the University Presidents chose to support the Athletic departments and ignore the reform ritual and deny there was a problem:

• Brown dismissed the report. The chair of the athlete council said the report was partly false and misleading.

• The Big 10 commissioners and faculty felt Howard Savage had been more a prosecutor than an investigator looking at the conference members’ athletic programs. The day the report was released, the University of Michigan faculty representative told the New York Times that the investigator had unauthorized possession of university documents.

• The graduate sports manager at Washington and Jefferson College in Pennsylvania said there’s no truth in the report.

• Stanford and Syracuse denied giving exclusive financial aid to Athletes.

• Student editors and coaches at Yale felt the report was unreasonable in its criticism of recruitment at Princeton and Harvard.

• Student editors at Columbia applauded the general motivation for the Carnegie report but thought it was unfair in its depiction of practices at their institution.

If nothing else, the #23 report exposed college sports resistance to systematic investigation and triggered repudiations and denials by college and university presidents. Over 3/4 of the colleges studied were found to have violated codes and principles of amateurism, suggesting that the commercialization of college boards had gained its acquiescence if not legitimacy.

Financial, regional, and public aspects of universities had built a “booster” foundation mentality making college sports a cooperative enterprise involving presidents, trustees, faculties alums, businesses, townspeople, radio, and the press. Civic pride and winning built some great universities through the 1940s. College sports were no longer part of the educational process for undergraduates. Intercollegiate athletics was accepted as part of college life’s pageantry.

The book “Games Colleges Play” by John Thelin states Sports served the participating campuses well, providing winning teams with identity and leverage unsurpassed by education-only-based campuses.

The Coach became the college spokesman, celebrity, and cultural hero portrayed as an educator and character builder for young men. Winning coaches embodied the greatness of American values, and it was believed that their winning methods could translate to American industry.

Many coaches drifted from the company of professors, and many professor were unhappy with the celebrity status of a coach and the lack of their recognition as a professor. Many believed that so much national attention was unwarranted. The dilemma was that winning was the only paramenter needed to define greatness. Victory, without values was easier than great coaching values but losing coaches.

WINNING, Cult of Personality football Coaches, boosterism, news media, acquiescent university leadership led to the success of football as a mass entertainment sport.

In the 1930s, alums financial support of athletes was considered more ethical than institutional support. What justified subsidization from any source was the assumption that participation in athletics did not interfere with the young man’s primary purpose in getting a college education. Many claimed playing football was educational, developing leadership skills and building character that supplemented classroom academic training. Football did have a socially redeeming value working class and ethnic outsiders with opportunities for a college education and to enter middle-class careers afterward.

The winning formula of Head Coaches Pop Warner, Amos Alonzo Stagg, Knute Rockne, and many others in the 1920s and 1930s resulted in money, publicity, alum, fans, enthusiasm, and the media creating gods out of football coaches.

Red Grange is a good example of the head coach’s power to consolidate intercollegiate sports into highly commercialized mass entertainment. Grange was a three-time consensus All-American for the Illinois Fighting Illini leading his team to a national championship in 1923. Grange was the first Chicago Tribune Silver Football Award recipient as the most valuable player in the Big 10. He is considered the best college football player of all time and the greatest Big Ten Icon by the Big Ten Network.

Red’s popularity as a player and coach was due to the product of newspapers and radio produced, not accolades from teammates or classmates. The media projected college football personalities as legendary images.

Sportswriter Grantland Rice named Red the galloping ghost and glorified his hard-working ethic. While weak defenses led to many of Red’s wins, the media chose to exploit Red Grange’s football success instead. The media poets in the press boxes praised his football genius. Red was one of the first to convert being a college football hero to a national cultural hero celebrated beyond the campus.

Red Grange’s success consolidated intercollegiate sports into a highly commercialized activity characterized by publicity and promotion. Red was the consummate promoter and brand builder for not only the University of Illinois but for college football in general, and by his side was a media that enhanced his brand, writing about him as if he was supernatural.

Carnegie Foundations #23

Not all Americans were happy that great athletes were more famous than outstanding scientists. In many cases, the universities primary goal to educate took a back seat to football. What could be better than alums bonded to the university by the love of football and an undergraduate base that agree that football is their defacto social center? This is probably why when many wanted to discuss the educational responsibility of their university, the presidents had a strategy of avoidance or, if backed into a corner, answered with an array of words that did not answer the question.

 

Not all Americans were happy that great athletes were more famous than the greatest scientists. In many cases, education in the 1920s and 1930s took a back seat to football. The alumni loved the sport, and for the undergraduates, it was the primary social center.

In 1929 a report by Howard Savage was prepared for the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. It was better known as “#23”, and the document received widespread public attention. It was a reform policy change that raised a red flag that intercollegiate sports had usurped the educational process of many universities. # 23 was not the first sign of national concern about problems of intercollegiate sports. In the early 1900s, numerous articles by college presidents in such national magazines as Harpers and the Saturday Evening Post brought public attention to injuries and abuses taking place in college football games. College football was a brutal sport that, according to legend, led famous heavyweight boxing champion John Sullivan to explain “there was murder in that game.”

But like all other reports, there was an initial rush of publicity and then the matter was dropped. Football was too important to many to eliminate it as a spectator sport from e subject matter waned. The first constraint was that the reform organization dealt almost exclusively with contact and rules on the playing field with little attention to player eligibility.

 

This article is a work in process- not completed!

The Road to Entitlement and Corruption

Mark Twain said all right to break laws so long as you have customs. In other words, the tradition of accommodating intercollegiate sports may be an exception to the rules, but it is alright because the university usually benefits from the custom.

American culture, including sports, is no longer shocked by abuses, player misbehavior, lies, and recruiting violations. The fans now good naturally accept abuses as part of the system. Fans want to watch sports, not police it. Fans don’t care about the educational component of playing college sports.

The fans love the NIL pay-for-play scheme because money has always led college sports to break the rules to win, so pay the athletes and be done with it!!!

The future road to college sports begins with the NIL, not the NCAA

Race and economics have been two significant drivers of college football since the early 1900s; race and economics have driven substantial changes in college football. In the early years, revenue was primarily restricted to gate receipts. Radio broadcasting rights began paying small dividends in the 1930s. The other significant change to football occurred in the 1960s when racial unrest and protest for equal rights took center stage in college sports.

Football has functioned as a public theater since it was first discovered by the mass circulation of newspapers in New York in the 1880s.

The national popularity of football made reforming it a fool’s task. For over a century, calls for reform have been present but only as background noise.

Sometimes the noise reaches a crescendo that irritates those in charge and makes the broader football public uneasy.

There are only two times that college reform in sports almost survived.

• The 1929 Carnegie Foundations report

• The the “Sanity Code” after the Second World War

Both ended up being hiccups in college football history.

In reality, not much has changed over the years. Micahel Oriard says in his book “Bowled Over, “it’s only a slight exaggeration to say that John R Tunis’s “the great God Football” from 1928 or Reed Harris’s “King Football” from 1932 could have been periodically recycled to make the case against big-time football over the years.”

“The entire history of big-time intercollegiate football has been a tortuous working out of the sport’s fundamental contradictions of being both a commercial spectacle and an extracurricular activity.”

 

 

The outcome of #23 was predictable

Reform 1930 through 1946 

Bullentin # 23 resolved nothing; in fact, there was no consensus about the role of intercollegiate athletics policies in higher education institutions.

At first, many College administrators agreed that college was not intended to be a great Athletic Association and social club. The prevailing thought was that College was an association of scholars in which provision is made for the development of traits and powers which must be cultivated in addition to those which are purely intellectual if one is to become a well-balanced and useful member of any community.  

In 1931 a group of large Southern Universities declared that they were going to ban recruiting a united declaration for unquestioned amateurism in sports. In 1933 the large loose southern conference created a new Southeastern Conference whose intent was to provide a workable alliance with tighter controls and higher academic standards. The Big 10, Pacific Coast, and Southern conference followed suit. However, influential historical institutions such as Harvard and Yale refused to cooperate during the period from 1930 to 1946. The large historic East Coast university, bogged down by quarrels and jealousy, refused to follow the SEC rules of college sports competition.

The new rules of the SEC opened up what looked like a military arms race characterized by stockpiling of talent and facilities. All members of the conference were forced to emulate the practices of their opponents.

So the conference intended as a mechanism for reform ended up not merely allowing but promoting the kinds of practices that reformers once thought it could prohibit. Recruiting constraints were unenforceable. The southeast conference between 1935 and 1945 reversed the reforms of the early 1930s.

Whereas in 1931, a group of Southern University pledged unconditional amateurism, a decade late,r they had stepped away from such claims. In 1938 the Southeastern Conference voted to allow athletic scholarships.

The conference approved measures moving away from the earlier reforms. In 1940 the Southeastern Conference voted to allow unrestricted recruiting of athletes, justifying this decision by saying, “We think this is a free country. A coach should be allowed to get his talent wherever he can but must abide by conference rules against improper inducements.” The code no longer prohibited inducements but now outlawed improper inducements. In 1944 converses paid attention to practice the big six conference allowed and followed the Southeastern Conference example by lifting its ban on paying prospective student-athletes. 

Reversing the reforms from 1933 to 1946, the major conferences dampened the expectations about reforms intended to move college sports towards amateurism. And in some cases, reforms initiated within the conferences were reduced, derailed, or reversed. The conferences use their power to reinstate as well as suspend institutional members. For example, the big ten allowed the University of Iowa to return in good standing.

In 1933 Big Ten representatives debated within their own ranks whether the conference would allow each university to establish dining hall training tables for varsity athletes, a practice prohibited by the conference because it was considered to be a form of payment to players. By 1938 training tables were acceptable amateurism, and acceptable practices had no fixed standards and were entirely relatively subject to the vote of conference members. Conferences legitimized training tables, and it would become the norm for college athletes.

The changing character of colleges and demographics were the reasons. Universities of the Mid-west, West, and South had come of age and were making inroads against the sports and educational power of the Northeast. America was the world’s first experiment in mass higher education.

Booster colleges in small towns formed from land grants were formed and the towns flourished. Civic pride and noble aspiration built many colleges in towns like Athens, Oxford, and Austin. Boosterism also opens the universities to political intrusions with Governors, state legislators, and mayors supporting state-run universities. It was in the 1930s that universities grasped the importance of college football as an institutional brand builder and a magnet to increase wealth and students. Politicians were quick to understand that education and athletics were perfect partners in building universities with national recognition. Athletes became the necessary architects to build a great university. The public relations tool that kept on giving. Sports became the driver to build universities for higher education. In most cases, sports triggered increased funding for the entire campus and a bonanza for publicity. Sports offered universities visibility that few, if any, of its academic programs could.

1948-1951

In 1948, the NCAA wrote the “Principles of the Conduct of Intercollegiate Athletics. The document defined amateurism, the need for institutional controls, the responsibilities of college leadership, required academic standards, authorized financial aid, and athletic recruitment protocols. The NCAA became the enforcer of the principles of amateurism with the power to suspend or expel violating institutions. Most universities agreed with the principles of amateurism but rebelled at transferring control of their institution and conference rules to the NCAA. Some worried that the NCAA would become a cartel, so lawsuits followed, eventually leading to retreats and the gutting of the NCAA “Principles” document in 1951. History proves that neutering the NCAA was a mistake, and corruption in college athletics followed. In 1951, organized crime and seven basketball teams were accused of point shaving.

1951 – Organized Crime and Sports (particularly basketball) RESULT in more rules that would not be followed.

1951

Collegiate basketball hit a new low with the FBI involved and criminal lawsuits filed. Colleges lost control of their ability to control athletics. The scenario tainted the image of all college sports. Colleges had overrated the “wholeness” of their sports program, and change was demanded. However, the new rules were too strict and eventually ignored as money and branding drove Collegiate institutions, not academics.

Gamblers had no problem enlisting players as long as the motive was not to lose. Players were okay with ensuring the game was within a point of the spread.

Enter the American Council of Education’s Presidential Committee.

The ACE’s job was to add ethics back into college sports.

While there were leaders of colleges that disagreed, the outcome of the research was startling, saying:

“We must recognize that colleges are in the entertainment business. The only question is, how far shall we go?

The contingent that ultimately lost the fight to change college sports wanted:

1) A return to intramural sports as the source for college athletes instead of recruits.

2) A reduction in Bowl appearances, spring training, and recruiting.

Many institutions rejected these proposals and agreed with the SMU President, “I do not believe that corruption is that widespread, nor do I agree with the (ACE’s) remedies.”

The ACE failed to understand that it was nearly impossible to regulate college sports nationally when regionalism dictated decisions after WWII. The OU president confirmed regionalism, saying:

“A winning team had done a great deal for the state of Oklahoma.” “ I hope to build a university of which our football team can be proud.”

Presidents of universities were leaning toward using athletes as the vanguard for building a great University.” Universities chose to pursue athletics as a business and not totally as an academic goal. Funds for sports were separated from the academic funds. One report said that “ athletics is, primarily, and entertainment rather than an educational enterprise, and should be entirely self-supporting.

Instead of a new sheriff for national university compliance, there was a new regional motto that supported the drive by small towns to be the boss of their destiny.

You Cannot have a great state….without a great university.

1956

In 1956, the NCAA established the athletic scholarship that we now take for granted as the foundation of college sports payments for tuition, room, and board, and incidental fees without consideration of financial need or scholastic merit.   With the advent of the 1956 NCAA ruling, professionalism was now legal for student-athletes.

The NCAA circumvented the issue of paying athletes money by stating that these scholarships were for academic purposes, not an athletic grant awarded to scholars who happened to play football. The NCAA promoted the term student-athlete expressly to deny they inherit the professionalism of students who pay to play sports.

1963-

1964-1972

One of the Superheated social issues in the 60s was integration. The professors thought the UT Regents were racist, while the student-faculty was for integration. The faculty condemned anti-black dorm rules  10 to 1.

In May 1964, Erwin Perry, one of six children raised on a cotton farm near cold spring Texas, received his doctorate in civil engineering at UT, and the ensuing September, he became the first black member of the faculty.

Four years later, George Washington, a member of the first integrated law class in 1950, became a professor at UT.   UT then set up studies for black culture and Mexican American studies.  However, with all the good things occurring academically concerning racial bias, the football team, with the support of the Regents, did not get officially get involved with the athletic racial issues until 1963.

 And all American varsity swimmer Frank Salzhandler was barred from the university pool by the swimming coach for refusing to cut his hair which came to his shoulders. He had his girlfriend cut an inch off and returned to the pool only to be grounded again after he wrote a guest column and the Daily Texan criticizing the athletic department. This time the University of athletic council validated his suspension 8 to 1

Black athletes in the late 1960s and early 1970s hit college football at its heart. The college coaches of the 1960s became much more sensitive to the economic and cultural backgrounds of their black recruits, which lead to the acceptance of more individuality for all the players on the team. In the wake of the disruptions of the 60s, coaches lost their cultural authority and the right to dictate hair length and social behavior.

My roommate Julius Whittier was a perfect example of a black athlete not submitting to the paternalism of white father figures. Coach Royal required the footbal players to wear their hair short until Julius Whittier arrived with his Afro. Asked by the Texas senior football leadership what Royal was going to do about Julius hair, Royal responded that the Afro was part of black culture and should be allowed.

There you have it! Young men from all racists led by blacks chose to follow the dictates of their culture and not surrender their identity to an “Opie” team image.

Still, the coaches retained their absolute power over the lives of student-athletes.

By the late 1960s, the coach’s transition from father figures to the football team’s managers had begun, but team discipline had to be maintained. Hence, at the 1967 NCAA convention, for the first time, Universities could tie a good behavior clause to represent the University and retain their scholarship. The coaches still had the power to control the athlete with the good behavior clause.

In 1971 the NCAA limited contact hours for varsity sports to 20 a week during the season. However, that did not include voluntary conditioning and film sessions which nearly doubled the time allocated to their scholarship sport to 44.8 hours per week.

1973

Amid signs of the apocalypse, the NCAA strengthens institutional control over rebellious student-athletes by replacing the 4-year scholarship with a 1-year renewable one.

 1980’s

1981 the College Football Association broke from the NCAA to sign its TV contract with CBS. It supported A lawsuit filed by the University of Oklahoma and the University of Georgia against the NCAA’s TV monopoly.

1982 Jackie Sherrill signs a six-year contract with Texas A&M for more than 1.7 million—a shocking sum at the time.

In 1982 The NCAA began requiring Division One athletic departments to provide their athletes with the necessary academic support.

1984 nurse Supreme Court opposed the CFA back sweet suit ending the NCAA’s control over television rights.

1987 the Sugar Bowl was the first game played on January 1st, 1988; it became the first major bowl with a corporate sponsor. Georgia bills a $12 million heritage hall and prepares for the recruiting arms raised to follow the money.

In 1987 the president of Carnegie Carnegie Foundation wrote about college spectator sports that the “situation” has gotten worse, not better. Many believed that college sports celebrated the sense of community in the wrong way. They argued that the emphasis on beer drinking and a circus-like environment before and after a game in public educational institutions took priority over students getting a good education.

1990’s

1990 Notre Dame breaks with the CFA to sign a TV contract with NBC. In 1991 the Big East added the University of Miami and became a football and a basketball conference.

1991 – government, irs, knight foundation and restricted compensation

1. In 1991 a committee in the House of Representatives recommended that colleges and universities be required to disclose student-athlete’s graduation rates as well as detailed systematic information on how college athletes’ programs are financed. The higher educational lobby groups and the NCAA resisted the proposal.

2. The Internal Revenue Service was also questioning whether granting tax exemptions for ticket receipts and broadcasts of postseason college football games should be allowed. And the FTC Federal Trade Commission was trying to show that college football associations’ television contracts violated antitrust laws. These organizations did not believe the intercollegiate sports should be part of the educational system at universities.

3. The NCAA passed cost-cutting measures, including the creation of a restricted earnings coaching position that are challenged in court and led in May of 1998 to the award of $67 million to the affected coaches.

4. In 1991 the Knight Foundation Commission’s report called for a new model whereby intercollegiate athletics would keep faith with the student-athlete ideal. It implored university presidents to give renewed attention to academic integrity, financial integrity, and program accountability.

5. The Andrew W Mellon Foundation is one of the newest and most conspicuous participants in the long-term analysis of college sports. The Mellon Foundation shifted the emphasis away from discussions of University panels and distinguished donors toward fundamental and systematic research designed to test primary hypotheses about student-athletes. The Mellon Foundation has focused on the role of intercollegiate athletics at a few academic institutions over the past half-century. Comparing institutional investments, admissions alumni governess, and historical context. After this research, the Mellon Foundation researched contemporary student-athletes at Princeton, Columbia, and Amherst.

1992

At best, reforms in college sports are illusory and transient. This was the case with the 1929 Carnegie Foundation report and is all too familiar in reform efforts of the 1990s.

As author John R. Thelin says, historical changing the curriculum has been like “excavating a minefield.” Good intentions and wishful thinking rather than enduring accomplishments have characterized campaigns to restore integrity to college sports.”

When the federal government chose not to get involved in the reform process for athletics at universities, there was no one left to enforce academics over sports.

as is with most intercollegiate sports reports, there was initial support for the Knight Commission report but it waned quickly.

With no government intervention, American colleges ignored the policy suggestions because the conclusions of the reports were both mixed and complex.

With the government on the sideline and not in the game in 1992 a bowl coalition was created. It involved four major bowls ( Cotton Fiesta, Orange, and Sugar) and five major conferences that excluded the Big Ten and the PAC 10, along with significant independents such as Notre Dame, to match the two top-rated teams in the championship game.

1995- The bowl coalition is replaced with the boat alliance involving four conferences, Notre Dame, and three bowls.

1995 Bobby Bowden becomes college football’s first $1,000,000 coach.

1997 Florida’s Steve Spurrier becomes college football’s first $2 million coach.

1998 was the first year of the BCS. The payments to participants in each of the four BCS bowls was 12.5 million, with payouts for the 18 other bowls ranging from 750,000 to 3.6 million.

2001 -22 coaches now have salaries of at least $1,000,000.

In 2003 Miami, Virginia Tech, and Boston College left the Big East for the ACC and were replaced by Cincinnati, Louisville, and South Florida.

In 2005 under threat of possible congressional action, BCS leaders announced a series of changes that added an additional championship game and increased possible access to BCS bowls for the lesser division 1A conferences.

In 2006 a presidential task force of the NCAA released a report urging universities to practice fiscal responsibility and restraint. USA TODAY reports that the average Division 1A coach salary is $950,000, with at least 42 coaches earning 1,000,000 and nine making 2 million or more.

In 2007 Alabama made Nick Saban possibly the NCAA’s first $4 million coach.

2008 ESPN outbids Fox for the rights to the BCS bowls, increasing Fox’s current payment by roughly 50%.

The benefits for many who played collegiate sports outweigh the dark side of the college sports entitlement syndrome.

There is no question that college football has historically provided social and economic mobility for thousands of young men and women who otherwise would not belong in college. Offspring of blue-collar workers who received an athletic scholarship did better themselves after graduation. These athletes with degrees in hand used their connections with local celebrities to win jobs with banks, insurance companies, retail outlets, etc. Employers hired them because they knew that sports built character and fostered traits that produced great employees.

Lou Holtz said it best about entitlement :

The Money Trail in collegiate sports is the Source of Entitlement that is now ingrained in the conscious level of most athletes.’

 

Alumni boosters in the early years providing extra benefits to players was the beginning of the entitlement syndrome. Money flowed from boosters to players in the symbolic form of a “money handshake.” A culture of entitlement that was eventually exposed and amplified by the media on the national sports pages.

Among the most famous cases occurred in the 1990s when a disgruntled defensive back taped coaches discussing illegal payments to players, and he handed those tapes to NCAA investigators.

The sense of entitlement is now a conscious privilege supported by 5-star dorms, dining halls, workout facilities, and academic support. The downside of such opulence thrown at boys turning to men results in a mentality that rules that govern society do not apply to their actions, leading to boorish and even criminal behavior. Jocks drunkenly brawling and groping women at fraternity parties were seldom prosecuted until the national media began to pay more attention to the degree and scale of the misbehavior.

Miami and Oklahoma win the Criminal title.

 

According to “Bowled Over” by Michael Oriard:

In 1989 Barry Switzer’s team terrorized the Sooner campus. Quarterback Charles Thompson in handcuffs after his arrest for selling cocaine. Three of Thompson’s teammates had recently been arraigned for gang ****** a woman in the football dorm, and another had shot a teammate after an argument.

Oklahoma’s problems, according to Sports Illustrated, began with head coach Barry Switzer who ran his program like a loose ship. It was an American disgrace. Then, OU players exposed the crisis in football brought on by the entitlement generation, where the athletes believed their criminal excesses would be tolerated for the sake of the winning football team.

The Boston Globe followed Sports Illustrated and wrote a four-part investigative series titled “College Sports out of Bounds,” which included an installment on athletes’ criminal misadventures.

Finally, in 1995, the Los Angeles Times issued a special report listing college athletes’ sports crimes. Based on 252 police incidents involving 340 sports figures, 120 were college football players, including attempted murders, unlawful discharge of a firearm, and theft.

However, after 100-plus years of legal dishonesty, lack of educational priorities, and infractions incurred in college sports, college sports remain an integral part of American higher education and not something tacked on.

If you want a medical metaphor- eliminating football might be closer to removing both kidneys than amputating A gangrenous foot.

 

100-plus years of governance by the NCAA, including six decades of regulatory power and the last 20-odd years driven by the college president’s agenda, have proven that system-wide reforms inevitably fall short.

.