Fixing College Sports

Lot of buzz for New York Times columnist Joe Nocera's magazine article on paying athletes as a way of fixing college athletics.  I do not think that increasing the professionalization of college sports is the way to go.  I like some of his ideas, such as offering athletes lifetime health insurance as part of their scholarship.  

But I think Nocera overthinks this issue. The best way to reform college athletics is a simple one: make freshmen ineligible. Incidentally, this is an idea championed by Dean Smith for years.  That alone should make it a no brainer for the NCAA and school presidents across the country.

Anyway, making freshman ineligible would restore academic balance, allow athletes to spend at least one year as a regular student, and reduce 'get rich quick' recruiting scandals hatched by alumni, boosters, coaches, etc., among other things.

In August, in the wake of the Butch Davis firing - Nevin Shapiro - Jimm Tressel news cycle I posted some other reforms on the late http://firebutchdavis.blogspot.com/2011/08/how-low-can-you-go.html blog.

Here are those ideas again, mainly around the theme that college athletics needs to take it down a notch, not be so big time and try to take some of the money out of it.  That's the only way to fix a system that does not need reform so much as it's fundamentally corrupt. Of course, proposing de-emphasizing money sounds crazy.  But remember, these are supposed to be institutions of higher learning that in the case of state schools are theoretically non-profits.

Anyway, to fix college sports the NCAA should do the following:

1. Make freshman ineligible to play any sport, revenue or non-revenue;
2. Use baseball's draft rules for all sports; you can get drafted out of high school but if you DON'T go pro you can't be re-drafted until you finish your junior year (and you have to make progress towards graduation while in school for those 3 years);
3. Limit conference sizes to 8 maximum; that would mean fewer games and practices for all sports, and shorter seasons, and therefore more time in the classroom, being a regular student, etc.;
4. Allow players to receive a percentage of money from sales of merchandise that use their likeness; seems only fair that the players should benefit from sales of THEIR jerseys, etc.;
5. Have a play-off system for all levels of football; get the bowls and their corporate shysterism out of college football;
6. Link post-season participation to graduation rates; if your team does not meet a certain standard you stay home from bowls and postseason tournaments.

Those are just a few.  I hope the NCAA makes some serious changes, but I'm afraid that until university presidents get the nerve to de-emphasize college sports a bit there will continue to be more Butch Davis-Jim Tressel-Nevin Shapiro-style headlines.