During class on October 4th, the topic of college athletics abusing their power became a pondering thought to me. Most people will assume the purpose of college is to give your child a furthur means of education and to develop the skills they need to start their life and find a career. However what exactly is the college's mission? Sure there may be some that take pride in their alumni's accomplishments in the world but to be honest, colleges need money to stay relevant. Colleges compete with each other for students through means of academics, campus, environment, and in some cases, athletics.
Athletics has slowly turned into colleges and universities main source of attention, especially from football and men's basketball. One of the biggest characteristics of a university is that football and men's basketball are the largest forms of marketability, so it's naturally fitting that universities will try to invest enough money into their athletic program by any means necessary. The problem though is that the more money you put into your program, the more pressure your creating to be the best, which leads to certain ways to get to the top that may not be the smart thing to do. Just to give a short history lesson, look what happened to Southern Methodist University's football program. Rule violations occurring in order to be the best has consequences. Now while those consequences may not be as severe as they used to be, the point they make is still very loud and clear.
To give a more recent example, such as the link provides, the University of Southern California was found guility of major rule violations. Not only was the program forced to give up a large number of scholarships, they were also banned from a future bowl game and Heisman Trophy winner Reggie Bush was stripped of his title for his role in the violations. Are these violations really worth it? Coakley points out in his text that there are about 1900 intercollegiate sport programs in the United States. Less than 25 of them consistently make more money than they spend (Fulks, 2008), and these programs have football teams that play in major bowl games each year and receive payouts of 18.5 million (Coakley p. 492). Was USC one of those teams that actually made money that they didn't have to worry about losses? I'm not sure, but what I do know is that it's not worth losing so much for the purpose of being the best. Who wants to attend a university that cheats the system to make money?
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