NCAA and their double standards

Back in the day, athletes were told that if they had a problem, and could not talk to their, parents, relatives, friends, or teachers that they always had a true confidant, and athletes knew that they always had their coach. But now the dynamics of the relationship has changed, coaches on various levels can no longer interact with their players, in fear of being charged with impropriates. But with all the money that the NCAA makes from these players, where do they get off with all the ethics on one hand, and allow coaches to commit some of the severe violations that they do. And why you might ask, is that all that really matters is that the school makes as much money as they can from these athletes.

The NCAA has strict rules regarding what school athletic departments can and cannot do, and when they violate them, we have seen the severe penalties. For example the 2007-08 season was completely stripped from the University of Memphis for violations regarding players and SAT scores (but the coach was cleared of any wrong doings), and the USC football team was placed on probation for impropriates during the 2004 season involving Reggie Bush (again coach not punished), and finally Kentucky’s Men’s Basketball Team is currently being investigated for possible violations when rap mogul Jay-Z was in the locker room during the NCAA Tournament.

But what is the significance to this, well last year; football programs like the University of Texas and Ohio State grossed millions from their programs while graduating close to 60%. Now one might see this as a relatively high number, that rate is extremely reduced when we look at minorities. These school need to take the same zealous approach to graduating these money making athletes, as they do in their approach to turning record profits every year. And for those that feel this is an unfair task for a school and that the student needs to have some responsibility, I do agree, but when you look at school like Notre Dame, Duke, Vanderbilt and Stanford, that are graduating over 90% of their team, we see that this can be done. The NCAA has shown time and time again that thou their mission statement might be to educate, promote, preserve and protect the highest standards of business ethics, while setting the highest degree of integrity, the bottom line for most school seems to be the all mighty dollar.