There are changes coming to NCAA athletics coming slowly but coming surely. The recent realignments of the conferences and the changing of decades old affiliations give witness to the fact that NCAA Sports will never be the same.
The most lamented outcome of these recent changes have come in the form of ages old rivalries being negated overnight and new ‘rivalries’ installed in their places. There are some teams who will be playing year end games against their new ‘rivals’ and meeting on the field for the first time. This mix-up can only be regarded as a loss to many fans. You can’t dictate rivalries… what nerve.
At the center of the hurricane of change in the NCAA is the Commissioner’s office headed by the embattled Mark Emmert. Emmert and his office have been much in the news and often under criticism because of their awkward handling of the situation down at the University of Miami… among others. Many of the most glaring issues are still unresolved and growing more worrisome to the commissioner’s office all the time.
However, Mark Emmert is still the commissioner of the NCAA and as such a highly respected figure who is much in demand on the public talk circuit and, especially among NCAA universities and colleges.
With the distance growing between the big, read that money making, schools such as Notre Dame and USC and all the other institutions that are left out of the coming profits earned from sports.
Which brings us and them to another touchy issue that just will not go away. Student athletes are the actual players down there on the field that the fans come out to the stadium or turn on their TV’s to see. Not the school administrators who ultimately are the folks who end up with all that money coming in from sporting events. But, the student athletes are supposed to be non-paid and only playing for the love of the game and their respective schools.
As we all know, every university has local backers and Alumni that have been bending the rules for years and slipping these ‘students’ a little something on the side just to show their appreciation. However, many other fans, and writers, frown on the practice and label it as ‘dirty’.
So what do we do? It has been proposed to put the student athletes on some sort of compensating salary and encourage them not to take what is offered on the side. But then the idea of having student athletes as ‘employees’ of the university does not set well with most people either. Obviously, this is a work in progress.
