There is a certain hierarchy in the Colleges and Universities in America. Everyone knows it. We all know who the elite members are. We hear about them all the time.
George Orwell wrote in Animal Farm, “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.” Of course he was talking about the birth of corruption in the newly formed communist party, and we are not commies. However, look closely at the system that we have inheriated from our forefathers. There is no denying the existence of the haves, and the have nots, among America’s citadels of higher learning.
Especially when it comes to those schools with good football, basketball and baseball teams! But wait, you say, those sports bring in revenues to the University. But that’s where it starts to get very complicated. Back in the old days the sports that brought in money covered the other programs at the school that did not. It worked out well that way for years.
Then along came TV and the money started getting serious. Then came the Internet and it went ballistic. There is now so much money generated by college and university athletes that some obvious discrepancies begin to appear.
Many fans, coaches and sports writers alike began to espouse the idea that student athletes, representing the University on the playing field, deserved to be treated better than they were.
After all, it was the athletes that the fans and the networks were paying to see.
This was not lost on the leaders of the major Universities known as the Power Five. They proposed expanded benefits and support for student athletes to the NCAA only to be shot down by votes from the smaller schools who were afraid of the added expense. The NCAA refused to separate the two classes of Universities although the need to do so was obvious.
The NCAA had already started making some improvements to the well-being of their student athletes in the area of better and more food after a prominent hero in last year’s March Madness declared after a game that he and his teammates did not get enough to eat and often went to bed hungry. They were in the Final Four.
Finally, it took an act of the NCAA Board of Directors to grant autonomy to the universities of the ACC, the Big Ten, the Big 12, the Pac-12 and the SEC so that they might deal with their own student athletes as they see fit without having to ask permission from the NCAA, or anyone else.
