Recruiting Violations in College Sports Essay

Collegiate sports have turned into a billion dollar industry and are probably just as popular, if not more popular than professional sports. College athletes put their bodies on the line to play a sport they love, many with hopes and dreams to one day make it to the professional leagues. Athletic facilities are the major money makers for all universities. Colleges bring in billions of dollars in revenue annually, yet athletes do not get paid. Some fans believe athletes should not get paid due to their sports level being “amateurish.”; however, this is far from the truth. There is much more to being a college athlete than just practicing and playing games. These student-athletes must practice, weight lift, go to meetings, travel, go to tutoring and study groups, all the while maintaining sufficient grades. This is very tedious work and is very time consuming. College athletes have a high standard to live up to (Frederick Web; Huma Web; Patterson Web ).

Sports of old were merely competitive activities rooted in heroism and romanticism. Sports activities today, however, have no such innocence or simplicity. Currently in America, the activities that make up our sports culture is not only the competitive events themselves but the processes and issues that underlie and surround them. Entwined in our sports culture is the giant business of mass broadcasting. Indeed, sports and the media go hand in hand like peanut butter and jelly, like Mickey and Minnie, Darth Vader and Luke. They are intertwined and depend on each other to continue to grow. Sports media includes television, radio, magazines, newspapers, books, films, and, now, most importantly, social media devices provided by the

Student athletes face a major problem that the NCAA holds them accountable. If any student athlete commits what is held as an NCAA violation they are forced to miss playing time or other consequences as well. NCAA violations have become a chronic problem in collegiate sports. When students violate the NCAA rules it can jeopardize their future career in whatever sport they are playing. Some of the rules don’t even make sense they are just useless. These rules need to be dealt with in order for the students to just be able to go along with their lives.

There are rules and regulation for everything. The DMV requires certain forms of identification for your driver’s license and the IRS requires you to file your income tax in a certain way to avoid penalty. It is no different when we are talking about the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). NCAA has strict regulation on its players and its member schools that must abide by. Although NCAA regulates pretty much everything through its 427-page manual, some rules were difficult if not impossible to enforce. In the case of Oliver v. National Collegiate Athletic Association, the conflict emerges as Andy Oliver questioned NCAA’s power to regulate in the face of court.

“College Athletes for Hire, The Evolution and Legacy of the NCAA’s Amateur Myth” written by Allen L. Sack and Ellen J. Staurowsky. In their book, the authors enlighten the reader on such issues as athletic scholarships, professionalism in college sports, and favoritism for athletes as well as many more important legal, and ethical issues that we as a country need to address. In this paper I will not do a standard book report by simply regurgitating the information I read in their book.

The NCAA was founded in 1906 and in its own words their duty was “To protect young people from the dangerous and exploitive athletics practices of the time,” but today the NCAA helps foster an environment that thrives off of doing exactly what they sought to stop. Today college athletes have their likeness used by the NCAA and the schools they attend for profit but do not receive any of the money they help to bring in. The NCAA also uses outdated rules that no longer help college athletes but instead harm them. One of the most glaring and criticized rules is that college athletes are amateurs and therefore must not benefit monetarily off of their talents and fame.

As the rule went into effect, many high-school athletes were signing National Letters of Intend to attend a college or university to play a certain sport. This of course meant that these incoming freshmen would be guaranteed $2000, along with their scholarship without having played a single second at the institution. But soon college athletic directors and conference presidents started appealing the rule and within a month over 125 members had signed an “override request” because it was too expensive (Nocera 2). Nocera than begins to illustrate the concept of how college coaches and the school themselves, are being paid and making a great deal of money. The Ohio State University’s head football coach, Urban Meyers signed a deal in 2011, agreeing to make $24 million dollars in six years, and top-notch conferences are signing television sponsorship deals for upwards of $11 billion dollars for fourteen years (Nocera 2). While the players are dedicating countless hours on and off the playing field, and not being compensated, they see their coaches making millions of dollars. Imagine stepping out to the field and seeing over 80,000 fans coming to see you play, and you can’t make any profit off that. Nocera believes that it is a “system that enables misconduct to flourish” (Nocera 3). Another consequence is that players tend to violate many rules of the NCAA involving financial aid and receiving money. Notorious athletic programs including Penn State

At the professional level, there are safeguards regarding how long a coach can work his players, however there is no comparable Although the NCAA limits practice to 20 hours per week, there are countless ways coaches can maneuver around the limit (Sanderson and Siegfried). The NCAA also does not consider that athletes are not only recruited for their grade-point average and test scores (Rose 48). They are recruited to help boost visibility of the university and its program (Rose 48). If they help the team become successful, it might attract larger donations from state legislators (Sanderson and Siegfried). The median voter in virtually every state is not a college graduate, so they may be more interested in the university’s football team than its library (Sanderson and Siegfried).

The actions of the NCAA and their treatment of student-athletes has long been a major issue. The world of college sports is a multi-billion dollar enterprise built on the backs of its unpaid amateur “student- athletes”. The evolution of sponsorship and media rights deals are worth fortunes, for which the players receive nothing, except for their degree.

According to Remillard (2014) academics followed only coaches in importance to the recruit (p. 20). According to an ESPN pole, academics ranked as the most important factor for recruits (Crabtree, 2013). This focus on academics also aligns with the NCAA mission. According to the NCAA website, “the association’s belief in student-athletes as students first is a foundational principle” (“Frequently”, 2015). Although, the NCAA’s claim may be empty, as collegiate coaches, it is important to prioritize academics even if no one else is doing it. It is the responsibility of the athletic director and coaching staff to stress

In modern day America sports are a very important part of our culture, because we are constantly watching sports and participating in sports. In any sport we watch mythology is present. The very act itself of playing the sport is reflective of old roman times when gladiators would kill for the crowds entertainment although today instead of killing its by hitting a home run or scoring a goal. “At their best, sports are about the extraordinary capacities of the human spirit.”(Wolter). These athletes can become extremely popular to the point were they are viewed as superhuman just like in myths, and there is a reason because the best athletes in their respective sport do what no average person could do. “The most legendary performances speak of almost super-human feats: the sub 4 minute mile, Michael Jordan’s flu stricken playoff

If a nation feels that they have a big sporting identity, that nation’s entire sense of being and self worth come from being a sporting nation. A drop in a nations self worth and self-esteem can come from a “sporting nation” not participating in a sport they feel best at, a drop in self worth and self-esteem can also come from not doing well in a sport that the nation is seen to be good at, not only by people inside the country itself but by others. If a sporting nation, sporting self esteems drops they are at risk of only having negative expectations of their sporting nation, they are also at risk of having a low rate of participation and effort shown by the people inside the nation towards sport. (Podium Sports Journal, 2010)

I read foul trouble by John Feinstein and it was a great background to the dirty games of college basketball. It does a great job of going in depth of how most college coaches break the rules of recruiting. They make sure they aren't involved so just the program would be penalized if caught so they could just jump to another job. Usually shoe companies that associated with that school pay the recruit and promise millions of dollars in a shoe deal once he goes pro if the kid goes to the

Sports, admittedly, have had a huge impact on our culture. Some of us even use sports as an excuse to gather our family for some quality time with each other, whether they just hangout for the sake of entertainment or engage in a meaningful conversation full of fervid passion when discussing spectacular plays, athletes, and coaches. However, people talk about the multitude of positive traits that sports are associated with, one must be informed about the abundance of issues that sports face; issues that keep sports from being what we want it to be- free from malicious intent and more along the lines of a peaceful collaboration perpetuated by authentic equality; coming together to proclaim our love for the game. Inequality, for example, is

What is it about sports that seem to capture us? Why do we play? Perhaps it is because all the serious trials of life are placed into a mere game. One battles adversity, experiences triumph, strives toward a goal, gets knocked down, gets back up, does it over and over, and finds joy not necessarily always in the outcome, but rather in this ongoing process. To view sports as one views life as an ongoing journey and not a destination is a priceless attitude to be able to claim. It's all the real struggles of a human being against himself, others, and the world, but in the end it's just a game. In other words when athletes step into their arena of play, it becomes their whole world, their only world. Nothing else matters. Within this world they can experience everything, but when it's over… it's over. They leave this world and once outside of this realm, real life is far more important and makes the trials experienced within the sport rather arbitrary.