The Rise Of College Basketball

It all started with an email seeking freshman male in his coaching and administration program. The 2012 graduate of UConn’s Sport Administration and coaching program, William Aloia, says this future success as the Associate Athletic Director for The College of St. Rose started out by almost” falling into his lap”. The New Jersey native began his undergraduate experience with two Division-I parents, and like an abundance of people he knew that working in sport was something he wanted to do. Previously a part of the Kinesiology department under the late Joe Marrone, Will jumped on the opportunity posted through an email and started his freshman year as a basketball manager for the very successful UConn’s basketball program. He explains how this experience “opened his door up”. Will states; “once I started at UConn working with the women’s basketball program and being around collegiate athletics at such a high level it’s really something in itself, and unbelievable experience. I knew it was for me, I didn’t know which part for sure, but I knew this was something I wanted to do.” What Will realized very quickly realized about working in sport is that often times it is a thankless job. However, that did not stop him from finishing his undergraduate career as a four-year manager for the basketball team. The motivation for Will early in his career has been a two-dimensional illustration of success.

In The Cartel: Inside the Rise and Imminent fall of the NCAA, Taylor Branch is piecing together pieces of evidence and information about scandals that arose both the NCAA’s perspective as well as his own perspective to show contrast in the controversial findings within the NCAA concerning athletes and leadership. Throughout the entirety of the book, the picture that is being painted by Branch is that the NCAA as well as the institutions are reaping the benefits of intercollegiate athletics. While the "big men” are reaping the benefits of the skill and hard work of the college athletes. The information in Branch’s work not only presents the documents of scandals, but also presents his argument and proof for greed that is overtaking humanity, as well as athletics. The main focus is on the underlying theme of greed.

The NCAA gives out two billion seven hundred thousand dollars in scholarships that can be gifted to more than one hundred fifty thousand student-athletes (Scholarships). Although this is the case, most student-athletes do not choose to compete professionally, but instead benefit from the education they are receiving. Additionally, it may seem controversial that the “coaches decide who receives a scholarship, the scholarship amount and whether it will be renewed” rather than the NCAA who is providing the money for the scholarships (Scholarships). Furthermore, many students can fit one coach’s ideals for the team and will be completely wrong for another coach’s. This being said coaches are constantly being added and removed. For example, over the past fifteen years Missouri University has had seventeen changes to the coaching staff while Florida has had sixty-five changes to the coaching staff (SEC Coaching Turnover Rates From Past 15 Years are Staggering). Since coaches have the most authority, many players are having their scholarships rescinded due to a change in the coaching staff. For example, Doug Segrest, a writer for the Birmingham News, interviewed Grayson Mullins, football player for Notre Dame, who was moved from his original position as a quarterback to a wide receiver when Lou Holtz, Coach for Notre Dame, was replaced by Steve Spurrier, who eventually rescinded Mullins scholarship because he did not fit the ideal model (Segrest). This demonstrates, that scholarships are constantly held over a players’ head as to perform not only at the best of their ability but to the coaches’ idealistic reality as well. Overall, scholarships pose a large issue in college athletics and while they do provide education to students that are harming in the long run as students are constantly at risk to lose them for performing

Coaching basketball is about strategizing and directing the movements and actions of a basketball team or individual player. Coaches strategize and scout opposing teams and find ways to defeat them as easily as possible. A successful basketball coach needs to now the understanding of how to play the game. A basketball coach must be able to manage the duties of the job by recruiting the top players, get them in shape, make a team, motivate players and teach them how to play the game of basketball. Coaching is usually done by a single person, with the help of one or more assistants. A coach is the face of the team, helping it achieve the public relations goals of the organization and build a positive image that will improve recruiting. (Edmunds). A coach is responsibiable for setting up and an environment so that the team can use its skills and abilities to their full potential. Therefor a coach has to make a game plan for each game, so that his team will be ready for the next opponent. A coach has to know his team and the opponent abilities to be able to match his team up with the opponent. A coach must know to mix the players who can start right away and players he can develop into starters. A coach may want to put 12-15 players on the roster just in case of injuries. To get ready for the season the coach starts putting in offensive and defensive plays the will run and teach the players situational plays to fit the team style and running practices. During a game a coach has

In the last ten years many young and talented high school basketball players have chosen to enter the NBA draft. These 17 and 18 year olds decide to skip college, and instead they choose to take a big risk and enter the NBA, hoping to become stars and earn millions of dollars. In many cases, these youngsters’ careers are a failure because they don’t turn out as talented as they thought to be. They end up spending only a few seasons in the NBA because they are not good enough to compete at that level. Many of them have to move on to doing other things, such as playing basketball overseas, doing everyday jobs, or going back to college to earn a degree.

The likes of Kobe Bryant, Kevin Garnett, Tracy McGrady, Amare Stoudamire, and Jermaine O’Neal are setting the tone across the nation for high schoolers considering by-passing college for the NBA. Two of today’s biggest stars, Garnett and Bryant, have never attended college, but both were immediately successful and popular in the pros (Head to Head). The biggest star in the NBA right now, Garnett, is having an MVP-caliber season and is leading his team to their best record in franchise history. The teenagers with high hopes admire these professionals living their dream and hope to someday be in their shoes.

Throughout the existence of the NCAA and the realm of intercollegiate competition, one of the largest topics of debate has been the idea to compensate athletes based on athletic performance above any scholarships awarded. Mark Emmert, president of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, has previously said “We can never move to a place where we are paying players to play sports for us” (Garcia, 2010, para.9). This statement by Emmert has again sparked several conversations concerning the specifics of what defines amateurism and the exploitation of our young student athletes. The awarding of a salary to athletes is both heavily supported and strongly opposed by players, spectators, coaches, and collegiate

When you turn on the tv on a typical March day what’s usually what you see on ESPN and other major sport news channels? Give you a hint NCAA Basketball. The NCAA is a multi-Billion dollar “Industry” that gets a lot of attentions of its fans. The other side of the coin in the NCAA is not as happy as it seems like when someone wins a National Title. Many Players devote their time to be there, some without any resources just hard work and just hope of making it pro and having a Multi-million dollar contract to not only play the sport they love but to have the money they need to have a house to live, food to eat, and everything possible needed to live a life. NCAA managers make millions and while the athletes get scholarships, sometimes that’s

The ugly truth behind the money machine that is college sports is that, every year, college athletes are deceived by the institutions the compete for into making them millions of dollars, with relatively little in return. Athletes are said to be given a chance to attend college and to attain a free college degree. However, research has shown that this is not completely true for two reasons. For one, the student athlete will spend most of their time in preparation for competition. Secondly, what education the student athlete does receive hardly serves them outside of maintaining eligibility just so

In the collegiate world of sports, basketball has become an increasingly recognized sport among African Americans, predominantly males. The hope of any young basketball player is that one day a scout will come and recruit them into stardom The question that presents itself as a problem to the lucky few who are chosen to go professional, is whether or not an education is more important than a million dollar shoe deal, “The NCAA's (1998) annual six-year study reported that only 33% of Black male basketball players graduated, (Chronicle of Higher Education, 1999). Individually, basketball reported the lowest graduation rate in all divisions,” (Robinson, 2004:1). Basketball players have become so idolized in the eyes of young

The multibillion-dollar industry that college sports has become has richly rewarded the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), university athletic programs and top football and basketball coaches. Athletes, however, continue to play under a decades-old system in which scholarships pay for tuition and room and board but fall short of covering the full cost of attending school. In return, players are expected to maintain a rigorous training and playing schedule while keeping up their studies. This falls very short to being fair for the student athletes, who are the ones putting their sweat, hearts, bodies and health on the line, day in and day out.

Despite winning their first conference game of the season by 23, Rutgers still remains on the down trend. While they avoided joining Boston College as the only Power-5 schools to go winless in conference play, Rutgers still had a season to forget. They enter the Big Ten tournament as the 14 seed with very little chance of winning any games in the tournament.

The first game in the history of college football was played in New Brunswick, New Jersey on

There are many high school basketball phenoms that are scouted by pro teams even when they are in high school. A select few in the past have gone straight to the NBA out of high school and had a lot of success, while some players go to college all four years to develop their skills at the next level. However, there are athletes that will waste one year at the college level just so they could get to the NBA. Why would you waste one year of your life when you could have already been in the NBA a year earlier? Basketball players should either go to college all four years and enhance their skills and get a solid education. If not, skip college and go straight to the NBA, rather than wasting a year of your life, and possibly a classroom seat for a person who wanted to get an education.

First of all, the authors of this article noticed that there are differences between different gender coaches’ salaries in college basketball. The researchers in this article performed an experiment where they have included salaries of basketball coaches in 2004-2005 season. Even though coaches of different gender are not paid equally, but looking into the facts this cannot be treated as a discrimination. Brook and Foster included in their formula factors such as: revenue brought to the University, sold tickets, coaching experience, winning percentage and so on. After the calculations, there was no significant difference found in 2004-2005 season salaries for male and female basketball coaches. In