{"id":3268,"date":"2011-09-15T05:25:30","date_gmt":"2011-09-15T13:25:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/?p=3268"},"modified":"2011-09-15T05:28:51","modified_gmt":"2011-09-15T13:28:51","slug":"evil-thy-acronym-is-ncaa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2011\/09\/15\/evil-thy-acronym-is-ncaa","title":{"rendered":"Evil, Thy Acronym Is NCAA"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Stanford<\/a>Technically, NCAA is an initialism rather than an acronym<\/a> \u2014 but you know what I mean. <\/p>\n

I have long been irked at the way the college sports complex abuses students, but I was absolutely floored by some of the details Taylor Branch shared in \u201cThe Shame of College Sports<\/a>\u201d (published in The Atlantic<\/i>).<\/p>\n

Two snippets to whet your appetite:<\/p>\n

\n\u201cWhy,\u201d asked Bryce Jordan, the president emeritus of Penn State, \u201cshould a university be an advertising medium for your industry?\u201d <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\nVaccaro did not blink. \u201cThey shouldn\u2019t, sir,\u201d he replied. \u201cYou sold your souls, and you\u2019re going to continue selling them. You can be very moral and righteous in asking me that question, sir,\u201d Vaccaro added with irrepressible good cheer, \u201cbut there\u2019s not one of you in this room that\u2019s going to turn down any of our money. You\u2019re going to take it. I can only offer it.\u201d <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And later:<\/p>\n

\nBut after an inquiry that took me into locker rooms and ivory towers across the country, I have come to believe that sentiment blinds us to what\u2019s before our eyes. Big-time college sports are fully commercialized. Billions of dollars flow through them each year. The NCAA makes money, and enables universities and corporations to make money, from the unpaid labor of young athletes. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\nSlavery analogies should be used carefully. College athletes are not slaves. Yet to survey the scene\u2014corporations and universities enriching themselves on the backs of uncompensated young men, whose status as \u201cstudent-athletes\u201d deprives them of the right to due process guaranteed by the Constitution\u2014is to catch an unmistakable whiff of the plantation. Perhaps a more apt metaphor is colonialism: college sports, as overseen by the NCAA, is a system imposed by well-meaning paternalists and rationalized with hoary sentiments about caring for the well-being of the colonized. But it is, nonetheless, unjust. The NCAA, in its zealous defense of bogus principles, sometimes destroys the dreams of innocent young athletes. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The whole thing is worth reading, so zip over to The Atlantic<\/i> and read \u201cThe Shame of College Sports<\/a>\u201d now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Technically, NCAA is an initialism rather than an acronym \u2014 but you know what I mean.  I have long been irked at the way the college sports complex abuses students, but I was absolutely floored by some of the details Taylor Branch shared in \u201cThe Shame of College Sports\u201d (published in The Atlantic). Two snippets to \u2026 Continue reading \u201cEvil, Thy Acronym Is NCAA\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rants-opinions-and-general-contrariness"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Ded-QI","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3268"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3268\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3277,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3268\/revisions\/3277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}