FanShot

Frank Deford Rips NCAA And Its Claim To 'Amateurism'

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Click the link and read the transcript or listen to the audio of NPR host Frank Deford give his opinion on the NCAA . If the retreat would only admit that the reason integrity has flown the coop is because it is impossible to maintain the fiction that billion-dollar entertainment industries –– which is what ticket sales, concessions and TV contracts make college football and basketball to be –– simply cannot logically exist when everybody is making money but the entertainers themselves. Never mind fairness; it is against human nature. The system obliges hypocrisy and mandates deceit. Yet a stated purpose of the retreat is to "maintain amateurism" –– even as more and more observers and insiders, including coaches, have changed their minds and concluded that the NCAA must acknowledge that the 19th century really did end sometime ago.