With the final four raging on, a columnist basically asked me, and I’m paraphrasing some here, “Why don’t people care more about the scandals going on behind the scenes in college athletics?” Coaches in trouble. Programs with huge blemishes, and fans, congress and alums all seem to focus on everything but.
Here was my response:
You brought up a political issue, expect people to respond politically. Numbers are just tools
Bigger issue, you talk about collegiate athletics as a collective “they.” No one ever cares about “they.”
Jayson Blair, Kelly from USA Today, etc. If someone wrote about the collective ills of journalism and how we should ignore the best selling papers and go to the heart of the matter, would you care. After all it is your industry.
Sports are something people use to get away from the real world, not to try to understand or resolve the issues.
No one cares if wrestling is choreographed. It pulls the biggest ratings of all sports on cable. It’s a lot more fun to argue who will win the final four than to try to investigate the issues behind college athletics.
Personally, I think the NCAA is the problem. If we saw schools secede from the NCAA, admit they are professionals in training, allow their players to get paid and move on, we all would have a lot less hypocrisy in the sports world.
But that’s me.
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