
 |
|
May 22, 2013
John Thorne:
They launched the 'Arab Spring' but now yearn for the good old days of a strongman
May 20, 2013
Richard A. Serrano: Is Meir Kahane's assassin now a changed man?
Melissa Healy: Genetic copies of living people from embryos no longer science fiction
Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : Jews Inducted into Rock Hall of Fame; Anton Yelchin co-stars in New "Trek" film; Kutcher (but not Kunis) visits Israel; Jewish TV Star Praises Jewish Rap Star
The Kosher Gourmet by Cathy Pollak: WARNING: This WALNUT CAKE WITH PRALINE FROSTING, perfect for afternoon coffee, is addicting
May 13, 2013
Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: Why the giving of the document that would permanently change the world could only be done in desolation
David G. Savage: Church-state, literally? Supreme Court weighing public school graduation in a church
May 10, 2013
Rabbi Berel Wein: Be all that you should be
May 8, 2013
Peter Ford: Why China is welcoming both Israel's Netanyahu and Palestinians' Abbas
Warren Richey: Obama administration quietly backs out of appeal over new contraceptive mandate
Fred Weir: At Kerry-Putin meeting, US-Russia relations thaw --- a tad
The Kosher Gourmet by Leela Cyd Ross : Almost too pretty to eat, this colorful salad with Sicilian inspiration will tickle the taste buds and delight your visual sensibility
May 6, 2013
May 3, 2013
Kids, kittens the Same? With employee perks at struggling Internet pioneer Yahoo! it's hard to tell
Sandy Kleffman: Artificial kidney offers hope to patients tethered to a dialysis machine
April 29, 2013
Roy Gutman: Poland's new Jewish museum celebrates life, doesn't revisit Holocaust
Mark Clayton: Terrorism in America: Is US missing a chance to learn from failed plots?
Kim Murphy: Boston Bomber's 'Svengali' Revealed
Pete Spotts: Tiny satellites + cellphones = cheaper 'eyes in the sky' for NASA
April 26, 2013
Clifford D. May: Defense in the Age of Jihadist Terrorism
Sharon Palmer, R.D.: How to feel your best -- with plenty of energy, a healthy weight and optimal mental and physical function -- without driving yourself batty
April 24, 2013
|
| |
Jewish World Review
Nov. 14, 2006
/ 23 Mar-Cheshvan, 5767
Cheer, cheer for old Revenue U.
By
Wesley Pruden
| 
|
|
|
|
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
If Charlie Rangel and his Democratic tax men are seriously looking for someone to squeeze, they might consider the NCAA.
Myles Brand, the president of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, has been invited to appear to answer questions by the House Ways and Means Committee about graduation rates of athletes, but the actual point of the invitation is to see how the college presidents justify not paying taxes on the $545 million the colleges and universities collect from CBS to broadcast the national basketball tournament. Right now, they don't pay a penny. Talk about your March madness.
Mr. Brand is familiar to sports fans as the university president who sacked Bobby Knight, the basketball coach at Indiana University, for, among other things, being Bobby Knight. In his tenure as head of the NCAA, 99 "athlete scholars" (do not laugh) on 65 campuses lost scholarships because the schools did not meet the minimalist standards imposed earlier. What breaks the hearts of the coaches is not that the athletes lost their scholarships, but the football and basketball factories were deprived of the right to award the scholarships to someone else.
But it's the unmilked cash cows roaming the campus that has Congress salivating. Until now, everyone has solemnly played under the fiction that big-time sports is part of getting an education, much in the way the courts abide by the fiction that Organized Baseball is a sport, and not a business, and therefore exempt from antitrust law. If the NCAA can show Congress what a great job the colleges are doing stuffing a little learning into certain bulletheads, Congress might be reluctant to squeeze popular entertainers.
Some congressmen and not all Democrats are finally coming to see the nation's football and basketball factories as in the entertainment business, just like Disneyland, Warner Bros., NASCAR and World Wrestling Entertainment. The colleges put on a good show and get paid handsomely for it, so why should the genius work of Urban Meyer at the University of Florida or Pete Carroll at Southern Cal to name two of the most successful football coaches be treated any differently than the high art of Madonna or Britney Spears?
Fewer than half of male basketball players graduate; the rate for black players is just 42 percent. A little more than 60 percent of white football players earn a diploma, but only 49 percent of the black players do. The coaches and college presidents have come up with ingenious ways to appear to improve the graduation rates of their athletes, if not necessarily to improve their educations. To disguise these dismal figures, many athletes now get tutoring not available to an engineering major or an aspiring chemist, and scholarship athletes can earn degrees in such fuzzy majors as something called "sports management." Scholars at the University of Georgia, for example, could puzzle over such final-exam brain-twisters as "how many halves are there in a game?" and "how many points do you get for a 3-point shot?"
If that doesn't do it, the university presidents have exploited an earlier congressional mandate that women be treated numerically equal in the awarding of scholarships by adding fringe sports attractive to brainier athletes. More than 90 percent of female scholarship rowers, field hockey players and fencers earn diplomas. A few lady rowers and fencers can carry a lot of linebackers, offensive guards and point guards.
The athletes, deprived of a real education, usually cheerfully submit to the shortchanging because they think bigger bucks are coming when they graduate to the professionals. But of course only a tiny, tiny fraction of them make it to Sunday afternoon. "The vast majority, almost all of our 360,000 student athletes in the NCAA are going to become professionals in fields other than sports," Erik Christianson of the NCAA recently tells USA Today. "And so it's vitally important for them to do well in the classroom, stay on track and earn that degree."
Actually making all this come true, by applying pressure in the right places, will require far more courage than we can expect from Congress. Big-time sports is too popular, too celebrated, too addictive to the masses. Abusing a few hundred young men is a small price to pay for a good show.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
JWR contributor Wesley Pruden is editor in chief of The Washington Times. Comment by clicking here.
Wesley Pruden Archives
© 2006 Wesley Pruden
|
|

Arnold Ahlert
Mitch Albom
Jay Ambrose
Michael Barone
Barrywood
Lori Borgman
Stratfor Briefing
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Richard Z. Chesnoff
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Suzanne Fields
Christine Flowers
Frank J. Gaffney
Bernie Goldberg
Jonah Goldberg
Julia Gorin
Jonathan Gurwitz
Paul Greenberg
Argus Hamilton
Victor Davis Hanson
Betsy Hart
Ron Hart
Nat Hentoff
A. Barton Hinkle
Jeff Jacoby
Paul Johnson
Jack Kelly
Ch. Krauthammer
David Limbaugh
Kathryn Lopez
Rich Lowry
Michelle Malkin
Jackie Mason
Ann McFeatters
Dale McFeatters
Dana Milbank
Jeanne Moos
Dick Morris
Jim Mullen
Deroy Murdock
Judge A. Napolitano
Bill O'Reilly
Clarence Page
Kathleen Parker
Star Parker
Dennis Prager
Wesley Pruden
Tom Purcell
Sharon Randall
Robert Robb
Cokie & Steve Roberts
Heather Robinson
Debra J. Saunders
Martin Schram
Greg Schwem
Culture Shlock
David Shribman
Roger Simon
Lenore Skenazy
Michael Smerconish
Thomas Sowell
Ben Stein
Mark Steyn
John Stossel
Cal Thomas
Dan Thomasson
Bob Tyrrell
Diana West
Dave Weinbaum
George Will
Walter Williams
Byron York
ZeitGeist
Mort Zuckerman

Robert Arial
Chuck Asay
Baloo
Lisa Benson
Chip Bok
Dry Bones
John Branch
John Cole
J. D. Crowe
Matt Davies
John Deering
Brian Duffy
Everything's Relative
Mallard Fillmore
Glenn Foden
Jake Fuller
Bob Gorrel
Walt Handelsman
Joe Heller
David Hitch
Jerry Holbert
David Horsey
Lee Judge
Steve Kelley
Jeff Koterba
Dick Locher
Chan Lowe
Jimmy Margulies
Jack Ohman
Michael Ramirez
Rob Rogers
Drew Sheneman
Kevin Siers
Jeff Stahler
Scott Stantis
Danna Summers
Gary Varvel
Kirk Walters
Dan Wasserman

Tech Q&A
Mr. Know-It-All
Ask Doctor K
Richard Lederer
Frugal Living
On Nutrition
Bookmark These
Bruce Williams
|