The N.C.A.A.’s Feeble Reform Impulse
I know there are those who complain that all these changes will allow the rich in college sports to become richer, at the expense of all the other schools in Division I. To which I say: so what.
In fact, I think that could potentially be a good thing. If you separate off the 65 schools in the Big 5 conferences — plus a few others like Boise State in football and the University of Connecticut in basketball — and allow their athletic departments to become ever richer and more powerful, they will be more easily seen for what they are: a form of professionalized and commercialized entertainment that has very little to do with higher education. They are the ones that can afford to put money in trust for players — and that is what is likely to happen.