NCAA President Says Change Needed, But It Won’t Include Paying Athletes

There is pretty general satisfaction with the way college athletics are governed – if you’re talking about the NCAA’s Division 2 and Division 3 schools, the smaller universities and colleges that don’t have big budgets and don’t often break into the spotlight.

But Division 1? “There is absolutely no one satisfied with the current model,” Mark Emmert, the president of the NCAA, said during an “On the Issues with Mike Gousha” session this week in the Appellate Courtroom of Eckstein Hall. The big, high-profile sports programs with huge budgets have attracted great controversy, to the point, Emmert said, that upcoming meetings will consider changes in how college sports programs are governed.

One thing that Emmert said is almost certain not to be changed is the longstanding prohibition against paying college athletes anything that would amount to salaries. Doing that has been the subject of extensive attention in the news media recently, including a cover story in Time magazine that called it “a moral imperative” to pay college athletes.

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Milwaukee Area Divide in Voting Is Unusually Deep, Gilbert and Franklin Say

 

It isn’t just that we disagree whether we prefer pepperoni or anchovies on our pizza. We disagree about what pepperoni and anchovies are. And we disagree in increasingly strong ways.

That’s one way that Charles Franklin, professor of law and public policy at Marquette University Law School, described the sharply partisan atmosphere of American politics. He spoke Thursday in the Appellate Courtroom of Eckstein Hall in the first session of the 2013-14 season of “On the Issues with Mike Gousha.”

Franklin and Craig Gilbert, Washington bureau chief of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, presented some of the early findings of research the two are conducting on polarization in politics, especially in the Milwaukee area and Wisconsin. Gilbert is on a six-month leave from the newspaper to take part in the project, supported by the Law School’s Sheldon B. Lubar Fund for Public Policy research.

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Obama, Walker, and Economic Optimism Slip a Bit in New Law School Poll Results

A bit of slippage – that’s what fresh results of the Marquette Law School Poll show. The job performance ratings of President Barack Obama and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker are down a little from May, the most recent polling date. Optimism about the economy is down a bit also. None of the changes are dramatic — the job performance changes are within the margin of error of the poll – but, as a whole, they spell a message that is a notch or two less positive toward key leaders and the future than was the case in May.

For Obama, the job rating among Wisconsinites who were polled went from 48% approve and 45% disapprove in March to 50% and 45% in May and then 47% and 46% in July.

For Walker, it was 50% approve and 44% disapprove in March, 51% and 45% in May, and 48% and 46% in July.

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