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.