Patrick Hruby isn’t buying it:
And then the NCAA said something truly ridiculous:
… Maintaining the collegiate model of athletics, which is uniquely American, is crucial …
Uniquely American?
No. No. A thousand times no. Not on a Thursday, not on a Sunday, and absolutely freaking not on the Fourth of July. Read past the public relations weasel words. When the NCAA extols the “collegiate model of athletics,” it means amateurism. And amateurism is many things: a powerful, pernicious mythology; an eight-cylinder engine of tinpot morality and unearned sanctimony; a prime mover of athletic department gold-plating; the next best thing to indentured servitude when it comes to reducing labor costs; a way to sucker otherwise-sharp federal judges, addled by the “Athenian concept of a complete education derived from fostering full growth of both mind and body”; an oily term of tax-and-worker’s-compensation-dodging legal art that basically means whatever the association says it means. But the one thing amateurism is not, has never been and can never, ever be is uniquely American. …
I suspect Hruby would have been OK if they had changed the wording slightly. This is closer to what they really meant:
“Maintaining the collegiate model of athletics, which is our peculiar institution, is a good – a positive good.”
With apologies to John C. Calhoun, from whom I may have swiped a bit of speechery.