NYT financial columnist Joe Nocera:
… The N.C.A.A. likes to say it exists to “protect student-athletes,” but it’s a laughable claim. The N.C.A.A. exists to rationalize the tawdry fact that the labor force of a $6 billion business — the estimated revenue of college football and men’s basketball — receives no compensation. (That’s what amateurism in big-time college sports really is: unpaid labor.) Coaches, athletic directors, conference presidents, the N.C.A.A. itself — they all take advantage of the teenagers who are making them rich, knowing their young charges have no recourse.
Worst of all are university presidents. So quick to espouse the rights of the student body — rights of privacy, of free association, and of due process should they get in trouble — they allow the N.C.A.A. to strip college athletes of every one of these rights. They look the other way as athletes receive a substandard education, or no education at all. An athlete can be defamed by the N.C.A.A., even have his career destroyed for no good reason, and the school, fearing retaliation, will never step forward to defend him publicly. It is shameful. …
3/5/2012.
Requirement #1 for UO’s new president will be selling his soul to Phil Knight. Frohnmayer sold his for way more than its true, heavily depreciated value. Lariviere found out about that part of his contract when he had to give Mike Bellotti $2.3 million, plus $5 million in PERS, and then hire his daughter! Berdahl is hoping nothing too bad will happen until he leaves. Whoever takes the job then is going to understand the terms quite well.