For True Reform, Athletics Scholarships Must Go
By John R. Gerdy, The Chronicle of Higher Education, May 12, 2006

The president of the National Collegiate Athletics Association, Myles Brand, created a stir recently when he forcefully defended the NCAA's commercial efforts to raise revenues for its member institutions. "Commercialism per se" is not incompatible with the values of higher education, he contended in his 2006 "State of the Association" address. Responding to those who think that "working too hard to generate revenue somehow taints the purity of college sports," Brand cried, "Nonsense! This type of thinking is both a misinterpretation and a misapplication of amateurism. ‘Amateur' defines the participants, not the enterprise."

Division I scholarship athletes are professionals — and to claim otherwise is to ignore reality. Consider the essence of professional athletics: pay for play. Despite Brand's idealistic rhetoric, the contract between the college athlete and the institution no longer represents the "amateur" ideal of "pay (scholarship) for education" when it is plain to everyone — coaches, fans, faculty members, media, and especially the athletes — that they are on the campus, first and foremost, to play ball. That, by any definition, is "pay for play."

Yet educational institutions have no business being in the business of professional sports. It is time to dismantle the professional model of college athletics and rebuild it in the image of an educational institution. Specifically, the athletics scholarship must be eliminated in favor of institutional need-based aid. The athletics scholarship at its foundation is the biggest barrier to athletes' getting a genuine educational opportunity. When you are paid to play, regardless of the form of "payment," everything takes a back seat to athletic performance.

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