As college football begins its new season, the sport’s reputation has “never been more damaged,” said Pete Thamel in The New York Times. At least 10 major universities, from Ohio State to Auburn, have recently been investigated or punished for violations of NCAA rules, such as illegal payments to “amateur” players. Last year, former University of Southern California running back Reggie Bush had to return his 2005 Heisman Trophy, after an agent said he’d given Bush $290,000 while he was at USC. But last week’s allegations of scandal at the University of Miami have “shocked even the most hardened critics” of college football. A convicted felon named Nevin Shapiro has stepped forward to claim that he gave more than 72 Miami players thousands in cash payments, cars, jewelry, and sex parties with prostitutes. Shapiro says he even paid for an abortion for one athlete’s stripper girlfriend.
Clearly, “the NCAA has lost control” of college football, said Tim Dalhberg in the Associated Press. With so much money at stake, the sport’s governing body “seems powerless to get it back.” TV networks pay more than $1 billion for rights to televise contests between big-name schools and bowl games, and the most successful coaches can make $5 million and up annually. No wonder colleges turn a blind eye when boosters and agents shovel cash and goodies to players. So let’s abandon the pretense of amateurism, said Roger I. Abrams in HuffingtonPost.com. The players at the major football powers provide their universities with a valuable service, and everyone else on campus—“including, I should note, the professors”—is paid at a market rate. Paying players would be a recognition of the reality that they’re “minor-league football players,” and would make them less susceptible to under-the-table payments.
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