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Today’s guest columnist is Victoria Jackson, a sports historian and clinical associate professor at Arizona State University.
The American sports ecosystem is at a crossroads. The Olympic and Paralympic Movement understands this. Why don’t universities do that?
There are currently two very different policy conversations taking place in Washington, D.C., regarding the future of American sports. The first is to engage stakeholders in the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic movement and leverage Congressional interest in elite athletics to reimagine what youth and community sports in this country can look like. We are aiming for The second introduces higher education leaders who are trying to prevent further disruption to the business of college football, and they want Congress to make it happen.
Thanks to the efforts of the Committee on the Status of the United States Olympic and Paralympic Games (CSUSOP), 2024 could very well be a landmark year for U.S. sports policy. CSUSOP will present its final report and recommendations to Congress in the spring ahead of the Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games. Under the leadership of co-chairs Dionne Kohler and Han Xiao, the commission aims to overhaul the U.S. sports ecosystem.
The Amateur Sports Act, passed in 1978 and revised in 1998, imposes a dual mission on the USOPC and each sport’s national governing body. It is to participate in both high-performance sports, elite sports, Olympic and Paralympic sports, which is a narrow apex. And that huge foundation is grassroots, community and youth sports. In testimony on Capitol Hill last September, I said that due to a lack of funding and incentives to support the grassroots, as well as a lot of pressure to prioritize success at the top of the pyramid, the USOPC is only half its dual mandate. He explained that this means that only a few goals have been achieved. The commission will demonstrate to Congress that the federal government has a responsibility to correct this failure to fulfill its public duties and has the authority to overhaul America’s sports system to make sports for everyone. That’s what I’m aiming for.
While CSUSOP embraces an optimistic, forward-looking agenda with clear plans, university leaders are living in a parallel dystopian world marked by anxiety, fear-mongering, and claims of catastrophic disaster. active and cut off from the world around them. They will give schools more control over the flow of funds from third parties to athletes, and ensure that athletes are not classified as employees or paid directly by the school or is asking Congress for help regulating sports industry operations that operate in the United States. conference.
What university leaders say in Congress risks becoming a textbook case of doublespeak. Their words and actions tell two different stories. They are seeking antitrust exemptions to restrict and restrict players’ financial conduct, but not similar protections to place limits on athletic department spending or coaches’ salaries and buyouts. The University of Kansas recently doubled Bill Self’s base salary and threw in all sorts of extra perks, making him the highest-paid basketball coach in the country at (at least) $13.7 million this season. Just days after KU’s announcement, Texas A&M fired Jimbo Fisher and owed him approximately $77 million for not coaching the football team.
On the other hand, because the NCAA works for the schools and has no role in monitoring their actions, we’ll see this year, when the Power Five automatically cannibalize and the Big Ten and ACC become coasts, across sports conferences. I witnessed it suddenly disappear. – Simultaneous mega-conferences across four time zones (which the Big 12 almost did). The breakup of the Pac-12, perhaps more than anything in the history of college sports, shows that schools are comfortable harming athletes in other sports in the pursuit of football money.
U.S. Senate Commerce Committee considering holding 11th sessionth Rather than listening to lobbyists, senators holding hearings on the NIL should look at the actions of schools and the inaction of the NCAA.
When the leaders of America’s higher education institutions, which claim to be creating the world’s best innovative solutions to the world’s problems, choose to defend and continue a disorganized and unsustainable education. , as an educator, I can’t help but feel frustrated. Business model — all because we don’t want to touch college football.
The famous college football game is closely and deeply tied to the higher education industry. What’s at stake for American universities goes far beyond a desire to maintain the status quo of storied college sports. Messing with college football exposes fault lines throughout the higher education industry. That’s because college football has long relied too much on the sport for many parts of its business, including fundraising, alumni engagement, infrastructure projects and maintaining good relations with state legislatures. Most important is marketing, which sells the idea of what it means to go to college to American families. And even in a political moment where higher education is under siege, football still acts as an apolitical force (at least when it comes to national politics), uniting fans and government officials from all walks of life.
College presidents are so obsessed with football that they overlook the fact that there are outs. CSUSOP’s ambitious redesign plan provides them with the opportunity to reinstate within sport the community service function that is central to the mission of higher education.
The stakes are high here, as universities are in danger of losing their status as the guardians of American U-23 sports. The school’s actions are more concerned with the university’s business interests (i.e., football players are not employees, are not paid directly by the university, etc.) than their actual job of serving the athletic and educational interests of students and the community. The NCAA could lose that privilege if it continues to show that it prioritizes the He presides over university sports. (For example, it’s not that far-fetched to imagine a future in which USA Track and Field runs collegiate national championships, along with other competitions it already runs.) In such cases, a company may lose its tax-exempt status. all If we don’t start uncovering the different sports industries that they operate in, not just football, but the sports that they offer on campus as well. Of course, the football industry has been professional for a long time.
Higher education is moving dangerously close to tax evasion, as former UNC-Chapel Hill President Holden Thorpe recently warned at a university sports symposium co-sponsored by Duke University and UNC. And when the chickens come home to roost, the impact will be felt from athletic departments to higher education as a whole.
This is what happens sometimes when you run to Congress for help. The wrong public official may be looking inside.
Victoria Jackson is a sports historian and clinical associate professor at Arizona State University. She is a former NCAA champion and retired professional track and field athlete.