Ncaa: Corporate Issues Essay

Submitted By sjreynolds
Words: 2700
Pages: 11

The rival college always cheats to win, always. They are constantly receiving NCAA violations, loss of scholarships, demoralizing titles such as “lack of institutional control”, and most often in house punishment. From the opposite view the favored college is often also experiencing the same situations, yet both academia’s continue to compete at the highest level in collegiate athletics and some with incredible success. Major college sports today are not what it used to be. Gone are the walk-on only teams. Gone are the prestigious rivalries. Gone is the local college team feel of major collegiate sports. Today our universities missions are to educate, however, their respective athletic departments have become big, big business. How big? Oregon’s athletic department in 2009 netted $44,538,251 (Dorhmann, SI). Landmark National Bank, a local bank to the surrounding Manhattan area, profited $5.1 million in 2011 (FAQS.org) and they are in the business of, well, making money. How much money the athletic departments make is relative to the topic only in that if you win you make money and how you win can sometimes be a cloudy topic. The competition in college sports have driven up the popularity, however, the vagueness in its rules has driven up the cheating. Many NCAA rules weren’t initially created with the incredible desire to win at an all cost’s attitude. They were merely guidelines that the schools were to follow to keep their institutions at an education first standard. Athletic scholarships weren’t even official until 1950 when the NCAA deemed athletic scholarships could be permitted to individuals only with the participation academically and athletically by the schools choice (Huma, Price of Poverty in Big Time College Sports). Today the NCAA headquarters in Indianapolis employs 400 plus people and in 2010 compensated their 14 highest-ranking executives nearly $6 million (Sander, The Chronicle). These statistics provide proof that collegiate sports are not only something that colleges need to have; they want to be the best at them. Cheating in college sports is argued nationwide in bars with friends, on campus, and in the athletic departments themselves. Regardless, cheating takes place on campuses everywhere. It is almost a part of college sports. The best cheaters win, right? What makes it ethically correct for an athletic department to break the rules? Are there certain exceptions? There are many examples that follow the standard way of thinking that cheating is wrong. John Calipari a nationally recognized coach at the University of Kentucky, one of the top 5 basketball programs of all time. He is known for getting the best players in the country and winning. In fact he just won the national championship this season. Taking a deeper look into Calipari’s history as an NCAA basketball coach, it will be found riddled with vacated wins, violations, and suspensions. His two previous stints at University of Massachusetts and Memphis both ended in recruiting scandals and ultimately vacating wins and scholarships from the respective schools (Winn, SI.CNN). However, Calipari went on to a pay raise and a different, better, job than the one he left which was riddled with NCAA violations. His programs were run in an unethical way, yet he came out on top both financially and with overall job improvements. John Calipari’s public status even became brighter and better than it was before. This is a claim that for a coach, cheating or side stepping the rules can very well be rewarding and in some cases the answer to winning. When is it actually cheating? Baylor recently was punished and found guilty of breaking recruiting rules. They weren’t paying players, offering extra benefits, or cars but rather they sent 405 extra text messages (King, ESPN). Most of the messages to kids who never played a game for Baylor, yet these were considered major violations in the eyes of the NCAA. To help put cheating and it’s place in collegiate