Dear College Presidents: Break The NCAA's Vise Grip On Athletes

The great social quest in American sport is to have one prominent, active, gay male athlete step forward and identify himself.

But I have a similar quest. I seek one prominent college president to say to her trustees or to the other presidents in his conference: "The NCAA is a sham and disgrace. Let's get out of it."

We know those presidents who disdain the NCAA are out there, but, alas, none dare speak the words that will break the evil spell.

Never has the NCAA been held in such scorn, regularly revealed as a hypocritical, bumbling vestige of a time when its so-called student-athletes were known quaintly as "lettermen" and the most notorious activity on campus was panty raids. Innocent America then bought into the NCAA justification of amateurism, but that giddy concept has come to be widely rejected — student-athletes are really sucker-athletes — and without public trust in amateurism, the NCAA is a rickety structure that cannot stand.

Basically, the NCAA has only two functions: to put on championship tournaments; and to enforce its own crazy-quilt rules. Sure, everybody likes championships, but colleges could outsource them to all sorts of other organizations. American Idol could run sports championships, I'm sure; so could Antiques Roadshow. And each athletic division, each conference should make specific rules best for itself.

As for the organization's picayune rules, consider only one recent application of NCAA law: A well-rounded young wrestler at the University of Minnesota named Joel Bauman also records inspirational songs. But even though his musical activities have nothing whatsoever to do with sports — and, of course, there's no money in college wrestling, and it's even being bumped out of the Olympics — Minnesota has told Bauman that to be compliant with the NCAA, he must cease being publicly identified with his motivational music or lose his scholarship.

So, principled, he quit wrestling. Your NCAA at work, helping our sucker-athletes.

The alumni of at least one college, Amherst, have opened a website seeking support to get their president to take Amherst out of the NCAA. More foreboding, a lawsuit brought by former athletes — which seeks damages from the NCAA for commercially exploiting their youthful amateur images in perpetuity — is one step closer to a jury trial next spring.

A couple of weeks ago, in a U.S. District Court, the NCAA lost, for the third time, an attempt to get the lawsuit dismissed. And given that this case is class-action and antitrust, which trebles damages, the NCAA could literally be liable for billions of dollars, which would, presumably, bankrupt it.

Ironically, if the esteemed presidents won't act, it may be some of those old sucker-athletes who finally do the NCAA in.

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