NCAA president Mark Emmert was at Sports Business Journal’s Intercollegiate Athletics Forum today, and, after touching on the Cam Newton investigation with a line he’s used before — “The burden of proof that we have to rely on...is obviously greater than somebody who writes on a blog.“ —but it’s what he said about college sports and players in general that truly matters.
In Light Of Cam Newton Investigation, NCAA President Mark Emmert Says ‘We Will Not Pay Students’
Via Darren Rovell:
”As long as I’m president of the NCAA, we will not pay students to play sports.“Really? This is the line the NCAA wants to draw, the maypole the NCAA wants to dance around?
The way to eliminate corruption in college sports, and especially in college football, isn’t with more rules and more enforcement. The NCAA and its various partners have been following that drumbeat for decades, and it hasn’t worked. At the very least, Cecil Newton asked about a pay-for-play scheme for his son. And believing that Cecil Newton is the only person looking for money for college athletes is even less plausible than believing Cam Newton knowing nothing about his father’s chicanery.
Rather than engaging in witch hunts and opening loopholes, the NCAA could — should — try to fix it, because that’s how the NCAA can both get its sport cleaned up and play the hero in doing so.
Until there is a way for college athletes to get paid something remotely resembling what they could earn in the open market, the temptation to find more money under the table will always exist. That’s a scenario as familiar and archetypal as the Fall of Man. And the NCAA is still trying to prevent college athletes from taking bites of the forbidden fruit merely by telling them not to. How has that worked out so far?
Somewhere, the snakes hiss. They’re laughing.
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