Educators and Congress Need to Resuscitate the Student-Athlete
College sports have completely transformed into professional sports. No genie can or will put this multi- billion-dollar industry back into the amateur bottle. But if these teams are going to continue to represent our institutions of higher learning, educators must restore a fundamental paradigm: athletes must be students first and competitors second. Congress will need to be a willing partner in this transition.
Congress is currently considering the SCORE Act and the Protect College Sports Act. Unfortunately, neither bill addresses the severed connection between athletics and education. Nor do they address the absurdity of current tax policy: wealthy donors can receive the same tax write-off for contributing to an athletic department to recruit a five-star offensive lineman as they do for funding cancer research.
Furthermore, both bills leave the future of college sports in the hands of the same institutional bureaucrats who presided over the over-commercialization and litigation failures that fueled this current crisis.
If Congress wants to help universities restore educational integrity, it must stop subsidizing the operations of major-........
