UNC football is in the middle of a scandal involving improper contact with athletic agents and potential academic violations. It turns out that one of the main ways the scandal broke was that players were bragging via Twitter about perks paid for by agents, e.g, drinks, entry to fancy parties, and so on. So this morning’s Daily Tar Heel says… wait for it…
The North Carolina football program instated a new team policy Thursday that bans all players from using Twitter accounts. Really? Like the main problem is how they got caught?
4 Comments
BTW – no more faculty blogs.
For UNC — I’m neither an alum nor proud to make the point — isn’t the messenger basically the problem?
In a “good” world competing for recruits through exclusive parties, alcohol, ties to agents, etc. ostensibly gives UNC a competitive advantage (read: a higher national profile, more and better bowl games and the money that comes with them). In what’s probably a more realistic world, competing for recruits this way just allows them to “stay in the game” with other top college football programs.
If the former football agent Josh Luchs is to be believed in the recent SI article ( http://goo.gl/jYJi ), recruiting violations and perks like these are far from uncommon, if not entirely the norm. “Sunlight” actually is the problem here for everyone involved, save for the faculty and their blogs, which seems like an overreach.
I understand the argument, sure, but it definitely doesn’t help our image that what we’re concentrating on is how we got caught! And BTW I think Philip is joking – I’ve heard no “no faculty blogs” policy, nor would one be enforceable IMHO.
One serious issue is that the NCAA rules often put student athletes in a worse financial position than other students. For example, their practice schedules keep them as busy as a part-time job, but they don’t get any earnings from the job. They are not supposed to have any pocket money. The average student in college is not in this situation. In some cases, the athletes actually get less than the official “cost of instruction” of the university. Then you add to that the sense of distributive injustice — the school and the coaches are making a great deal off the labor of the student athletes but NCAA rules prohibit the student athletes from legitimately profiting from their labor.
The tuition scholarship and the chance to go to college is a benefit, of course, but only if the student athlete is allowed/helped to get an education and actually graduate.