By Ken Reed
A petition supported by Champion Women, an advocacy organization for girls and women in athletics, and the Drake Group, an organization that works for academic integrity in intercollegiate athletics, is currently posted on Change.org.
The petition calls for a bipartisan Presidential Commission “to identify and examine issues of national concern related to the conduct of intercollegiate athletics and to make recommendations for the resolution of such issues.”
The petition claims the NCAA has failed to address numerous critical issues confronting intercollegiate athletics.
The reason is clear: big-time intercollegiate athletics is a win-at-all-costs (WAAC) and profit-at-all-costs (PAAC) entity, not an educational entity.
Moreover, the petition nails the reason why the NCAA won’t change and a Presidential Commission is needed:
“The NCAA is currently controlled by a small group of highly-commercialized athletic programs that set national policies to serve themselves; thereby making the organization incapable of reforming itself.”
Drake Group member, Allen Sack, a professor at the University of New Haven, says his organization strongly supports this effort.
“The Drake Group, an organization to which I have belonged for 16 years, has supported some sort of congressional effort to disclose information that would help to assess whether the NCAA actually accomplishes its stated mission of maintaining athletes as an integral part of the student body, and retaining a clear line of demarcation between college and professional sports,” according to Sack. “If you support a bipartisan president’s commission to examine this issue please sign off on this petition.”
Please take a look and give it serious consideration.
— Ken Reed, Sports Policy Director, League of Fans
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