Summary of "The Shame of College Sports"

            In the article “The Shame of College Sports” by Taylor Branch, Branch examines the flaws of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) regarding the concept of “amateurism” in College Sports. Branch gives many statistics at the start of the article to show that large Universities have huge profits: he claims that around 1 Billion USD are earned yearly per major college conference, such as the SEC or Big 10, from athletics, and that a single University earns 40-80 Million USD yearly from athletics. Branch continues to give statistics such as these throughout the article, all the time mentioning that the athletes do not get any of this money. Branch even mentions that the average head football coach at a University makes millions of dollars, but the athletes are heavily penalized if they try and make a few dollars selling their memorabilia. Branch then goes through the history of college sports and the NCAA, revealing some suspicious details of the NCAA’s past and discussing the life of Walter Byers, the executive director of the NCAA for many years.  Later in the article, Branch discusses the hypocrisy of the regulations of the NCAA which allow multinational corporations to advertise on the athlete’s gear but does not allow the athlete to use their celebrity status to obtain free tattoos. Branch also discusses the many court cases involving the NCAA, some of which deal with worker’s compensation (which was not given to the athlete) and the others which deal with players potentially breaking their “amateur” status and using agents, which caused the NCAA to enforce strict penalties to these players. However, Branch does mention a few cases where professors sued the Universities for changing grades to allow eligibility for college players, in which the NCAA did nothing. These cases show that the NCAA is not truly following their “education first” mantra. The final section of the article deals with current court cases which Branch discusses: in particular, O’Bannon v. NCAA, where O’Bannon is being represented by Michael Hausfeld, an antitrust and human-rights lawyer, who Branch has an interview with where Hausfeld appears very confident. This article, from start to finish, attacks the NCAA for their flaws and does an excellent job in revealing those flaws.

Works Cited

Branch, Taylor. "The Shame of College Sports." The Atlantic Oct. 2011. The Atlantic. Web. 29 Jan. 2012.