SCRANTON TIMES-TRIBUNE Editorial: Mark Emmert, the oh-so-righteous head of the NCAA, made clear while imposing draconian penalties on Penn State in the Jerry Sandusky scandal that education is far more important than sports – his organization’s $10 billion TV contract for basketball, rather than philosophy, notwithstanding.
“One of the grave dangers stemming from our love of sports is the sports themselves can become too big to fail and too big to even challenge. The result can be an erosion of academic values that are replaced by hero worship and winning at all costs,” he declared, adding that while the PSU case could not be addressed by the NCAA in terms of “this specific bylaw or that specific bylaw, it certainly hits the fundamental values of what athletics are supposed to be doing in the context of higher education.”
Whether the PSU sanctions have anything to do with higher education is questionable. Players transferring from Penn State, which had an 87 percent graduation rate for football players last year, have gone to schools with an average 64 percent graduation rate for athletes… (more)
