National Collegiate Athletic Association |
The NCAA News - News and FeaturesThe NCAA News -- November 22, 1999 Thoughts of the Day Financial Aid "We must recognize the fact that scholarship funds for athletes will be made available either openly or sub-rosa. "I honestly believe that the institution that believes this is not so is taking an ostrich-like attitude. At this point, it becomes necessary for the college that is interested in student-athletes to consider what protection can be placed around scholarships to the end that the young man with athletics ability will not be exploited. This can, it seems to me, be done by very few, but very categorical, regulations -- no matter what the source of the scholarship may be: "(1) No scholarship shall be offered to a man who does not meet fully the entrance requirements of the institution. "(2) No scholarship shall be continued for any man who does not successfully meet the academic requirements within the institution. "(3) No scholarship shall be taken away from a man because of failure to go out for athletics or to play on athletic teams of the institution. "(4) No man shall be given a job by the institution for which he is not required to give value received."
-- Thurston J. Davies, president, Television
"When it is recognized that television may very well prove to be one of the biggest technical and economic changes to appear on the horizon of this generation -- plus the fact that television may also turn out to be the greatest motivating force for social and cultural change for possibly several generations -- it should indicate the need for most careful thinking and action by people caught in television's path."
-- Thomas J. Hamilton, University of Pittsburgh Recruiting "I think a coach is in the best position of anyone to know the facts of life on the recruiting problem. ... "Twenty years ago, I think it would be fair to say that a football coach spent 90 percent of his activity on the technical aspects of football coaching and perhaps 10 percent on recruiting. I would certainly say that today, 50 percent of the time and energy of a coaching staff is spent on coaching the sport and at least 50 percent is spent in recruitment, or to put it a little more bluntly, as one of my Southeastern friends said once, 'To get 'em is just as important as to coach 'em.' "A football coach is a production manager in the fall and a sales manager for the other nine months of the year -- a sales manager of a highly complex organization."
-- Lynn O. Waldorf, football coach, Cost of athletics "It is possible that intercollegiate athletics are too important to be left to coaches and directors. Another way of saying it is that what we are doing in intercollegiate athletics is not and must never be considered to be a thing of costs. It is part of the organic whole, of each of the institutions we represent. It is part of the life of the institution, and it is part of the life of the academic community, and we have always got to consider it in such terms as that. "If it were not for this fact, if it were not that so many more things than simply dollars are concerned, then the problem might be quickly solved by the competent directors of athletics who abound in this organization and around the country."
-- Edwin H. Cady, faculty athletics representative, Indiana University, Bloomington, 1969 "The annals recording the more than 60 years of NCAA history are replete with eloquent speeches of intercollegiate leaders urging support and perfection of the educators' concept of amateurism. It would be tragic to yield now to the constant urgings of expedient zealots, some harried administrators and a few win-conscious coaches and the professionals themselves who have no regard or respect for amateur principles. "The ideal is far too important for the colleges, the competitors and the nation itself to permit a piecemeal surrender. Our educational institutions have built with some pain and considerable effort a sound administrative structure for intercollegiate athletics, and it should be used to eradicate professional concepts and attitudes just as it has been used to better so many other aspects of this most vital of all sports activities -- intercollegiate athletics."
-- Walter Byers, NCAA executive director, 1969 Responding to critics of major college football during debate over the creation of Division I-A at the 1978 NCAA Convention:
"I think it is a fortuitous thing that we do attract large crowds into our stadiums. I think it has been a healthy thing for intercollegiate athletics in this country. As we all know, in many schools this has helped to support the very sophisticated programs of athletics and certainly benefited many, many boys. So I think this particular bias is one that we resent. Yet when you have two groups with such divergent philosophies in the same room together constantly jockeying for position or for the success of their own point of view, you are going to have constant friction." -- Edmund Joyce, faculty athletics representative, University of Notre Dame |
"Many of us have witnessed the great changes in American life from the introduction of the automobile, the changes of habit that have come with the introduction of the telephone, and then the radio. We have seen the change from silent pictures to sound, from black and white to color, and realize that this is an ever-changing and progressive world. We have witnessed the absorption of these technological advances into the full pattern of our daily and economic life.
"We realize that football has been subject to abuses and there have been scandals from time to time, and we all regret it and resent it when it happens. Yet should we make a change in a program that causes large crowds to come into the stadium? Do they mean that we are simply in the entertainment business and ought to do something about it, ought to reduce our programs, perhaps, so that there will be 'less commercialism' or less attention on the revenue-producing aspects of football?