• On escalating salaries for assistant football coaches: "Although some coaches wonder where the escalation of salaries will end, a more likely scenario is just a continuation of what is being seen now. After all, college sports has become big business."

-- Shreveport Times,
July 2005

• "College sport has become a nakedly commercial enterprise, whether it is to bring in millions of dollars at Miami or Michigan or to attract new students to MacMurray College or Mount Union College."

-- Welch Suggs, "A Place on the Team: the Triumph and Tragedy of Title IX," 2005

• On the hiring process: "College athletics has become such big business that athletics directors are reluctant to risk hiring a high-school coach."

-- Los Angeles Times,
April 2005

• On commercialism at the Final Four: "It's a fine line the NCAA is walking. The Final Four, after all, is an enterprise tied to higher education. The players on the floor are college students, and pep bands, painted faces and everyday fans in the stands are essential to the college athletics environment ... But corporate tie-ins and client catering are facts of business life, and, make no mistake, big-time college sports are also business. When Coca-Cola made an 11-year sponsorship deal in June 2002, the contract was valued at more than $500 million."

-- USA Today,
April 2005

• Editorial on academic reform: "Our hope is that the new rules restore a sense of proportion to college sports. The NCAA should consider further changes, such as making freshmen ineligible for varsity teams and curtailing the number of weekday games. Reformers are climbing a steep mountain, given the big television contracts, the rising celebrity status of college athletes and the run-ups in coaching salaries. Football coaches at a number of colleges now make more than $2 million a year, not counting side deals on speaking engagements and local broadcasting. More and more, college sports are a big business."

-- Minneapolis Star Tribune,
January 2005

• On the Bowl Championship Series: "The other major myth here involves the NCAA's role as a high-minded protector of 'student-athletes,' a term generally followed within any major sports programs by a girlish giggle. College sports are big business, as ABC's bowl contract and CBS' multi-billion dollar broadcast deal for the NCAA basketball tournament clearly indicate. Despite the money flowing to the colleges, however, they remain a fractious and hypocritical body, voicing concerns about amateurism and penalizing players for absurd violations of their arcane rules when that horse left the barn long ago."

-- Variety,
December 2003

• On the NCAA's recent purchase of the NIT: "By the way, whatever happened to 'turning down the volume?' That has been the official theme of the Brand administration. Lower coaching salaries, end the arms race. In the last year, the NCAA has added a 12th regular-season game in football and settled with a sinking ship of a tournament by 'buying' it. Just another H-bomb -- hypocrisy -- dropped by the Brand administration. I really believe Brand is a good leader. He's just caught up in the NCAA vortex. No one is above the inherent hypocrisy and profit motive that has evolved in the NCAA's 100 years of existence."

-- Dennis Dodds, CBS SportsLine.com,
August 2005

• "The NCAA simply reached into the petty cash drawer and gave the Metropolitan Intercollegiate Basketball Association -- they run the NIT -- $56 million to go away. And you doubt that college sports can be very big business?"

-- Bob Ryan, ESPN "Sports Reporters ,"
August 2005