One hundred twenty members of the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics convened at the Division 1A’s athletic directors’ meeting this week and issued a statement recently acknowledging that they are committed to working together to help with reforms to the NCAA governance process.
However, pay-for-play will not be a reform that’s supported. It’s not a startling revelation, but one that reinforces that while the pay-for-play movement may be growing, there’s still a long way for it to go to gain significant traction.
“Pay for play has no part in the amateur setting,” president of the Division 1A Athletic Directors’ Association Morgan Burke said in a statement that followed his quote with the notation that “the value of a full scholarship and direct support services at Purdue has a value in excess of $250,000. Plus, student-athletes with a full scholarship have no loan to pay back, an expense that could run upwards of $200,000 at Purdue.”
Burke is the athletic director at Purdue. Both Burke and Missouri’s Mike Alden, the president of the NACDA will serve as national spokespeople according to the statement.
Pay-for-play has been in the limelight recently after a Yahoo Sports report found that five SEC players were paid through an intermediary last season. Houston Texas running back Arian Foster said recently that he was paid while he was at Tennessee and allegations of pay-for-play were included in Sports Illustrated’s feature series on Oklahoma State.
In Foster’s case, his admission is after the current NCAA statute of limitations expires. Because of a myriad of factors laid out by Yahoo!’s Dan Wetzel here, the NCAA likely won’t be able to do much, if anything to the programs of the SEC players.
“As a group, the athletics directors are engaged in developing recommendations that will improve the governance and operation of intercollegiate athletics,” Burke said in the statement.
What are some ideas for those recommendations? We’ll find out when Burke and Alden schedule a teleconference in the near future.
Nick Bromberg can be reached on Twitter @YahooDrSaturday. This article is reprinted here with the written permission of Yahoo!
While I disagree with some of the NCAA regulations I do believe that college athletes should not be paid. College athletes are not professionals and while it would be nice to have extra money, paying them takes away from what they primarily are, which are students. High school athletes receive scholarships to play in college. As stated by the article it is payment enough that they do not have student loans to pay back at the end of college.