CORRUPTION

SINCE THE UNITED STATES  sprang forth principally from great britain, cricket and rugby were somewhat popluar in colonial america. they evolved into baseball and football, and the rest is history.

as they became popluar after the american civil war, business minded americans began to see the profit potential. since every town in america with nine or more people had a baseball team well before the civil war, professional baseball in big cities was perhaps inevitable, and has now spread throughout much of the world.

baseball is among america's greatest gifts to humanity. simultaneous with professional city baseball, baseball and football clubs sprouted and thrived on post civil war college campuses.

on campus, football was the more popular. it allowede for more participation, at less expense, and its roughness appealed to the young.

always looking for funding sources, administrators chnged their behavior from ingoring the phenomenon, to offering token support, and finally, to full fledged support, contril, and marketing. higher education in america jumped into bed with capitalistic athletic entertainment. 

as early as the first decade of the twentieth century, concerns were raised about the corruptive power of money. grade changing, allowing good players to participate without being enrolled as students; all manner of corruption was cited and condemned, much like today.

the NCAA division I football crisis we have today, wherein billions of dollars are generated through college football, attendant with all manner of corruption, of which the recent penn state scandal is but one rather small example, is really nothing new on a fundamental level.

joe paterno, ironically, addressed the situation directly, when he suggested, a number of years ago, that college football should perhaps be paid like professionals. it is diffucult to maintaint the integrity and purity of amateur athletics when the entertainment is surrounded by billions of dollars.

eventually colleges and universities may be forced to separate athletics from academics,  and become the sponsors and owners of professional sports businesses. in this way, there would be no question as to the nature of the arrangement, and might eliminate, at least to some degree, the rampant corruption we have now.

Bb

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