Awaiting Word

THE AMERICAN HIGHER EDUCATION system, one of the best in the world, is much preoccupied with athletic competition, because the American people are. Rules governing intercollegiate athletic competition are hammered out through a long and complicated process involving state and national politicians, Boards of Directors, and Aministrators. Currently there are several important issues concerning current rules, among them, whether to pay a stipend to college athletes, which has never been done. While the American media and corporate establishment, always an important influence, and a rather high percentage of the American people favor doing so, college administrators, including chancellors, university presidents, and athletic directors largely do not. Five'll get you ten that whatever turns out to be the fondest desire of the media and the public will eventually become law; that's where the money, billions of dollars of it, comes from, before it flows to the institutions of higher learning via their athletes. Administrators are quick to point out that the athletes are treated extremely well already by the colleges and universities, rewarded amply for their athletic efforts with room, books, and board, and an education. True though this may be, it does not alter the fact that the athletes are exploited, majorly. Almost a hundred years ago, american higher education decided to join forces with corporate america in marketing college athletics, and in general it has worked like a charm, profiting the institutions, but not the athletes. But it has brought problems, problems very much with us now. Large amounts of money always attracts corruption, and collegiate athletics is nothing if not full of financial corruption. The rules which the system maintains, the very same system constantly breaks, or fails to enforce, in the intense competition between major universities for athletic talent. The purity of amateur competition is almost a myth, a hoax, almost nonexistant. Athletes are ostensibly allowed to recceive almost nothing from anyone while serving as athletes, and therefore what they receive, or might receive, is tempting, and illegal, like recreational drugs. And the favors flow, from benefactors.Even when receiving room and board, one needs a little bit of money, and college athletes are forced to scratch and scrape for what little extra cash they can find. A somewhat monkish existence. Mandated by law. And yet, there is no amateurish purity, laws are broken constantly, and th esystem is riddled with corruption. Offering some money to college athletes represents a possible soultion to the current unsatisfactory state of affairs. We await word from the powers that be on a better idea, if they don't like this one.