The following diary is by Miles Grant, who asked me to post it because he was having a few technical difficulties (damn iframes!).
College football’s biggest problem, as I understand it from watching this 60 Minutes report by Armen Keteyian last night, is that it makes too much money.
The optimist would say CBS thinks its broad audience has rarely thought about how money impacts college-run football, the universities, and athletes, and is hoping to get them thinking about the topic. Talking directly about how top colleges rake in the dough for themselves while tossing crumbs to the athletes who actually put their lives on the line to play the games would be too jarring, even off-putting.
But the cynic would say that this CBS report is concern trolling at its worst, pretending to care while ignoring the real issues and skipping solutions altogether. The report presenting the views of four people cashing in on the NCAA’s corrupt cartel (two athletic directors & two coaches) with only a brief comment from an athlete and nothing from college football’s many critics. The cynic would also point out that CBS, which has an $825 million contract to broadcast SEC football games, has a strong financial incentive to go whistling past the graveyard on this one.
What do you think?
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