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No one in the room spoke. There was silence from the phone speakers. Paterno's 46-year tenure as head coach of one of the country's storied college football programs was over, and the gravity of the action began to sink in. "It was hard for us to want to get to the point where we were going to say that," said Ira M. Lubert, a board member who works in private equity. "I was laying in bed that night shaking. And I couldn't sleep - thinking: We just terminated Joe Paterno."
New head football coaches at major-college programs will be paid an average of nearly 35% more next season than what their predecessors made in 2011, a USA Today survey finds. The increase means the average basic compensation at the schools making changes will go from a little more than $1.1 million this past season to a little more than $1.5 million next season. This rise will fuel what is likely to be another annual increase in the pay for all head football coaches in the NCAA's Bowl Subdivision, even as instructional spending at many schools slows or declines.
After weeks of buildup, the National Collegiate Athletic Association's Division I Board of Directors finally revisited its rule that -- before it was suspended because so many institutions opposed it -- gave colleges permission to award athletes on full scholarships up to $2,000 more in aid. The board of Division I presidents didn't give up on the legislation, but consented to modify it, putting an altered version of the rule on the agenda for April's board meeting.
Rather than "how much should athletes be paid?" we ask "why allow 300-plus independent schools to agree collectively on the maximum that each gives its athletes?" Why do we allow collusion in college sports when in the rest of America, we trust free markets?
The roughly 100 public universities in the NCAA's top-tier football division took in more than $5 billion last year. And just about everybody - the coaches, assistants, colleges, broadcasters and merchandisers - shared in the spoils. Everybody, that is, but the players, the "student-athletes" who play without salaries and can be sanctioned for accepting a free meal.
2011 was a brutal year for the NCAA, with explosive scandals, rules violations by athletes and coaches alike, and all-around ire from the news media, college officials, the public and even members of Congress. All that will be driving much of the discussion among officials at this week's NCAA convention, getting under way today on the association's home turf and culminating Saturday in votes on various pieces of legislation at all three division levels. Here's a look at what to expect from the NCAA's 2012 annual convention.
There are fundamental flaws in the pay-for-play mantra. Proponents naively think that paying players will solve all the problems involving agents, team boosters and others who are willing to break rules. They are wrong. The stakes will simply be raised to bribe athletes to attend a school, support them financially for the agent's future gain, or help them cheat in school. No, paying players a salary would make the situation worse.
It's been a rough year for big-time college sports, to put it mildly. And as the NCAA opens its annual convention in Indianapolis, the association - which has suffered through an unprecedented series of scandals - finds itself besieged by calls for change. But what would change look like? We wanted specifics, so we asked three distinguished experts to stop by our offices and share their thoughts. The result was a wide-ranging and thought-provoking conversation.
The leaders of college sports gather in Indianapolis this week for the annual NCAA Convention after a year of scandals ranging from celebrity coaches breaking association rules to allegations of gut-wrenching crimes. Much of what will be on display at the convention is the effort, more than a century old, to find peace in the marriage of higher education and big-money sports. A critique of the status quo could come Wednesday when U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan gives the keynote address at a luncheon.
The BCS championship game will be held Monday night, and will generate tens of millions of dollars, probably hundreds of millions, for ESPN, the NCAA, advertisers, Las Vegas gamblers, New Orleans vendors, coaches, assistant coaches, athletic directors, assistant athletic directors, apparel companies, sports magazines, newspapers and on and on. But none for the workers themselves, the stars, the talent we want to see: the players.
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