Ncaa Puts Big Schools On Pro Level

A toast to college athletics, which came out of the closet this week.

Now sports has its own little Dow Jones comprising the five major professional conglomerates: Major League Baseball, the NFL, the NBA, the NHL and the National Commercial Athletic Association.

The NCAA that is to say, the 100-odd muscle colleges that play real tackle football - clambered up on the big board by effectively buying the silence of all the shirttail relatives. By threatening to take their marquee value and go home, Division I-A football schools finally wrested their collective destiny away from the Division I-AA, II and III rabble who for far too long thought they should have a say in the management of collegiate athletics because - get this - they were colleges, too.

As if, the girl might say.

Don’t set your VCR for a football playoff - not next year, nor the next, nor until every last nickel has been milked from ol’ Bossie, the sacred bowl cow. Eventually, the newly hatched Alliance - the one that gave us Nebraska 62, Florida 24 - will cut deeply enough into the ratings and revenues of the warm-up bowls that they’ll cease to be useful.

Leaving Big Football to sell itself to the highest bidder.

And because that will be new money, and not the existing pot being divvied up with the po’ folk, the Division I-A cartel won’t have to share a farthing.

Ain’t sovereignty grand?

This is the history they made at the NCAA Convention in Dallas: they made it the last NCAA Convention. No longer must North Carolina break bread with North Dakota. No longer does Alabama State’s vote cancel out Alabama’s.

All that remains is the pretense that we’re talking about amateurs.

“This move,” said Iowa faculty representative Bonnie Slatton, “makes it harder for us to say we’re not just another form of professional sports.”

A pretty transparent masquerade anyway. It’s hard to keep the scam going when Notre Dame’s date with Air Force was being called the $8 Million Game - the bonus the Irish reaped for winning and playing in the Orange Bowl.

Those are damn near Super Bowl wages. If only the players received wages.

Well, the booty’s only going to get bigger. Wonder what Stephon Marbury thinks when he dribbles on the Coca-Cola logo splashed across Georgia Tech’s basketball floor?

It’s a wonder any educrat can keep a straight face.

“I can’t believe with the presidents at the top of the structure that every school is going to become Nike U,” Duke assistant vice president Chris Kennedy in easily the funniest line to come out of the convention. “It would go against everything that we stand for.”

Hey, pal, you work at at Nike U. Shortly before burnout, Coach K signed on the dotted line. That funny little Swoosh on the uniform isn’t mustard, ace.

Do you suppose that while Mr. Assistant Vice President was being awestruck by the historic repercussions of this final final NCAA Convention it occurred to him that the conventioneers could have made some real history - with some substantive support of the athletes?

Oh, wait. They didn’t kill off gymnastics or swimming, and they actually eased academic restrictions on world-class athletes in individual sports in training for the Olympics. Well done. That’s compassion. That’s really being a team pla… what? The U.S. Olympic Committee is considering giving the NCAA $50 million in the next five years?

And to think we call them “non-revenue sports?”

Oh, and the NCAA did pad its “special circumstances” fund for athletes to $10 million. All they need is a funeral to go to and the money is theirs.

Here’s what NCAA didn’t do:

They didn’t increase the value of scholarships and voted down a provision that would allow athletes to hold limited-income jobs, so that a Corliss Williamson wouldn’t come back from the Final Four to find the power in his apartment shut off.

They thumbs-downed financial aid for athletes to attend summer school before enrollment, something to help them become academically acclimated.

They refused to adjust the sliding scale which determines academic qualifiers, putting increased emphasis on test scores in a manner even the authors of those tests say perverts their purpose.

And, worst of all, they refuse to budge on the concept of giving the old Prop 48 non-qualifiers or partial qualifiers their year of lost eligibility back if they make proper progress toward a degree. So, if Notre Dame admits a partial qualifer, the school’s academic credibility will never overtake that of kid’s SAT.

Here’s an idea: get Nike to sponsor the partial qualifier’s fourth year of eligibility. Let ‘em put a Swoosh on the cap and gown.

Hey, you’re out of the closet now, guys. Anything goes.

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Blanchette The Spokesman-Review