Ethical Issues In College Sports

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Describe and analyze the issues The top issue in the NCAA system of athletics involves poorly managed ethics programs in place at many schools. While the poorly run ethics program is not at the forefront of the discussion its subsequent consequences are, this is of course seen through schools trying to cover up their scandals, instead of being open and honest about them. This is a problem because these cover ups have become a very hot topic in the college sports ranks due to the growth of the media and the timeliness in which the media reacts to these scandals. These cover ups have occurred many times recently in college sports, but the more recent ones covered in the case study include the Penn State scandal, the Ohio State players compensation…show more content…
The case study explains that the Ohio state incident was detrimental to the students involved and the NCAA and its universities are mindful that their student athletes for the most part do not become professionals and will have to find a career outside of sports when their college careers end. “Therefore, any attempt to treat collegiate athletics like a professional sport could be detrimental. While this is a very valid argument, and seems to have the student athlete’s best intentions at heart, it cannot be overlooked that many of the universities have their students receive a subpar education as a result of their training for their respective sports. There is no more glaring example of this issue than the March madness tournament, in which students play basketball for up to a month with no schooling or assignments. This is all done in the name of winning for the students respective universities and bringing in millions of dollars in revenue. Where in this scenario are the athletes best interests at heart? How is putting these students into such a highly stressful and intense environment, with every move scrutinized, not treating these students as if they are professionals? For many of these well-intentioned statements of the NCAA about student’s amateurism, a lot of criticism has come about over the perceived hypercriticism the NCAA seems to have produced in their…show more content…
“Bilas -- who seems just as frustrated as most by a system that allows the NCAA and Texas A&M to profit off of Johnny Manziel while preventing the reigning Heisman Trophy winner from selling his own signature -- began a little experiment in an attempt to highlight the hypocrisy.” (www.cbssports.com) After these findings and subsequent twitter rant by Bilas, the NCAA shut down their website and changed it so players names could not be used in the search engine in order to find and purchase replicas of those players jerseys. The NCAA gave no apology for their website search engine and simply decided to change the process and wipe their hands clean of the issue. Bilas in wake of the controversy was quoted “I didn’t understand why they would do that because of the message it may send. I don’t know why they did it. But on the heels of having said what they said in court earlier this week in court filings in the O’Bannon case, that the jerseys are not of the players, they’re of the school, the school’s property that doesn’t represent the player, I knew that wasn’t true. This kind of thing pointed it out in a pretty stark fashion how ridiculous that statement is.”(Bleacherreport.com) In this Bilas was

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