On the way to work today, I heard an editorial by Frank Deford of Sports Illustrated. He explains that worrying about money spent on college sports was pointless because it's not going to stop. The better way to look at college sports is that they are entertainment, not academics and should all be moved to a new Department of Entertainment.
I couldn't agree more. College sports are big money entertainment and have nothing to do with academics. Certainly they have money spent on them well beyond their intrinsic value, but it's unclear if this money really takes away from what is available for academia. It may, but then again, it's quite possible that such money would only go to some other form of big entertainment if big name college sports didn't exist. If the commercial sports entertainment programs at colleges were distanced from academia, it might be possible for academic budgets to operate without any question of effect from sports.
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