University of North Carolina Chancellor Lee Roberts presents Bill Belichick with a new UNC hoodie (Screengrab from Go Heels You Tube channel)
It’s not hard to see how college sports became fully professionalized over the decades. What started out more than a century ago as a natural outlet for young people competing for fun and pride was popular and it drew fans and attention and boosters.
And thus, it wasn’t long before college teams and coaches started cutting corners and bending rules of amateurism and academics to get and keep the best athletes.
In this sense, today’s college sports world in which athletes with little real connection to their schools are paid openly and state universities like UNC-Chapel Hill hire people like all-time great NFL coach Bill Belichick to multi-million dollar salaries, is more honest and transparent than it’s ever been.
But that doesn’t make it logical or appropriate.
The bottom line: As the late great UNC president Bill Friday eloquently argued over many years, college sports and competition can be wonderful, but when they become professionalized, higher education institutions soon find themselves headed down a dangerous and destructive road they will find very hard to exit.
For NC Newsline, I’m Rob Schofield.
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