College sports is pro sports, and we should treat it that way

By Mike McIntire

So far this year, some of the biggest headlines in college sports have had little to do with what happens on the gridiron or hardwood.

Louisville’s men’s basketball coach was suspended because a team employee hired a stripper to have sex with recruits and players. The University of Mississippi faces a raft of allegations, including boosters showering athletes with cash and car loans, academic cheating, and an ill-advised phone call by the football coach to an escort service.

And at Baylor, a lawsuit asserted that more than 30 football players committed 52 rapes over four years, adding a sickening new dimension to a sexual assault scandal that has already seen athletes arrested, the coach fired, and the university president resign.

How did we get to this place at our institutions of higher learning, where education, the law, and even basic morality take a back seat to the smash-mouth needs of the multibillion-dollar commercial enterprise known, quaintly, as intercollegiate athletics? The truth is, we’ve always been here.

From its earliest days in the 19th century, football, read full article.