Thursday Quickies: The NCAA is more ridiculous than we thought

A new NCAA internal report gives us a glimpse to the inside

By Zac Oakes@ZacOakes Jan 23, 2020, 6:40am EST

If you’ve ever wondered what goes on behind the scenes with the NCAA, there are some new documents that give us a glimpse.

Last spring, an NCAA working group gathered in Dallas, Texas, to talk about the NCAA as a whole, its problems, and its future.

The Los Angeles Times was able to get its hands on some documents from that meeting thanks to an Open Records Request and it’s... interesting.

Each attendee received a 44-page report marked “Privileged and Confidential — Not for Distribution” filled with anonymous feedback from top college athletics officials.

One official seemed to think sports writers were a major problem.

“It is a hard environment with these sports writers who think amateurism is ludicrous. I think there is room for the definition of amateurism to evolve. In some sports, it is okay for students to compete in non-collegiate competition, like the Olympics, where there is an opportunity to make money through endorsements. And this inconsistency is ridiculous to me. Treat student-athletes like other students. If a pianist got an endorsement from Steinway, we go, yay. If it is an athlete, totally different story.”

And one predicted the doom of the NCAA...

“The biggest threat is that the court system will force us to start paying athletes. And that will be the end of amateur sports as we know it,” one commented. “I think if we did a better job to show the academic benefits of playing college sports, it would take a lot of wind out of the balloon. All of the perks like letter jackets, cost of attendance, ring, etc.”

There are a lot of other interesting nuggets from this report, so make sure you check out the LA Times report here.

These are some interesting comments from these officials, especially the one above that the NCAA would get some good PR from showing letter jackets and rings. Like that will undo all the absurd decisions the NCAA has made and continue to makes.

And now on to your Thursday Quickies...

Tweet of the Day

Some Cat on Cat crime here...

Anthony Davis with the smooth footwork gets the bucket over Julius Randle

pic.twitter.com/YxX8I3LEqX
— Big Blue Nation (@BigBlue9ation) January 23, 2020