National Collegiate Athletic Association - Criticisms

Criticisms

Numerous criticisms have been lodged against the NCAA. These include:

• In 2012, the NCAA was criticized for implementing penalties and bowl suspensions to the Pennsylvania State University and Football program without performing an investigation, for basing judgement upon a largely unsubstantiated third party document ("Freeh Report"), for overstepping the NCAA bounds of athletic related rules infractions and disallowing any possible appeal as per the NCAA processes and procedures allow.
• In 2009, the NCAA was criticized for suspending Paul Donahoe's NCAA eligibility after it was made public that he had appeared on pornography web site Fratmen.
• The creators of South Park in the episode "Crack Baby Athletic Association" (s15e05)
• Several people, notably including former Sports Illustrated columnist Rick Reilly, and NPR's Frank Deford, have criticized the NCAA for its inflexibility.
• Former NCAA President Walter Byers in his book Unsportsmanlike Conduct: Exploiting College Athletes refers to the NCAA's operation by stating that "Today the NCAA Presidents Commission is preoccupied with tightening a few loose bolts in a worn machine, firmly committed to the neo-plantation belief that the enormous proceeds from college games belong to the overseers (administrators) and supervisors (coaches). The plantation workers performing in the arena may only receive those benefits authorized by the overseers."
• Following losing the 1953 case The University of Denver v Nemeth, where it was found that a student and athlete was owed workers' compensation, it has been argued that the NCAA created the term "student-athlete". This was done according to Andrew Zimbalist in his book Unpaid Professionals (1999) to prevent similar future litigation losses.
• In 2007, the case of White et al. v NCAA was brought by former NCAA student-athletes Jason White, Brian Pollack, Jovan Harris and Chris Craig as a class action lawsuit. They argued that the NCAA's current limits on a full scholarship or Grant in Aid was a violation of federal antitrust laws. Their reasoning was that in the absence of such a limit, NCAA member schools would be free to offer any financial aid packages they desired to recruit the student and athlete. The NCAA settled before a ruling by the court, by agreeing to set up the Former Student-Athlete Fund to "assist qualified candidates applying for receipt of career development expenses and/or reimbursement of educational expenses under the terms of the agreement with plaintiffs in a federal antitrust lawsuit." More information about this settlement is available at NCAA
• The National Collegiate Players Association (NCPA) is a group started by former UCLA football players with the purpose of organizing student-athletes. Their goal is to change NCAA rules they view as unjust. Today, this continues by doing the following:

1. Raising the scholarship amount
2. Holding schools responsible for their players' sports-related medical injuries
3. Increasing graduation rates.