CFT: Female kicker doesn't make the cut at LSU

AP

Early this morning we noted that former North Carolina defensive back Deunta Williams, when he wasnt accusing the SEC of paying for football players, took issue with what he described as a broken system as it relates to the NCAA and collegiate athletics.

College football is a business, and the people who run college football are only interested in money and using the players as product to make money, Williams was quoted as saying.

The thinly-veiled inference, of course, is that the NCAA uses student-athletes for their financial gain, a form of exploitation if you will.

Obviously, the leaders of intercollegiate sports vehemently disagree with that assessment. During an interview with Bob Ley on ESPNs Outside the Lines Tuesday afternoon, NCAA president Mark Emmert addressed the criticism college sports has come under in relation to the financial benefits realized by the universities and how precious little is funneled back to the individuals who are actually responsible for the on-field work thats made the game, in the case of football, the second most popular sport in the country.

Heres the transcript of Emmerts interview, courtesy of PFTs Mike Florio (yes, you read that correctly).

Ill tell you the critique that I agree with, and the critique [is] that theres such an emphasis in America on athletics as a route to fame and fortune that it has skewed far too many young peoples view of how you can be successful as a young person.

We surveyed our Division II NCAA mens basketball players. Division II.Half of them believed they were going to make a living in professional basketball. Maybe one will. But half of them thought they might make a living as a basketball player.

We have far too few young people realizing that the route to success in life is to get a good education in middle school, high school, and college, and then go on and do all the things that people do in life. When we see a young person getting an opportunity to go to college, the $2 billion second only to the federal government the total amount of financial aid thats proposed by NCAA institutions to young people, we see young people having higher graduation rates in Divisions I, II, and III than the rest of the student body, we see them having access to the best coaches, the best educators, the best trainers, the best tutors that help produce academic success like that. If thats the definition of exploitation, then I dont know what exploitation is.

I would have loved to have my kids exploited like that. I would love to have been exploited like that myself as a young man. The idea that somehow playing in front of a stadium with 70,000 people and being on ESPN SportsCenter diminishes you in some fashion while creating an opportunity for you to be known world-wide is somehow exploitation is a curious notion of exploitation. I think the vast majority of your audience would love to be on this show, would love to have a chance to have their name known widely.

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CFT: Female kicker doesn't make the cut at LSU