.............................. wrote:
the ncaa does regulate it, it gives men 12.6 and women 18 scholarships to recruit eligible human beings.
Go build a team.
Should we mandate how many throwers and sprinters must be on scholarship too? Many nationally known cross country teams would be up a creek in that case.
Should we mandate how many athletes should be from a certain state?
Should we mandate how many should have blue eyes?
I can see the argument that having foreigners will raise the bar for Americans. I can also see the argument that the public schools are tax-supported and should be spending their scholarships on Americans, in fact, on in-state kids as much as possible.
This boils down to a philosophical question of the role of NCAA sports. Is it to develop athletes for the "next level"? Is it to provide school spirit? Or is it to enrich the experience of the students who participate in the activity, the same way Chess Club or a fraternity can?
I also acknowledge that the NCAA is a scam. NCAA football is all the proof we need. All their talk about the "student-athlete" but now there are games all week long?
So to the point of my post: If we accept that the role of NCAA athletics is to enrich the experience of the participating student, and if we accept that tax-money should be spent in support of locals, then the above poster's slippery slope falls over the edge. The parents of blue-eyed people pay taxes, as do the parents of throwers and sprinters. That's a big difference.
I think the coach of any state school should have a moral obligation to recruit his/her own state as hard as possible, but ultimately, needs to act upon the mandate of the college president and the AD. So if the goal is to win, the coach will probably need to expand his/her horizon.
Personally, I think we should dump NCAA sports and adopt a European club system. I also think we should have an NCAA championship football game, and give the TV money to women's sports in exchange for exempting football from Title IX (which would probably save many "minor" sports). I have lots more opinions, too, but none is particularly interesting, as you have probably figured out already.