- Reflections, 2016-21: A Sequel to an Odyssey of Reform Initiatives, 1986-2015. - Reflections, 2016-21: A Sequel to an Odyssey of Reform Initiatives, 1986-2015. Dr. Frank Splitt, Longtime Drake Group Member and Recipient of the Robert Maynard Hutchins Award has posted a sequel to his 1986-2015 Odyssey of Reform Initiatives. A prolific and nationally respected voice advocating for intercollegiate athletics reform, this new collection of writings continues to ... Read more
- Reclaiming Academic Primacy in Higher Education: The Revised IRS Form 990 Can Accelerate the Process - The revised Form 990, “Return of Organization Exempt from Income Tax,” filed by many public charities and other exempt organizations, has the potential to fully expose the Achilles’ Heel of the NCAA and its member institutions – the extremely weak, if any, educational basis for the current financial structure of big-time college sports. This would ... Read more
- Collegiate Athletics Reform: A Call for Federal Intervention - The American public’s seemingly unbounded love of college sports entertainment at any cost can be readily exploited by skilled marketing professionals to the long-term detriment of the integrity and health of higher education in America. The incremental cost of such exploitation to build an ever bigger college sports entertainment enterprise amounts to the cost of ... Read more
- Collegiate Athletics Reform: A Collection of References from the National Catholic Reporter - As suggested in “Telling the truth on campus,” the presidents of our Catholic colleges and universities could be moved to solicit advice from their faculty and others on the place of the value-distorting, sports entertainment business in their schools. They might even go so far as to provide independently verifiable evidence that their athletes are ... Read more
- Collegiate Athletics Reform: Ever More Likely Up to the Courts - “Washington should stop subsidizing millionaires,” Obama said in his State of the Union address—no doubt unaware of tax subsidies for numerous millionaire coaches and NCAA cartel as well as conference officials. »Read more
- Collegiate Athletics Reform: Trilogy III - It is my view that the probability of an academic body emerging to rein in the runaway college sports entertainment industry is extremely low. Academic officials will most likely avoid taking on the powerful NCAA cartel and their governing boards so will continue to deal with related problems by looking the other way—muddling through will ... Read more
- Collegiate Athletics Reform: Trilogy IV - Most likely the public is unaware of its sports-entertainment induced coma that effectively inhibit critical thinking and discussion of issues. There will be no complaint from government officials. From a political point of view it is much better to have the public discuss football and basketball games than it is to have it troubling these officials ... Read more
- Collegiate Sports Reform: On Taxing College Sports Related Revenues - University athletics benefit from in what can be likened to a stealth entitlement. Donors can usually write off gifts for athletic facilities and the right-to-purchase tickets. For example, federal tax revenues are lost because more than 1,000 university sports departments are eligible to extort deductible gifts as a condition for ticket sales. »Read more
- College Sports Reform: A View of the Likely End Game Via Four Related Commentaries - It’s Time to Expose the Big Lie Congress has been reluctant to strip the NCAA and its member universities of their tax-exempt status and so help limit the seemingly uncontrolled growth of professionalized big-time college sports entertainment. »Read more
- An Open Letter to the President - The challenge before us is to get academics-over-athletics priorities re-established at America’s colleges and universities that are held captive to the NCAA’s commercial interests in its sports entertainment businesses. Such interests appear to be first and foremost to the NCAA, not the interests of college athletes and American taxpayers. Simply stated, the NCAA has a ... Read more
- Collegiate Sports Reform: The Likely End Game - Simply stated, the big lie is that, for the most part, college athletes at big-time schools are counterfeit amateurs—passed off as legitimate students.[6] The objective is to create the illusion that NCAA and conference operations fit the academic mission of the participating schools. These athletes generate billions of dollars for said untaxed business operations—a tax ... Read more
- Collegiate Athletics Reform: A Lesson Learned - The Secretary is seemingly unaware of the fact that NCAA’s highly-touted APR is not a realistic measure of academic progress. In light of the intrinsic defects of the APR and the historic failure of the APR process to promote academic reforms, as well as the lack of reform-leadership abilities of school presidents, it is almost ... Read more
- Collegiate Athletics Reform: When Will We Ever Learn? - There is no meaningful oversight of the NCAA cartel (the NCAA and its member institutions) as it is not only self-reporting and self-regulating, but self-enforcing as well. Furthermore, the cheating and corruption that enables the cartel to maintain its tax-exempt status—while fielding professional teams with their conferences serving as the minor leagues for the NFL and ... Read more
- Scoreboard, Baby Notwithstanding: A Postscript - America has the most to lose as it confronts new global realities with its institutional priority of athletics over academics—all the while handicapped by the public’s continued obsession with sports entertainment. America’s present-day position does not present a pretty picture. What to do? »Read more
- Why Congress has yet to Curtail the NCAA Cartel’s Tax Breaks, Exemptions Historically Tied to Amateur Athletics - One might ask why Senators and other members of the U.S. Congress are not working on provisions to pare back the unjustified tax breaks that the cartel—the National Collegiate Athletic Association and its member colleges and universities—as well as its supporters have come to accept as entitlements. All of the cartel members are nonprofits that don’t ... Read more
- The Brutal Truth About College Sports: Who Will Tell the President? - The open letter to the president addressed the challenge to get academics over athletics priorities re-established at America’s colleges and universities that are held captive to the NCAA’s commercial interests—asking for assistance from the executive branch of government to see that compliance to federal requirements for the NCAA’s tax exemptions are enforced. »Read more
- Reclaiming Academic Primary in Higher Education: New Hope for the Future - Notwithstanding the fact that NCAA Bylaws stipulate that intercollegiate sports are to be subordinate to the academic mission of their member schools; professionalized college sports have severely compromised academic integrity and warped the academic missions at our nation’s colleges and universities that support big-time football and men’s basketball programs. In other words, the athletic tail has ... Read more
- Big-time College Sports: A Plausible Alternative to Pro Sports? - Perhaps even more important to the plausibility of bigtime college sports as an alternative to pro sports are the related financial advantages of operating from a nonprofit base. The NCAA cartel could continue with its successful amateur charade and operate its sports entertainment businesses as nonprofit organizations with minimum payroll expenses though their continuing use of ... Read more
- Ongoing College Sports Scam Puts Madoff to Shame - Like Harry Markopolos, who for nine years tried to persuade SEC staff that Madoff’s operation was a fraud, The Drake Group has been working to persuade the Congress that the unregulated operation of the NCAA is disingenuous at best. Here’s the story. »Read more
- Cheating in College Athletics: Presidential Oversight Notwithstanding - Apparently, no one anticipated the horrific downside to putting athletics oversight in the hands of sitting presidents who are literally caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place—between a public demanding high quality entertainment and governing boards who have the capacity (and all too frequently the inclination) to fire presidents who rock the university ... Read more
- Time for Accountability - There are striking parallels between the uncontrolled, greed-driven, anything-goes operations and excesses on Wall Street, with its misrepresentation of material assets in the form of disadvantaged financial instruments, and those in the NCAA’s college sports business, with its misrepresentation of material assets in the form of disadvantaged academic instruments — so-called student-athletes. In articles exploring ... Read more
- The U.S. Congress, Higher Education, and College Sports Reform: Signs of Progress, Truth, and Consequences - Almost all untenured faculty members are too busy working to get tenure and are not in a position to challenge administrative policy on intercollegiate athletics. In either case, faculty members who defend academic integrity can be considered subversive25—inviting intimidation and career-threatening retaliation by school administrations. Also, the fear of being ostracized looms large. »Read the ... Read more
- More on Taxing the Sports Factory - The context within which college athletics functions is compromised academic integrity that enables out-of-control commercialization with its distracting influence on school officials, on America’s youth, and on the nation’s diminishing prospects as a leader in the 21st century’s global economy. All too often, secrecy, deceit, and deception, are hallmarks of the business of college-sports entertainment ... Read more
- A Revised IRS Form Can Serve as Occam’s Razor for the Core Problem in College Sports - The core problem of academic corruption in big-time college sports is directly related to institutional misbehavior. By this is meant that institutions of higher education have become masters of deception – scheming and cheating to field competitive, professional-level teams, especially in big-time (NCAA Div 1) football and men’s basketball. “The Gordian-knot-like dilemma in college sports ... Read more
- The Congressional Challenge to the NCAA Cartel’s Tax-Exempt Status - The House Committee on Ways and Means needs to zero in on intercollegiate athletics. A hearing would expose the NCAA’s secretive ways to the light of day. Furthermore, a hearing would call attention to the need for corrective actions that stress transparency (with related academic disclosure), accountability, and oversight – »Read the full article
- Troubling U.S. Financials: Lessons for the Reform Minded - The government’s favorable tax policies, viewed as entitlements by the NCAA and its member institutions, not only help fuel the athletics arms race, but also enable coaches as well as school, NCAA, and various big-time conference officials to gorge at a huge tax-free money trough. Putting an end to this practice could prove to be ... Read more
- The U.S. Congress: New Hope for Constructive Engagement with the NCAA and Intercollegiate Athletics - Given the enormous broadcasting revenues at stake, the NCAA faces a conflict between its sometimes-contradictory roles as promoter and governor of intercollegiate athletics. Consequently, the NCAA cartel is incapable of reforming itself to stem the growth of commercialism. Worse yet, reform is impeded by greed, fanatic sports fans, a mostly apathetic public and inconsistent government ... Read more
- How About A Congressional Hearing on College Athletics? - After a century of ineffective efforts to reform college sports, there is a growing concern over out-of-control commercialization that is driven by the college-sports entertainment industry to further its financial interests – exploiting college sports and its participating athletes while limiting access to higher education by real students. Accounts of the problems and issues surrounding ... Read more
- How About A Congressional Hearing on College Athletics? - The NCAA’s use of the phony collegiate model and ’student-athlete’ term to defend their tax-exempt programs and modus operandi has served the NCAA well in the past, but at great cost to America’s institutions of higher education. This model and terminology have, to various degrees, spawned a culture of academic corruption in colleges and universities ... Read more
- How About a Quid Pro Quo for Athletes? - Scandals and multi million dollar coaching contracts make for attention-getting headlines and stories. However, the core of the issue surrounding the tax-exempt status of the NCAA cartel and so-called ’student-athletes,’ is this: lacking tangible and verifiable evidence, the government must presently take the word of school administrators that athletes are really students on track to ... Read more
- Reform in College Sports Requires Government Intervention - Over the years the NCAA cartel evolved a modus operandi that has proved to be eminently successful at expanding its commercial interests in the big-time college sports entertainment business while maintaining its tax-exempt status as an institution of higher education and thwarting significant reform. The latter has been accomplished by creating illusions of reform as ... Read more
- Questioning Tax Preferences for College Sports - Questioning the tax-exempt status of the NCAA — is considered to be a significant milestone on the path to reform in big-time college sports. This reform could lead to a reversal of the priorities seen on many of our big-time college campuses. Simply stated, these priorities are athletics-over-academics and Sports-over-STEMS, where STEMS stands for Science, ... Read more
- Kudos for Uncovering the Ruse - What’s the ruse? It’s the school’s admission, rostering, and – in many, if not most, cases — exploitation of highly talented, but educationally disadvantaged, athletes to build cash-generating, competitive (quasi-professional) teams for their college sports entertainment businesses. Many of these academically unprepared athletes must pretend to be students while having a full-time athletic job, ... Read more
- The College Sport Tax Scam Revisited - Frank Splitt questions whether college athletes in big time sports are bona fide students and whether the tax preferences afforded college sports are deserved. »Read the full article
- NCAA reform, Academic Integrity Issues and College Sport Tax Preferences: A Collection of Essays - A collection of essays published in national media and authored by Frank Splitt. Articles include: (1) Who Wants to Tackle Biggest Man on Campus?, (2) Sarbanes-Oxley and Disclosure Can Fix Budget Problem, (3) Handwriting on the Wall?, (4) Athletes Who Are Not Real Students, (5) Valuing the Science Course, (6) March Madness will go ... Read more
