Sports agents just part of problem

When Alabama football coach Nick Saban, who'll do anything to win, calls somebody a pimp, you know things are getting bad. Saban used the epithet to refer to unethical sports agents, and the NCAA is conducting an investigation of possible payoffs by sports agents to football players at the University of North Carolina and the University of South Carolina.

Sports agents' abuses, however, are just the latest manifestation of the fundamental problem underlying college athletics. The once-simple and low-key sports programs have become big business — very big business. The Atlantic Coast Conference recently signed a multi-billion contract with ESPN to televise basketball games. Coach Saban at Alabama makes more than $4 million a year, plus incentives, and Alabama fans probably think he's worth it. In a couple of months, any cable or satellite TV subscriber in the country will have a choice of more than a dozen college football games every Saturday, and that doesn't count the Thursday night games, which were added purely to satisfy television demands.

This latest scandal ironically comes just after Bill Friday, president emeritus of the UNC system, celebrated his 90th birthday. Friday has spent a good deal of his retirement time advocating for reforms in college athletics. The Knight Commission, which he co-chaired, pushed for reforms and a diminished stature for college sports, to no avail. The commission worried that athletics were dictating policies to academia, and academic standards and ethics were suffering.

When the NCAA finishes its investigation and hands out its penalties, much will be blamed on sports agents, but the real blame lies with universities that get caught up in the hype of college sports, build ever-more-grand football stadiums and basketball arenas, and allow television contracts to dictate schedules, game times and everything else. The blame also lies with alumni and fans who lavish money on athletic programs through booster clubs and capital campaigns, and with Congress, which treats donations to these booster clubs and athletic campaigns the same as donations to tax-exempt academic causes.

If you've ever listened to Andy Griffith's classic "What it Was Was Football," you know that college football has not always been big business, but it has always been fun. Less lavish programs in less grand facilities with more emphasis on area competition and less on national championships would be just as competitive, just as much fun and just as much a source of pride as today's grandiose and ethically hazardous College Sports Inc.

Andy Taylor never made that kinda money

"Who knowed?" Andy Taylor said during an interview at Mayberry Manor Retirement Home. "Here I was doing the best I could with only one patrol car between me and Barney, and only one bullet for Barney's gun, just two jail cells — one of the most likely occupied by Otis. Who knowed I coulda been makin' six figures like they pay the High Sheriff down to Wilson County.

"Here I find out Shurf Gay's makin' a hunderd 'n forty-four thousand a year, but I'm just ashamed to say what a paltry little salary I made when I was sheriffin'. I can tell you it won't much, though. Why, I didn't even have air conditioning in my house. Had to sit out on the front porch in the evening to get cool and live with my aunt to make ends meet. And when I took Opie fishing in Myers Lake, we didn't have no fancy rod 'n' reel. We had an ol' bamboo pole with a string and a hook on the end.

"If'n I'd been makin' $144,000 a year, I coulda give some of it to my deputy. Barney mighta been able to afford better accommodations when he took off for Raleigh on the weekend. He wouldena had to stay at the YMCA. He coulda got hisself a room at the Marriott if'n he was makin' a third what the shurf in Wilson's a-making.

"Now, I understand that Shurf Gay's been in office a long time, and those annual raises, they tend to add up after awhile, but it still don't seem quite right that he was makin' that kinda money while I was just strugglin' along. I mean, in Mayberry, we didn't have no big black SUVs or SWAT teams or nothin'. It was just Barney and me. Shoot, we didn't even have drug dog, not that drugs were any kinda problem in Mayberry, you understand, but we mighta liked havin' a dog to tag along with ol' Barn.

"I understand that sheriff's salary cannot be reduced by the county board during an election year, and I guess that's reasonable. If I was a younger man, I might want to move to Wilson and file for that high-payin' job myself. But I'm doin' all right here at the Manor, so I reckon I'll stay here. I hear the state Highway Patrol's lookin' for a new commander, and that would be a fine job. However, it prob'ly wouldn't pay as good as sheriff of Wilson."