To the editor:

I’m joining the Saturday columnist’s campaign against big-money college athletics, quixotic though it may be (Dec. 2). I loved his point that high GPAs and graduation rates of athletes mean little, given huge expenditures for tutoring and support. What might this level of individual attention accomplish for other minorities?

Hypocrisy and mismanagement start with the “amateurism” conceit. Major-sport college athletics are actually for-profit activities – in which players are exploited by NCAA monopoly rules against market wages, taxpayers are exploited by unjustified nonprofit status, and nonathlete students are exploited by hidden subsidies from educational funds. The solution lies in open commercialization, separation of education from commercial sports and transparent bookkeeping.

I dream of seven or eight farsighted university presidents who band together, spin off a profit-making semipro college league, and pay the players what they are worth. Since their teams will draw the best young players, I predict an immense commercial success. Their finances, endowments and stadiums should be kept strictly separate from educational resources, and semi-pro athletes should be forbidden from enrolling in college classes during sports seasons. Semipro leagues are unlikely to voluntarily abandon nonprofit status, but I imagine that, given transparent finances, the IRS will eventually do the right thing.

Undoubtedly the NCAA will retaliate by expelling those universities from competition in the truly amateur sports. However the universities are quite capable of setting up their own amateur leagues – perhaps also making a profit by suing the NCAA monopoly.

David Burress,

Lawrence