I stumbled upon this on this great snow day and if any of you have netflix or amazon prime, you need to watch "Schooled: The Price of College Sports". It highlights the evolution of "amateurism" in college sports and the hypocrisy of the NCAA. It features candid interviews from former athletes, coaches, administrators and media personnel. The story of Kent Waldrep and his suit against the NCAA shows how the association uses the term "student-athlete" to cover their own asses. This term was a product of Walter Byers (the first employee of the NCAA) and he was intrumental in establishing standards (good and bad) that still have lasting effects.
The movie also features Sonny Vaccaro and how he got money in college basketball coaches' pockets and Nike swooshes on the players' feet. This turned out to the the beginning of commercializing collegiate athletics, all the while the "student-athletes" continued to be exploited.
If you've got an hour and a half to kill, this movie is well worth the watch and is really insightful as to the origin of some of the arguments still going on today.
Netflix - https://www.netflix.com/WiMovie/Schooled_The_Price_of_College_Sports/702...
Amazon instant video - http://www.amazon.com/Schooled-The-Price-College-Sports/dp/B00GM2MSGY
Comments
Along the same line as that movie, the link below was from a recent interview with Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban. While not a fan of some of his antics, his argument here I completely agree with. I cant ever see it happening because of the cost to the league but the points he brings up are completely valid.
http://espn.go.com/dallas/nba/story/_/id/10538276/mark-cuban-says-nba-d-...