OUR VIEW: NCAA aims to protect athletes

We are pretty fortunate as Aggie fans. Since 2004, our NCAA sports teams have reported only 59 violations of NCAA rules, and most of them were small breaches: A coach texted a recruit more than twice a week or gave an athlete money to buy food at the airport. Nearly all of the incidents were solved with a simple cease-and-desist letter from the NCAA and re-education on the rules. It may seem trivial to enforce such specific and strange rules, but these rules are necessary to ensure a positive experience for student-athletes.

It may not seem like much, but reporting even little issues like the ones Utah State has been cited for keeps the athletic department on its toes to avoid future mishaps. It seems to be working: In general, USU sees only small-time violations, the worst of which have seen suspensions of a few games to a semester for student-athletes, although some athletes became ineligible to play until reinstated.

Probably the biggest NCAA violation occurring in this time period happened in October 2012, when former tennis coach Christian Wright was fired for conducting private tennis lessons with prospective student-athletes.

It might seem like the NCAA is a bully a lot of the time, but they have student-athletes’ best interests at heart. There is a reason why they are called “student-athletes” and not “athlete-students.” Even though they were recruited to play sports, they are students first, athletes second. The NCAA tries to get this point across by punishing those who try to place athletics recruitment over academic recruitment. This is also why the idea of paying college athletes will never happen: It puts the importance of college sports over that of going to school and getting a degree.

This is not to say that the NCAA is not bogged down with sometimes unnecessary bureaucracy. It is hard to see the harm in a coach giving some of his or her own money to a potential student-athlete so they can buy a snack at the airport. That doesn’t seem like trying to advance the cause of athletics over academics: It seems like someone just trying to be a nice person. Nitpicky rules like this are why the NCAA sometimes gets a bad rap. 

Still, the point stands: Even though it can be annoying sometimes, college sports are better off with the NCAA than without it.