President Obama on Friday said that universities "bear 'more responsibilities than right now they're showing' toward their athletes and that the NCAA should require schools to guarantee athletic scholarships with no strings attached," according to Dave Jamieson of the HUFFINGTON POST. Obama: "Students need to be taken better care of because they are generating a lot of revenue here. An immediate step that the NCAA could take -- that some conferences have already taken -- is if you offer a scholarship to a kid coming into school, that scholarship sticks, no matter what." Obama also suggested that NCAA rules meant to protect the concept of amateurism "can be too draconian, especially considering the money going to schools and coaches." He said, "What does frustrate me is where I see coaches getting paid millions of dollars, athletic directors getting paid millions of dollars, the NCAA making huge amounts of money, and then some kid gets a tattoo or gets a free use of a car and suddenly they’re banished. That's not fair." Jamieson noted Obama "stopped short of saying that it was time to pay collegiate athletes or that they should have the right to unionize." He said, "In terms of compensation, I think the challenge would just then start being, do we really want to just create a situation where there are bidding wars? How much does a Anthony Davis get paid as opposed to somebody else? And that I do think would ruin the sense of college sports." However, Obama "made it clear that he feels the current system isn't adequately protecting the athletes who rake in enormous sums of money for their schools" (HUFFINGTONPOST.com, 3/21).
