NCAA President Mark Emmert yesterday appeared on TBS and called the NCAA Tournament a "really important event ... for all of college sports," as it is responsible for "about 90%" of the NCAA's annual operating budget. CBS' Seth Davis wondered if the organization could "get more of that money into the pockets" of players. Emmert replied, "It comes down to, at the end of the day, what's this all about? Is this about employees playing a game on behalf of a university and wearing a university jersey, or is this about college athletes playing games that represent their university? If you're going to shift over and say, ‘No, no, they're actually employees and they deserve a cut of the take,’ the higher education world will say, ‘No, that's not what we're about.’ So it's just a fortunate thing that college basketball has become wildly popular." Following the interview, TBS’ Kenny Smith said, “There should be a stipend for a student-athlete who graduates and plays in the NCAA Tournament. ... But you have to graduate to get that stipend.” CBS' Clark Kellogg said the NCAA needs to find some “creative, realistic ways to distribute this money pie so that it benefits the student-athletes in some fashion.” Kellogg: “You need some creativity, you need a lot of commitment to try to disperse those resources so that they're serving the student-athlete while they’re student-athletes as long as they're carrying their weight and fulfilling their responsibility." He noted there are a "lot of different ways" that could happen, but there should be "more movement on coming up with some solutions to actually put into practice” (“Inside March Madness,” TBS, 3/27).
