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Message: [QUOTE="Bone Dog, post: 4346520, member: 12088"] The whole question of whether there’s antitrust implications is suggestive of the disaster college football has become for all these schools. I’m not a lawyer either. I’m a college professor. So maybe my perspective will sound peculiar. It’s this line in particular that catches my attention. It’s not mistaken, but it is revealing. First, almost all of them are public institutions. I think this is what you meant to say, and it seems compelling. A public institution can’t really be accused of monopolizing a public interest. The public is essentially a monopoly, and must be so, as soon as it enters into any realm of business. Second, and more importantly, we should ask what the impact of football interests has been on institutions “whose primary agency is the business of education.” How can educational institutions [I]compete[/I] in education? That would be like competing in virtue or wisdom — we might think the very fact of the competition means the competitors have missed the point. Of course, we’re only talking about competition in sports, and this need not impact the educational mission. In respect of most sports, this is surely true. But a few sports, mainly football and basketball, have become essentially business interests within universities. Maybe the administrations and faculties of these schools can keep this interest separate from their primary educational agency. Of course, we all know that all these schools compete for national educational rankings as well. But the real question is whether a sports business has anything to contribute to an educational institution. Universities may be able to keep this business interest separate from their educational mission — spoiler alert: they mainly haven’t succeeded— but why should they have such an interest at all? We might as well ask if they should also maintain a hedge fund business within their enterprise. Don’t worry, I understand that schools get lots of money from sports, as well as from the hedge funds (read endowments) they maintain. Without them, they’d be a lot poorer. But they might just be better at that primary educational agency. [/QUOTE]

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