BenMaller.com - Ben's Takes

Does everyone cheat in college hoops?

By Ben Maller

I have felt, for some time now, that most successful big time college basketball programs cheat at some level. If you follow college sports on a regular basis you would have to be naive to think otherwise.

Recently, the University of Michigan punished its basketball program after a federal investigation revealed that former booster, Ed Martin, had given a total of $616,000 to star players Chris Webber, Robert Traylor, Maurice Taylor and Louis Bullock.

Nobody I know was shocked by this revelation. The fact is, to win in major college athletics you have to play the game, and part of that is bending and breaking some NCAA rules.

NCAA rules are broken even at schools like Duke.

A television program aired, last year, that suggested that Duke had lowered its admission standards for basketball players over the past decade as a way to recruit top players. The program also asked how Duke could have graduation rates occasionally reaching 100 percent.

The answer was, according to that show, easy classes, easy independent study homework with almost no attendance requirements and the pigeonholing of most basketball players into becoming sociology majors.

If this is going on at mighty Duke, what do you think is happening at other major powers in the ACC, Big East, SEC, Big 10, Big 12 and Pac-10?

Eddy Curry of the Chicago Bulls, who was one of the most sought-after players coming out of high school before going to the NBA a year, ago told the Chicago Sun-Times that cheating is a part of college sports. "There will always be schools trying to give more money,'' Curry said. ''Certain players feel they're better than other players, so they'll want more than the next man. But I think paying athletes would help.''

With the amount of money in college athletics, it's big business for the major programs to make sure they keep getting their share of the top high school talent.

It's not fair to have these schools make millions of dollars off the skills of these athletes and then not share the wealth. The TV deals are crazy. Most coaches have shoe deals. The schools sell the star players' jerseys in sporting good stores from coast to coast.

The answer to this is simple: The NCAA should wake up from its coma and realize that star college athletes should be paid some kind of stipend.

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