Mondey, Michael Jordan, and Subdividing NCAA Division I

I like having money.  I’d like having more money.  I don’t want anyone telling me I can’t spend my money.   Or dictating how I should spend it.  Michael Jordan can build a $40 million home.   I can’t afford to own a house like Michael’s, and I don’t expect him to live as I do.  If I can’t keep up, then I don’t belong in his neighborhood.

There is a lesson in this for the world of college athletics and the NCAA.  Some college programs have a history of investing in the infrastructure of their athletics programs.  They may have earned their way there, as did Michael Jordan.  Or they may have had advantages from the start that eased the way, as do those with inherited wealth.   Nonetheless they spend to build and maintain their programs, with the result that their conferences have the programs fans want to watch, the media clout, and the big revenues.   It seems un-American (or at least un-Potuto) to deny them the advantages they have earned.  (In saying this, by the way, I don’t by any means defend the excesses in spending or the differences between athletic funding and funding of the greater campus.)

Certainly athletic competition requires a requisite number of teams with some level of competitive balance among them.  Is that number 64?  Or 80?   We need to decide.  But then those programs need to be able to chart their own course and decide on their rules.   In other words, we need further subdivision of NCAA Division I.  The Michael Jordans of college athletics can’t continue to be thwarted by those schools that don’t have the money to keep up with the Jordans.   Even within this smaller group there will be variances, with some still trying to contain the better endowed Jordans or operating in the red to keep up with them.  But at least the neightborhood won’t run the range from my house to Michael’s.