Legal Commentary

The products of an entertaining form of corruption

By Tom Kirkendall

Inasmuch as the corrupt sponsorship of big-time football and basketball by academic institutions is a common topic on this blog, the following articles caught my eye:

The Chronicle's Richard Justice surveys several of the ugly recent incidents in big-time college football and calls for higher ethical standards. However, he ignores the perverse incentives built into the highly-regulated system that promote the unethical behavior.

Meanwhile, one of the coaches who has been accused of being ethically-challenged -- former Texas Aggie coach Dennis Franchione -- turns out to be an over-achiever with an interesting story.

And how exactly is it that Rick Neuheisel was able to persuade UCLA to hire him as its new coach in the face of this curriculum vitae?

Look, June Jones, Rich Rodriguez, Franchione, Neuheisel and the other supposedly unethical coaches of the moment are not, on balance, any more unethical than the rest of us. They are simply the products of a highly-regulated system that creates all sorts of perverse incentives to act badly. Change those incentives and the coaches' behavior will change. A good start would be to quit paying the coaches the excess rents that should be paid to the players whose talents generate them.

Full post as published by Houston's Clear Thinkers on January 30, 2008 (boomark / email).