No problem placating the smaller conferences – you could pay >1,000 athletes out of the President’s salary.
“Emmert said the minimum Academic Progress Rates required for teams to compete in the postseason could be raised to 900 in time for this season’s N.C.A.A. men’s basketball tournament. It could increase to 930 — essentially corresponding to a 50 percent graduation rate — in two years.” Heavens to Murgatroyd!
Read more from the NY Times here. Even better, read a damning article in The Atlantic here: “For all the outrage, the real scandal is not that students are getting illegally paid or recruited, it’s that two of the noble principles on which the NCAA justifies its existence—’amateurism’ and the ‘student-athlete’—are cynical hoaxes, legalistic confections propagated by the universities so they can exploit the skills and fame of young athletes.”