This wonderful New York Times article has nothing to do with computer science, but it has everything to do with the business we’re in – higher education – and with the proper role of intercollegiate athletics.
“[Notre Dame’s] president, the Rev. John I. Jenkins, … adamantly opposes a model in which college sheds what is left of its amateur ways for a semiprofessional structure…. ‘Our relationship to these young people is to educate them, to help them grow,’ he says….
“And if that somehow comes to pass, he says, Notre Dame will leave the profitable industrial complex that is elite college football, boosters be damned, and explore the creation of a conference with like-minded universities.
“That’s right: Notre Dame would take its 23.9-karat-gold-flecked football helmets and play elsewhere.
“‘Perhaps institutions will make decisions about where they want to go – a semipro model or a different, more educational model – and I welcome that,’ Father Jenkins says.”
Read more, in the New York Times, here.