Going Pro in Something Other Than Common Sense

-There are over 380,000 NCAA Students athletes, and just about all of them will be going pro in something other than sports.

If you have watched college athletics on television over the past few years I’m sure you have heard this tagline after nearly every commercial for the NCAA at least once or twice.

Now, I know that the NCAA stands for National Collegiate Athletic Association, and their focus is to be what is best for the student athletes. I won’t get into what a joke I believe that is considering how much money the NCAA makes off of the athletes. However I did not know that while looking out for what is best for the student athletes and helping them “go pro in something other than sports,” it does the opposite for the rest of the student body, the non-athletes.

March 17th the NCAA announced that no schools in the NCAA Tournament would be allowed to have their university run radio stations broadcast the games. The same stations that have broadcast most of the games this season for UCLA and North Carolina (home games only for Memphis and Kansas) will not be allowed to travel and broadcast the games this March. Why you may ask, money, greed, stupidity, you chose.

The NCAA has a contract with Westwood One for all right to any Internet broadcasts for the NCAA Tournament through its agreement with CBS sports. Whether or not the NCAA ever thought this could be an issue, we will never know, but between Westwood One and the NCAA, they are preventing non-student athletes in preparing themselves to “go pro in something other than sports.”

The most listeners EVER for a broadcasted game on UCLAradio.com were 500. That occurred last fall for the UCLA-USC football game. Do you really think that 500 people NOT listening to the Westwood One feed will hurt their rating much? It must affect it more than I would think considering that UCLAradio.com was able to broadcast every game last year in the NCAA Tournament including a semifinal loss to eventual champion Florida in the Final Four.

I understand that technically Westwood One does have the rights to do as they please, but the right thing to do here is let the students call the game. Westwood One would never notice in the ratings and these kids would get to take part in an experience that would great as they move forward in the careers “going pro in something other than sports.”