After a number of years of trying, it looks like the NCAA has slammed the final door on Jeremy Bloom's efforts to accept endorsement income to support his career as a freestyle skier, while still playing football for the University of Colorado.
I've been following Bloom's fight with the NCAA for a a little more than two years, and there simply isn't a better example of the hypocrisy of the NCAA and the corruption endemic in college athletics.
The heart of Bloom's challenge to the NCAA, was an exception the body granted former Iowa wide receiver Tim Dwight, so he could participate in the NCAA Track and Field Championships after he had already spent a season with the NFL's Atlanta Falcons. The NCAA rejected that claim, giving the bogus answer that Dwight was only allowed to compete because he had ceased receiving endorsement income for the period that he was reinstated.
Garbage. The real problem here is that if the NCAA allowed Bloom to accept endorsement income, it would have to cope with a blizzard of waiver requests from other players who would suddenly get popular with local and national advertisers -- a problem considering NCAA schools rake in millions of dollars per year in merchandise sales.
Allow a college athlete to enjoy a revenue stream like that, and in the mind of the NCAA, it would diminish the value of their own sponsorship agreements.
Remember, NCAA rules don't exist to protect student-athletes, they exist to protect institutions from one another.
Think of NCAA rules as sort of an athletic arms control agreement: I won't let boosters pay recruits under the table just to make sure my competitors don't either.
And don't think the presence of Bloom, an athlete potentially receiving endorsement income, in a college locker room could prove potentially dangerous to the NCAA. With Bloom around, it wouldn't take long for other athletes to start asking questions about where all that merchandise income is going, and why they don't get a piece of the pie.
CORRECTION: Looks like Bloom will keep fighting.
Very good post, and very much needed. The NCAA has become the AAU of the 1950s, interested in nothing but accumulating more power for no other reason than because they can.