The winds of change continue to swirl around college sports. Hall of Fame running back Jim Brown prefers that it become a hurricane.
“I’m totally for change and total change,” Brown said during a Saturday roundtable discussion at the first ever Pro Football Hall of Fame Fan Fest in Cleveland. “And I think that body needs to be torn apart and put back together with everybody’s best interests in mind.”
Brown made it clear that he wasn’t simply blurting out words randomly.
“I wanted to say it as harsh as I could, because I want them to come at me in any way they want to,” Brown said. “Because it’s a shame the way that it happens.”
And if there was any doubt. . . .
“The NCAA is probably the most reprehensible organization God ever created,” Brown said. “Total exploitation. The kind of money they make, the kind of life they live, it’s embarrassing.”
It’s become a given that dramatic changes will be made to the current model of college sports, whether voluntarily by the NCAA and its members or involuntarily through the courts or the National Labor Relations Board or the will of people who choose not to support the current structure unless and until the billions generated are more equitably shared with the men and women who bring the money in.
Fortunately for the NCAA, the folks currently running the show have realized in recent days that it’s far better to not talk than to offer lame justifications that serve only to make more people realize that something big needs to happen.
Either way, something big will happen. The only question is how the NCAA gets torn down and by whom.