Dr. Harry Edwards on NCAAs: Stop the Madness of March

Edge of Sports

Dave Zirin / The Nation

News, Sports News, Sports, History, Politics

4.8 • 616 Ratings

🗓️ 16 March 2016

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

As college basketball fans descend into March Madness, Edge of Sports offers a wake-up call from Dr. Harry Edwards, renowned sports sociologist and author of the seminal text “The Revolt of the Black Athlete.” Dr. Edwards prescribes a stringent tonic for the NCAA’s ills: a complete dissolution and ground-up reformation focused on academics and athlete equity. Our host Dave Zirin also offers his ’Choice Words’ to the NCAA, drawing inspiration from John Oliver’s brilliant 2015 sendup. Finally, the ‘Just Stand Up’ award goes to Rory Fanning, an Army Vet and co-author of Craig Hodges’ forthcoming memoir who was among a group of protesters that shut down Donald Trump’s planned rally in Chicago.—Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: The NCAA https://youtu.be/pX8BXH3SJn0Zirin: Why Not Even the Mighty John Oliver Can Shame the NCAA http://thenation.com/article/why-not-even-mighty-john-oliver-can-shame-ncaa/—Contact:http://twitter.com/edgeofsports | http://edgeofsportspodcast.com | http://fb.com/edgeofsportspod | [email protected]—Music: Aden Dueitt-Piazza “Ufz” http://soundcloud.com/gonjastar | T1R “onepoto” http://soundcloud.com/t1r864 | Miles Davis “On Green Dolphin Street” http://milesdavis.com/ Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Edge of Sports, the podcast. I'm Dave Ziren.
0:06.1	We have such an amazing show this week. This is our NCAA show, but it's less about March
0:11.8	madness than about how to stop the madness of March. We are going to speak to the most
0:16.5	prominent sports sociologists to ever walk the earth. The author of the seminal 1969 text, Revolt of the Black Athlete, Dr. Harry Edwards.
0:29.1	What are the immediate reforms that you put your pen to to make the system a little more just?
0:34.4	Well, the first thing I would do is to disband the NCAA.
0:41.9	Some situations are so corrupt.
0:50.8	I think that some institutional structures are so hard-bound and dysfunctional that you have to dismantle them and begin over. I don't think that it's appropriate for the Super 5 conferences and all of the money that
1:00.8	they generate to operate under the same auspices as Division 3 schools or even mid-majors,
1:09.4	which oftentimes struggle to maintain and sustain athletic programs
1:15.0	that service the entire student body and campus communities, not just in so-called revenue-producing sports,
1:22.6	but in so-called minor men's sports and most certainly women's sports. I think that we need a brand new
1:28.6	organization that actually operates under the auspices of laws instead of, quote,
1:36.3	regulations that are put in place largely to serve the organization itself instead of the
1:42.1	student athletes or even the institution.
1:44.7	If you look at some of the history of how some institutions have been treated, it's tragic.
1:49.7	The NC2A needs to be dismantled.
1:52.1	They are running, as I stated in 1967, a plantation structure of organization that serves no one really except them and to some extent the major
2:05.8	institutions that constitute their constituency. I know that Walter Byers, who called me
2:13.2	a black militant agitator when I charged NC2 with operating a plantation structure and his
2:18.9	1995 memoir called it exactly that a plantation structure of organization we have Taylor branch
2:26.9	who wrote a piece for the Atlantic saying that the NC2A carries the whiff of the plantation system, and all of a sudden he was,
	...

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