Can the problem of college sports be solved?
DEFORD: Well, I don’t think a lot of it can be solved. Because I think that there is simply too much in place. And maybe I’m a cynic. But first of all, you have all this real estate. You have these extraordinary millions, billions of dollars that have been placed into the stadiums and arenas. So those, by themselves, argue that we’ve got to have teams to go into them. The system has been built up so in the United States that it’s really sort of part of our DNA now. We kind of accept it. And to all of a sudden turn around and tell the people in the good state of Oklahoma or Alabama that we’re cutting back on your football team, you could no more do that than take sex out of movies. People wouldn’t tolerate it. It would be like saying, “You can only watch television one hour a week, you people in Alabama.” Q: You wrote that the lure of athletic scholarships is more damaging than the reality. How so? DEFORD: I think we have a situation in this country now where so much has been heard abou
