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WASHINGTON — Weighing in on the growing debate over amateurism in college sports, President Barack Obama said on Friday that universities bear “more responsibilities than right now they’re showing” toward their athletes and that the NCAA should require schools to guarantee athletic scholarships with no strings attached.
“[T]he students need to be taken better care of because they are generating a lot of revenue here,” Obama told The Huffington Post in a sit-down interview. “An immediate step that the NCAA could take — that some conferences have already taken — is if you offer a scholarship to a kid coming into school, that scholarship sticks, no matter what.”
“It doesn’t matter whether they get cut, it doesn’t matter whether they get hurt,” the president went on. “You are now entering into a bargain and responsible for them.”
Under pressure from players and the public, several conferences — the Big Ten, the Big 12, the Pac-12, the SEC and the ACC — have passed reforms guaranteeing athletic scholarships so long as students remain in good standing. Other individual schools are now considering the same reforms, but for many college athletes, it’s still possible to lose a scholarship due to a playing injury.
The president also suggested that NCAA rules meant to protect the concept of amateurism can be too draconian, especially considering the money going to schools and coaches.
