Hi Nathan:

Is sport a means to an end, or an end?  I think it depends on the person as much as anything else.  First of all, in any sport, hockey included, only a relatively small minority of players will ever manage to make a living out of it.  It may be a means to an end to get an athletic scholarship to college, or to eventually become a pro, but a lot of times people play sports just for the fun of it.  I play tennis.  I'm pretty good for a man my age and condition, too.  I strive mightily to raise my rating past the current 4.0 but likely will never achieve that (at 57 my body is rebelling), but I still strive, I still play, I still enjoy - and I will never, ever earn one penny from it.  The activity may have side benefits such as health, but that isn't the reason I play.

For me, then, tennis is the end.  Why is it so hard to imagine football, hockey, squeakball, etc., could also be an end in itself?  Would those sports disappear if you couldn't get a scholarship?  I think not.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [log in to unmask] [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Wednesday, February 06, 2002 10:38 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Letters of Intent
>
>
> Tom asked "So the question becomes, what do we value more:
> Concentration of talent at some schools or purity of the sport?"
>
> I do not think these are the two options. There is no purity
> in sport. Sport is a means to an end, not an end. Even for
> the pro athlete, sport is a way of making money to feed the
> kids. For some colleges, sport is a way of making money. For
> some colleges, sport is a way of recruiting students, of
> getting donations from alumni, of advertising and appearing
> big even if not (do you know how skunks do this?).
>
> And so the problem is not that the NCAA does what it does.
> The problem is that there is no alternative. The NCAA is one
> of the purest examples of monopoly in the nation. There is no
> other sanctioning body anymore. What the NCAA does, you have
> to do, regardless of the price they ask in concentration of
> talent, athletic vs academic integrity, and ream after ream
> of ridiculous rules. As a monopoly, if the NCAA says I cannot
> have an Indian mascot, why can't I be independent of the NCAA
> or a member of the AAU or NAIA and still run my program and
> play Minnesota, the Wisconsin, the Michigan, and Maine? We
> have a difference of opinion, but what the NCAA wants, they get.
>
> There may still be purity of sport, but there is no purity in
> the NCAA.
>
> Nathan Hampton
>