During at least one point of everyone’s life they will catch a glimpse of a collegiate game on TV. Whether it’s basketball, football, soccer, baseball, dance team, you name it and at least someone has seen it. For the most part, these games are under the supervision of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), an organization that overlooks the rules for these sports and makes sure everything is fair. However, the NCAA is not fair. The organization is an overbearing, narcissistic and money-hungry figure for college sports. They do this by controlling the players’ lives outside of the game and by using the players to get our money.

If you were a mere passerby of the NCAA you may have seen an ad that makes a college athlete’s life seem easy going and simple. The young man in the ad goes through his day like it’s nothing. Great! That must mean college athletes live lives just like the rest of us except they’re on TV! Wrong, and I’m not the only one that would tell you that. Many players have come out and stated that it was completely inaccurate and the only part they got right is that the man never ate in the whole ad. This is something that is completely ridiculous. The NCAA uses the players as money makers every chance they get through events like bowl games, college gameday and tournaments. The corporation makes millions off of these kids and what do the kids get? No money back. I do understand the majority of kids get scholarships and if they’re good enough they will most likely play professionally. There are, however, the handful of kids who don’t get a full ride, that go to a lesser known school and they’re lucky to even be there. In fact, these kids almost get the worst of it. Teams like UMBC, Murray State or UC Irvine do get scholarships, but they don’t get as much money from the NCAA for scholarships like blue blood schools (Duke, Kansas, Kentucky, etc.) Which means some of the best entertainment in March is through schools that don’t get much money and their players may not even be on a full ride scholarship.

As many of you know, the men’s NCAA tournament national championship game just occurred and the Virginia Cavaliers won. If you paid close attention, you would also know Virginia’s guard Kyle Guy was under some heat for the fact that people wanted to send wedding gifts to his fiancee and him. The NCAA had allegedly said the couple could not have an online registry for their wedding and one man even commented that the University of Virginia made him delete his post on their website due to the fact that it risks Guy’s eligibility in future and previous games. Now, the president of the NCAA has since come out with a statement that they never told anyone they could not post a public registry. So okay, that’s fine and resolved I suppose. But, why should the NCAA be such a doom and gloom to make people even believe that they couldn’t give wedding gifts to a couple of college kids? Obviously, this shows their presence is threatening and the universities are scared of their strict rules, especially surrounding sponsorships, getting them in trouble.

What’s the real harm of getting a college kid a gift anyway? With the pressure these kids have to go through it’s the least we could do. They’re full time students, athletes and get paid nothing besides scholarships (which are not always full rides).

All in all, the NCAA is a corporation that mainly cares about money and being in control. They use the college athletes for money and don’t give the appropriate amount back in return. They abuse the system they created and don’t even show the public the accurate life of a player.