In anti-trust for example, one way to deal with abuses is to set up an elaborate regulatory scheme.  Another is simply to split off the companies when there is a conflict.

We do the same with regard to members of boards and self-dealing.  You wouldn't permit a member of the Board of Regents to be involved in a company from which the University was buying products.

Robert Hutchins, at one time, as President of the University of Chicago, simply decided to remove football entirely.

I just think the conflicts are so inherent, and so inevitable, and so rampant, and so deep.

I hasten to begin by saying this anecdote does not involve our present distinguished President [Mary Sue Coleman] who's taken a lead on these issues.

But I have received, as a university professor, calls from a major university president's office asking me to change a football player's grade.  I don't know whether that's more demeaning for the president or for the professor.  Obviously, I didn't change the grade and they did lose the football game.

But the point is that's a conflict that shouldn't exist.  The coach who's told that his athletes must perform well academically knows full well that this University, like others, fires coaches who don't produce winning schedules.

I talked to a football player recently who wants to go to medical school and needs to take lab courses which he's being discouraged from taking because it interferes with practice.

I just think the conflicts are so inherent, so deep, so rampant, so irresolvable.

There are alternatives.  Take Hancher, for example.  We don't . . ..
 
[President Coleman commented that there are benefits from collegiate athletics.]

NJ: I don't deny for a moment that there are benefits from the athletic program, for the students, for the campus, certainly for raising money from alumni and so forth.

The question is whether the benefits outweigh the costs and the burdens. You think they do and I think they don't, and that is an issue about which reasonable people can differ.

But in terms of the “farm club” [someone had suggested that university teams were the “farm clubs” for professional athletics] I was going to use the example of Hancher [auditorium].

We don't pretend that Hancher has to serve, necessarily, an academic purpose.  It's sort of a forum for Broadway musicals and so forth.

Why not have a farm club in Iowa City that could be called the Iowa football team?  We could provide that the players who wish to get an education while here could do so, but we wouldn't maintain the illusion that, really, these are student athletes.  These would be athletes who, if they chose occasionally to take a course could do so, but wouldn't be required to do so.