Michael Beasley and Sports Journalists' Role in NCAA Violations

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Michael Beasley in the news because he is suing his former agent for conspiring to represent him while he was still a teenager. In addition, he is suing his former AAU coach for providing his mother with money that was illegal, in terms of NCAA rules.

Now, this isn't necessarily the story that interests me. The more interesting point, I found, is what the role of a journalist is when it comes to NCAA rules and their enforcement.

The NCAA uses a system of rule enforcement that is largely based on self-reporting and the reporting of others to tip them off to violations. Does this mean that sports journalists are really the NCAA's police?

The underbelly of NCAA is not clean. Some people know that and some people don't. But why has it become the job of those in sports journalism to find violations (those that are not illegal in the eyes of United States law)?

Are crime journalists obligated to find crimes and report them to cops? Of course not. It is the police officer's job to find criminals and newspapers simply report on them.

Investigative journalists who uncover fraud and other malpractices are working in the interest of the consumer or the general public. Their reporting benefits the wider mass of people.

By reporting NCAA violations, journalists are ultimately working for the established organization.

The true free press in the United States was designed to fight tyranny, or the concentration of power in one entity. The NCAA is a completely concentrated entity, with journalists ultimately working for it to enforce rules.

What the NCAA calls violations (players selling their property; getting paid, as in the Cam Newton investigation, to play) is what the free market calls "business".

The job of a sports journalist should be to protect players from abuses of the NCAA and not the other way around.