Opinion: Congress Questions NCAA Tax Status

In what amounts to a “moral audit,” Congress has asked the National Collegiate Athletic Association to justify its tax-exempt status in light of the billions of dollars the organization earns each year and its merely tentative links to higher education, notes a sports columnist in The New York Times.

Rep. William Thomas, the California Republican who chairs the House Ways and Means Committee, sent a letter to the association asking, among other pointed questions, “What actions has the NCAA taken to retain a clear line of demarcation between major college sports and professional sports?” The letter also questioned low graduation rates at universities and multimillion-dollar salaries for coaches.

Andrew Zimbalist, author of The Bottom Line: Observations and Arguments on Sports Business, told the Times columnist — Selena Roberts — that the inquiry “is not an insignificant event.” He added, “Although these politicians are grandstanding in my view, I’d rather have them grandstanding than be silent.”

Ms. Roberts writes that “peacock politicians can be effective.” She adds: “Congress took the stage to shame Major League Baseball and scared it straight into the admission of a drug problem. And as the Ways and Means Committee probes America’s nonprofit sector, it may hold the NCAA accountable to its unholy binge shopping.”

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