No, Iowa senator Charles Grassley isn't asking for a measurement before deciding if he should go for it on fourth down. Something tells us he's not much of a football fan. Grassley is making the rounds again, asking the NCAA to justify its tax-exempt status.Not much headway has been made by Grassley since we first told you about this in March, but he raises good questions, especially when NCAA honcho Myles Brand, one of our favorite targets, is pulling down $895,000 in salary.
All this to run tax-exempt, amateur athletics. Nothing like exploiting the workers/athletes.
Nicholas Johnson, a former commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission, suggests that Grassley is going down the right path.
Johnson, who now resides in Iowa City, points to the hometown university as an example.
"Iowa spent $90 million refurbishing the Kinnick Stadium — and for what? Six games will be played there this year. Most games run about 3-1/2 hours [and include, I'm told, a total of about 7 to 12 minutes of actual action, with multiples of that time devoted to commercials].
"At 24 hours a day, and 365 days a year, counting 3-1/2 hours a game, that's 21 hours of use out of 8760 hours a year — 99.76% of the time sitting empty; 24/100ths of 1% of the time being used. ... Grassley's just asking — not declaring, just asking — what does this multi-billion-dollar industry have to do with charitable, tax deductible contributions for 'educational purposes'? Good question."
1 comment:
Grandstanding bullshit.
If the NCAA were not tax-exempt, a big chunk of change would be going to the federal government. Are they more worthy, more benevolent than the NCAA? Would they do something better with it, or just give themselves a pay raise?
Oh, wait. It wouldn't either because the NCAA doesn't make a profit. Whatever income they bring in goes back to their members - colleges and universities.
Myles Brand gets to pay taxes on his salary. He is not tax exempt.
Another case of a politician flapping his arms to get attention over nothing. If he wanted to get something going, he'd start asking why the hell it costs so much to send a kid to college. He won't do that because it is a real issue and the last thing that politicians want to do is deal with real issues when they can get publicity for dealing with fake ones.
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