About the Book
The company I was working for in the 1980s engaged in some accounting manipulations. They did some wrongful padding concocted at the New York headquarters for booking at several subsidiary accounting centers, including the one where I was employed as Assistant Group Controller. The company books were audited for one of the largest CPAs firms in USA.
That was one of the many manifestations of human nature shortcomings that came to my attention.
At that time, I became aware of some wrongdoings taking place in college athletics.
I drew a parallel in my mind between what I thought of as “fouling” in business and “fouling” in college athletics.
My interest in these subjects continued in the more than three decades that I, and the public in general, knew of unabated wrongdoings that plague the worlds of businesses and college athletics.
Greed in businesses made executives to break the accounting rules to obtain monetary advantages. Many of them were caught and faced several levels of punishment, including prison terms. This is the subject matter of Part I of this book. Laws have been enacted by Congress, and the Enforcement Division of the Security and Exchange Commission has a watchdog role representing improvements to our days.
Greed in college athletics is manifested in an environment that became big business, particularly in college basketball and football programs. This is the subject matter for Part II. The National College Athletic Association (NCAA) is the organization regulating all the college sport programs. In basketball and football the NCAA has perpetuated a system that rewards monetary riches to coaches and their staffs, and to the NCAA president and his staff. The student players are the producers of all those riches, but they are confined to what is allowed to them in benefits as amateurs. It is an inequity that is highly criticized as unfair. The NCAA has introduced some improvements in recent years, but pay-for-play have been ignore. I present in my book a pay-for-play calculation method that is fair to the student athletes and, that me as a number person, consider easy to implement. It’s time for the NCAA to be fair and square in the college athletic business.
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My interest in these subjects continued in the more than three decades that I, and the public in general, knew of unabated wrongdoings that plague the worlds of businesses and college athletics.
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REVIEW
JORDANA LANDSMAN
The US Review of Books
“While the egregious history of ‘fouling’ in business resulted in eventual actions by Congress… it remains to be seen whether ‘fouling’ in college athletics will illicit the same results.”
During the decades of his distinguished business and accounting career, Fernandez noticed parallels between shady activities in corporate America and college athletics. He believes legal and ethical violations in both these big-money industries should be subject to revelation and reform. In this persuasive and well-researched discussion, Fernandez makes his case methodically, focusing first on corrupt practices in the business world and following with his perspective on abuses and inequities he perceives in college sports. In the business world, he notes positive progress, as misleading and unlawful accounting practices from prior decades have been addressed by tighter regulations. In college sports, however, Fernandez posits that abuses continue, with little collective will and no clear, respected oversight body poised to make effective near-term changes.
Particularly disturbing to Fernandez is the inequity he perceives in a college sports system that earns billions in broadcasting fees for games played by college athletes who are prohibited from receiving compensation. Coaches, universities, and broadcasters are enriched by the sponsorship fees and advertising, yet the students who are wearing the logos and playing the games go unpaid. This sustained and complex dialogue over the unpaid status of college athletes hardly begins or ends with this discussion, and the book’s position might have been enhanced by addressing and debunking the arguments from those who believe the integrity of sports and indeed the young athletes themselves are best protected under the current system. Still, Fernandez offers substantive observations and research to support what emerges as a dirty but unsurprising portrait of corruption by and for the power players of big business and college sports.