Heidi Alexander: “I thank my colleague from North Carolina. I thank the Senator from Iowa for his courtesy in allowing us to go ahead.…”

“I thank my colleague from North Carolina. I thank the Senator from Iowa for his courtesy in allowing us to go ahead. Some 50 years ago, I had the opportunity to compete in track and field for Vanderbilt University. Unlike my colleague from North Carolina, who as a fine defensive back at Wake Forest University, there was no athletic scholarship available for me. But I was fortunate enough to be a member of a record setting team. Twenty-five years ago, while I was president of the University of Tennessee, I was asked to serve on the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics. The Knight Commission was created in October 1989 in response to a series of scandals in college sports. After 18 months of careful study, our 22-member commission issued a report called ``Keeping the Faith with the Student-Athlete: A New Model for Intercollegiate Athletics.'' Our central recommendation was that college presidents needed to exercise stronger control of their athletics programs to ensure their academic and financial integrity. And our guiding principle in making that recommendation was that athletes are students first, not professionals. We wrote: We reject the argument that the only realistic solution to the problem is to drop the student-athlete concept, put athletes on the payroll, and reduce or even eliminate their responsibilities as students. Such a scheme has nothing to do with education, the purpose for which colleges and universities exist.…”