Should college athletes face background checks?

It is certainly not news to most of us that a lot of college athletes have got into trouble with the law at some point down the line. What may surprise us is the extent of this, and how widespread the problem is. One out of every fourteen players from the preseason Top 25 NCAA football teams in 2010 were found to have been charged with or cited for a crime according to the recently released results of a special investigation conducted by Sports Illustrated and CBS News, the Huffington Post tell us. This poses the question – should college athletes face background checks? Only two of the twenty-five schools routinely performed any kind of criminal background check. It seems troubling that schools are so willing to put the sporting ability of individuals above the safety of their campus. Given obvious pressures to win, and possibly look the other way, this has got to change. The NCAA or the regional conferences have got to mandate that background checks are run on all prospective athletes before they are granted admission and allowed to play each year. Any individual institution that began running them on their own would simply be at too great a competitive disadvantage without a universal mandate. This will put all institutions on a level playing field — certainly something that should be a key objective of the NCAA. It’s not an issue of trying to punish certain individuals and not offer them a second chance, it’s more a consideration of safety. If background checks are such a significant part of other aspects of society, then why not in this?]]>