The Wofford College men’s basketball coach, Dwight Perry, was fired on Sept. 12 because of his team’s meal swipes. It is safe to say this is an incredibly rare occurrence.
Wofford basketball won its conference last year and found itself in the NCAA tournament looking to make a return in the 2026 season. Six new players were put in underclassmen housing, despite the plan to put them in upperclassmen housing.
Perry helped the players out by putting them in a house to rent off campus for the time being.
The players forgot to switch their meal plans from on-campus to off-campus, and this meant they received “impermissible benefits” from the school and paid $84 to $108 less than they should have. For this reason, Perry was fired and the six players were suspended from the team.
In a world where teenagers like Bryce Underwood make over $10 million to play college football, Jeremiah Smith $4 to $5 million to do the same, and thousands of others receive money directly from the school, it’s great to see the NCAA has its priorities straight with cracking down on meal plans.
The NCAA denied having anything to do with the exclusion of the players or the coach, so days later, the players were let back on the team. Perry, however, remained fired.
Despite the NCAA stating they had nothing to do with the disciplinary action taken, the situation still leaves a growing stain on their reputation in today’s college sports world.
Small schools like Wofford are having a harder time competing with the big “Power 4” schools, which are in the Big 10, ACC, SEC and Big 12 conferences. With the introduction of name, image and likeness allowing players to make money off themselves for performance and reputation, and the transfer portal growing in recent years, funding is becoming a bigger headache.
The idea of the student-athlete is beginning to fade as 18-year-olds are seen as business assets rather than athletes. In July 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled NCAA athletes could receive compensation for their status as players for their name, image and likeness.
Despite this great step forward there are no real rules or regulations over what students can do to make money, leading to a completely free market in which players are crying out for leadership and structure.
In the summer of 2023, 10 of 12 schools left the Pac-12 conference, leaving only Washington State and Oregon State teams like Washington, Oregon, USC and UCLA all joined the Big 10, where every other week it seems they’re making a trip to New Jersey, Pennsylvania or the midwest for a match. The reason for this isn’t better competition, it’s better television deals. Better deals mean more money.
You could argue that what they are doing is good for the athletes, because if they get more revenue, they can pay their players more. However, there is still a cap in place where schools can only pay a total of $20.5 million for all their athletic teams.
The development of college athletes is starting to regress. A player could go to a big school, make six figures, but never see the field. Many would prefer this over going to a smaller school, developing, playing week in week out, getting paid a couple thousand at best and getting a degree or even transferring to a larger school if they are good enough.
Will this become the next way for college athletes? Maybe. The new era of college sports is the wild west as there is truly no regulation.
Schools are also running their athletes into the ground. Football teams are playing 17 games if they make the national championship. Basketball teams can play 40 games by the end of the NCAA tournament, and Tennessee played 73 baseball games last season winning the College World Series.
All of this is for the glory of college sports and the money that comes with it, over the development and betterment of their athletes.
