When the "disintegrating influence of money-mad athletics" was first hot, Judge Saul Streit condemned the University of Kentucky as "the acme of commercialism and overemphasis." That was in 1952, after hearings on Kentucky's role in college basketball's point-shaving scandal. Streit found "covert subsidization of players, ruthless exploitation of athletes, cribbing at examinations, illegal recruiting and the most flagrant abuse of the athletic scholarship." More than 30 years later, the bill of particulars has hardly changed at all.
The University of Kentucky is now preparing its formal responses to a list of stark charges made by the National Collegiate Athletic Association. They...