Andrew Cooper, from college star to activist: ‘The NCAA does not exist to protect athletes’

Let’s be clear – Andrew Cooper is no fan of the National Collegiate Athletic Association. A former track and cross-country runner at Washington State University and the University of California, Berkeley, Cooper’s experience as an athlete at top American universities provided him with a critical eye of how the NCAA governs college sports. As a long-distance runner, Cooper has had plenty of time to think. And he believes the structure, system, and priorities of US college sports need a reboot.

Cooper served inside the machine as president of the NCAA’s Student-Athlete Advisory Council at WSU and UC Berkeley. Today, he is an athletes’ rights activist who sees systemic failure in how universities and the NCAA handle issues around mental health and sexual abuse allegations. Cooper sees patterns.

“The issue is that universities have processes in place and make empty claims about protecting athletes and protecting students,” Cooper says. “Universities are trusted to regulate themselves but they benefit from covering up sexual assault. There is a crisis in America around self-regulation.

“The universities care [about athletes] until it potentially impacts their reputation and their revenue. Once allegations impact a university’s reputation and revenue, suddenly it impacts an individual’s job. If your job hinges on protecting the university’s reputation or revenue then you are going to make every effort possible to protect the reputation and revenue of your source of income. Anyone taking a Policy 101 course would immediately realize that it is obvious that an institution would protect its own interests at the expense of workers or students who are negatively impacted by an event.”

And there’s plenty of income to protect. For