America’s landscape is littered with middle-aged men who’ve had their hearts broken by the actions of the “modern-day athlete.” In between a George Will op-ed bemoaning the loss of overweight white sluggers in lieu of the sculpted over-juiced, predominantly Hispanic baseballer and Joe Buck still dabbing his eyes dry over a Randy Moss antic; we have the OSU tragedy.
Sports reporters and writers should be taken with a grain of salt large enough to cause the Dead Sea envy. But salt grains are not enough to detour my angst over middle-aged men demonizing college kids. I can handle Rick Bucher’s attempt to sidle into Derrick Rose’s camp now that Kobe’s career is fading by ignoring half a dozen other players, LeBron included, and claiming Rose is the best player in the league. I can even handle Rick Reilly defending Lance Armstong with the same enthusiasm he deployed towards castigating Barry Bonds even though skin color and sport were the only differences between the two athlete’s cases. But demonizing some idiotic* college kids for doing something idiotic is cruel.
*I used the word idiotic because the majority of college kids are idiots. Even some of the Rhodes Scholars are idiotic, ‘cough cough’ Bill Clinton. STD-spreading, Dave-Mathews-Band-loving, couch-burning, joint-smoking, not-good-at-sexing, underage-drinking, Family-Guy-over-quoting college kids are not the moral compass of this country.
The college kids traded their crap stuff for other crap stuff. Then a coach lied about his knowledge of the stuff for stuff trade. Simon Legree, I mean the NCAA, is probably going to punish the school and the athletes and whole bunch of Baylesses are going to continue to bash the college kids. College kids using their property to get tattoos while the school and Legree uses them to build an empire.
I am biased; I will always side with the athlete. I’m a big working class guy and the athletes are definitely the worker bees. I understand the criticisms against pro-athletes, I don’t agree with most of them, but I understand them. They make good money and get to do something we envy. But college athletes are caught in this weird athletic purgatory and are then villified for disobeying the NCAA’s imposed immoralities.
We have minor league athletes earning major league money for their schools while the media attacks them for trying to capitalize on their accomplishments. The media folk attack these young men for their arrogance and sense of entitlement. Well, they should be entitled. They earn professional profits for their schools and get amateur benefits. They act entitled because they are entitled to much more than they receive. The media is making a lot of racket and getting fan bases lathered up against a scapegoat. All that noise you hear is the media creating a diversion while the real crook, NCAA Legree, gets off scot free.
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Agreed. The NCAA should dissolve. Universities/Colleges could just have inter-murals. Then kids who do not want to go to higher education will have to develop their talents in a minor league system where they would be paid. These kids would increase their value over time so that when they start making millions in four years they will better appreciate what it takes to get there. Currently the NCAA makes bank and the kids get persecuted for being a kid and doing what anyone else their age would do. With that said…I love college basketball but I’m tired of all the BS rules imposed by the NCAA and the athletes being exploited.
Word.
A counter: Chris Vance, a former Buckeye implicated in the current scandal, was given a full ride scholarship to OSU because he is fast and strong and excels at catching a ball. That scholarship was worth approximately 100K ($24,000 a year for out-of-state tuition X 4 years). Furthermore, Vance would get a per diem of over $1,000 a month, ancillary benefits (including travel, meals, the adulation of everyone on campus, etc) and could sell whatever personal Buckeye property he wanted to sell after he graduated. I wouldn’t call a free degree from a great school for 4 years of particpation on their cherished football team an “amateur benefit”. You might think it’s stupid that the NCAA has a rule against selling team merchanidise during your playing days, but it seems a minor price to pay to wait a couple of years before hawking a jersey for a tattoo. I’m not necessarily defending the NCAA or mainstream journalists, and I agree with the overall sentiment of your article, but to imply that athletes like Chris Vance are above reproach, or that any criticism leveled at them is diverting attention from the “real crook”, is in my view a bit of a stretch. Not every athlete did what some of those Buckeyes chose to do, because what those young men did was stupid and risky. I think it’s ok to say as much.