Scandal in the NCAA! (Yawn)
Last month, Yahoo Sports released a report from a University of Miami booster named Nevin Shapiro, incarcerated for his role in a $930 million Ponzi scheme, who provided thousands of impermissible benefits to at least 72 athletes from 2002 through 2010.
Check your fantasy football roster; chances are you have multiple players from the "U," and chances are they know Nevin Shapiro.
And, while it is entertaining to see whether it is your tight end or running back who accepted free prostitutes back in the day, the investigation referred to as 'groundbreaking' mentioned only what we already know -- that high-profile amateur athletes from low-income neighborhoods accept nice things for free -- but not what we don't -- a solution to the problem.
Because the problem lies not at Miami, or Ohio State, but in the system itself.
Schools cheat because who puts on your uniform determines millions of dollars in revenue; revenue in the form of television contracts, merchandise sales and such.
Coaches cheat because the alternative is doing the right thing. Doing the right thing until your cross-state rival comes into your house and whips you by 30 with five-star recruits who could have been in your corner had you just dirtied your hands the slightest bit.
Then come the death threats in the mail. Then comes the pink slip in the mail.
So there really is no alternative.
Which brings us to the kids. They often take the fall because hey, how hard is it to just say 'no'?
But those of us saying 'no' must step outside the ethnocentric lens. Those of us just saying 'no' have never had a sweet-talking car salesman tell us mom will never ride the bus again if we just say 'thank you.'
Those of us just saying 'no' often don't hail from neighborhoods where the only way we would see the car keys being dropped into our palm was in the next lifetime.
The NCAA exploits its athletes in a plantation-like system. It profits enormously from their immense talents (CBS pays the NCAA $6 Billion for the rights to broadcast March Madness), yet forbids them from even sniffing a piece of the cake.
John Brandon of Grantland.com took the following hard stance on college athletes receiving impermissible benefits:
"...to feel sorry for players because they don't get paid is misspent empathy. The deal they're offered is to play football in exchange for a free ride to college. The deal, as deals will, comes with rules. Take it or leave it, just like everybody else... If you don't like the deal being offered by the university, you're free to do something else. How about community college? How about going down to the temp agency and signing up for general labor? Dishwasher at Outback Steakhouse? What's that you say? The university sounds better than those other options? You'd like to exercise and occasionally read amongst 20,000 cute young women rather than do those other things that are available to you? Now you do realize that someone else is going to profit from your work, just like what happens to 99 percent of other folks in the world? And you still prefer playing football and getting a degree to apprenticing to be a plumber or enlisting in the Army? OK then. If you're sure."
But what Brandon fails to address is that many athletes have been so failed by the resource-starved education system in their underdeveloped communities that they have no use for the 'free ride to college.'
What Brandon fails to address is that for many athletes, the alternative to '20,000 cute young women' is not Outback Steakhouse, but rather millions of dollars in the pros.
In 2006, the NBA passed a rule which required players to attend at least one year of college in order to gain eligibility for the NBA Draft. It was a way for the NCAA to gain some brief shade under the money trees that are Kevin Durant and Derrick Rose.
While that mandatory on-campus stint produces millions of dollars for the NCAA, it can cost players an equally significant sum. Not to mention the prospect of a future pro suffering a career-threatening injury during his mandatory one-year stay in the NCAA.
I understand that a primary argument against paying college athletes is where to draw the line; if you pay high-profile football and basketball players, do you not have to pay the water polo team as well? Both are Division I sports.
But college sports is a business, and to give the athletes a share of the revenue they create would be, well, American. It would be doing the right thing.
And it may rid the world of the Nevin Shapiro's out there who do the wrong thing.
