Just Pay Them - Give the College Athletes Their Money
Sunday, June 05, 2011
Pay ‘em whatever it takes, because certain battles aren’t worth fighting.
Prostitutes will keep prostituting no matter how many times you stuff their mini-skirts into the back of a police cruiser, and you can round up all the troops you need from GLAAD and every other gay rights organization in America to form a sequin army on Kobe Bryant’s doorstep, but homophobia in professional sports will still exist tomorrow morning.
And no matter how many times a disgraced coach offers a half-hearted apology hours after getting bagged for a lifetime worth of recruiting violations or other infractions, his peers will continue to cheat their asses off in order to get ahead because the playing field in college sports is far from level and it will remain that way until the end of time.
Get this: Ohio State’s meltdown stemmed from players exchanging memorabilia for services at a local tattoo parlor. That’s it. Tattoos. This isn’t even about a recruiting violation or competitive imbalance. Tressel, the most decorated coach of the past decade, ultimately had to quit his job because some of his players signed a few helmets and balls in order to get free tattoos. Not houses, cars or jobs for their moms. Tattoos.
Where I’m from, we call that a barter deal. What’s good enough for corporate America should be good enough for the NCAA, but America’s chief governing body for college athletics plays by its own rules, much like every professional sports league in this country, minus the fact those leagues actually pay their employees.
Women are allowed to use their cleavage and good looks to weasel their way out of speeding tickets, yet somehow elite college athletes with arguably more discipline and responsibility than any other student on campus are barred from parlaying their talents into a lucrative savings’ account.
Anyone who provides a service for a business or university that makes money and doesn’t get compensated for his or her services is a fool, and the NCAA has been making fools out of its employees for far too long, raking in millions off of bowl games, Final Fours and merchandise sold at stadiums – merchandise popularized by the kids on the field whose net worth is less than that of a Dice-K rookie card.
While we’re at it, let’s drop the “student-athlete” tag, too, because neither the NCAA nor the school gives a flying fart whether its athletes graduate. Lousy coaches with smart kids and high graduation rates don’t get contract extensions. They get fired. No university ever made a dime off Sunjit the Spelling Bee champion, but there isn’t a school in the country not begging for the next Tim Tebow, because he’ll ball hard enough to allow every greasy administrator and alum to save face by dropping a multi-million dollar “learning center” smack dab in the middle of campus. As long as the school can create the illusion that it cares about your child’s education, we’ll gladly choke on the exhaust fumes as Bobby Joe Quarterback drives off in his Escalade.
Other than the lure of dim-witted, blonde coeds begging for “study partners,” there’s no incentive whatsoever for a prominent college athlete to stay in school in lieu of making serious bank at the professional level. You can keep your ill-fitting lettermen jacket. No one needs – or wants – a degree. If I want wall decorations, I’ll go to Home Goods. If I want to buy Home Goods, I’ll go to the NBA.
Consequently, if you pay college athletes, they won’t need to prostitute themselves in order to get a hideous sleeve tattooed onto their left arm. Some of them might even stay in school for an extra year or two, strengthening the overall quality of college athletics. Let schools give these kids whatever they want, and may the school with the most money and richest boosters win. That’s the American way, and it’s been the cornerstone of our society for decades.
Coaches, boosters and administrators will continue to find ways to compensate college athletes whether it’s legal or not, so end the nonsense and come up with a system to eliminate these problems. Regulate it, tax it – do whatever you feel is necessary to maintain some semblance of order.
Just pay ‘em. They’ve earned it.
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