FanPost

Simply Amateurish


Why are we surprised, why are are outraged?

Would we be as outraged if Mr Nevin spent $100k, rented Doral for a day, and took 72 guys on a bus trip to learn golf?

I'm not saying we don't need to overhaul the NCAA's oversight, but what we first need to do is reevaluate the way we look at the perceived 'morality' of amateur sports.

It seems to me that we have some irrationally romantic and archaic attachment to idea. Like sports writers         keeping baseball players out of the Hall of Fame, even though the drugs the players took at the time were legal,  simply because the writers couldn't stand the newfound ephemeral nature of the 'olde recourds.'

We have a very flawed attachment the concept of amateur sports. Do you really think olympic athletes
don't have a job in real life to make some money? No! In fact some of the most inspiring stories are of everyday
kids from humble beginnings, training for whatever niche sport while sweeping fast foot joints just to get by!
Many will say that college football players have a job, and it's titled "representative of the university". Well,
coaches represent the university too, and for that they get north of seven digits.

I'm not saying colleges should outright pay football players on a weekly basis, but why do we have such a repulsed reaction to getting them in on the revenue?

Has anyone considered having a bond program for football players who graduate? Damn.
What better carrot on a stick to graduate than to have a $40,000 long-term bond waiting after graduation.
Hell, give them club level seat options for life! Use all these things to build a stronger alumni base.
If a player is too good to stay out of the pros past junior year, fine, then they forefit their bond.
It doesn't matter, because they'll get a hefty signing bonus anyway.

The NCAA needs to stop worrying about boosters. If someone is helping a kid out as a 3rd party, that's money the
school doesn't need to spend! The most important thing is that they prevent boosters from contact during the
RECRUITMENT process. All that's at stake here is making sure there's a semi-equal playing field for recruiting.

However, once a kid's on campus and signed in for 4 years, who cares if someone gives him a couple hundos a
week? To me, it's the NATURE of the gifts Nevin gave that are repugnant, not the act of charity itself.

Keep boosters away from recruits and coaches. After hours, as long as nothing illegal is going on, then who cares?

Don't tell me it's not fair to the other student athletes in say, rowing, that football players would get some lettuce;
it's not uncommon that students in the 'Olympic' sports are on partial scholarships anyway. There's already inequity.

Revenue sharing shouldn't interfere with Title IX either, all that stipulates is a University spend equal amounts on
various male/female programs. If Title IX dictated that all sports had to generate the same amount of revenue,
then all the patrons in the stadium  would have to be PAID to show up so the University could show a loss equal
to what sports like volleyball no doubt create in a bottom line environment.

The environment IS the bottom line in football. No other amateur sport has seat selection days. No other amateur sport requires that you dump thousands simply for the right to dump thousands more. If you are so self-rightous as to honestly believe that a game where,hundreds of stadiums fill weekly with tens-of-thousands of people spending hundreds-of-millions of dollars is apples-to-apples with discus practice out back of the public gym, then you are an accessory to the rampant exploitation of these kids.

Look at the ridiculous fact that a player cannot be given any of the royalties from sales of the video game with their likeness in it. What's that? Oh, I'm sorry, 'it's not them, it's just a number,' you say?  I call bullshit. This is Crispin Glover v Robert Zemeckis 101. We know what the first thing almost every kid does when he buys that game, edits the names to match the real life players. Heck, if I'm said kid's most hated quarterback on a rival team, I still want some cash for his ability to name me 'PoopFaceHead' or 'HeHateMeMore'.

Of course you know all of this, but to you it's just the way you've rationalized that it's just part of the 'way things are.' The way we justify this as acceptable is no different then the way we've compartmentalized the terms "prostitute" and 'escort.'

If you are saying Nevin's actions were reprehensible because of the salacious nature of his gifts,then you have a point.
If you are saying Nevin's actions were reprehensible because college football is an amateur entity, then you have
allowed yourself to be sold a bill of goods as phony, void, and worthless as the paper that landed our antagonist in
prison.

Again why are we surprised, why are we outraged? Because of a few morally repugnant actions, we've allowed ourselves to become closed-minded to question anything about the practicality and, honestly, sensibility of what we dogmatically call "improper benefits"

Praise to those trying to keep hookers off of children. Shame on those trying to keep the                                   providers of their fortune off the stack.