Do you hear that?
The thunderous bumping. The trembling bass.
Maybe you see it.
The spinning chrome. The shimmering diamonds.
That’s booster money.
At any major universities in the country, you will find athletes dangling iced-out watches over the steering wheel of their plush Benzes as they cruise through campus. You can’t miss it. Heads turn, and speculative whispers of who that was fill the air.
Wait a second. How is the starting running back rocking a watch worth more than his tuition if his momma is a nurse working two shifts?
Booster money.
Everybody knows it. It’s just that no one is willing to admit it. Or acknowledge it. Boosters have been paying student-athletes forever. Movies have been produced about it and jobs have been lost over it. Why doesn’t the NCAA just face facts and accept that student-athletes are getting paid to play for particular universities.
Take the Great Depression for example. Prohibition outlawed the sale and consumption of alcohol in America. But after a while, people realized it was useless to uphold prohibition, because it didn’t stop anyone from boozing. It just made doing so a little more scandalous.
The same thing goes for the war on drugs today. Billions of dollars are wasted in an attempt to stop the unstoppable. People will always use drugs. And boosters will always pay student-athletes.
So what do you say we face facts and embrace the inevitable?
There’s so much talk in the media today about whether Greg Oden and Kevin Durant should stay in school or go to the NBA.
“Stay in school and get an education.”
“No. Get paid before you get injured.”
Why can’t they do both?
If we just accept that boosters are paying student-athletes to play college ball, then these kids can have the best of both worlds. They’ll get paid AND they’ll get an education.
Of course it isn’t fair to the rest of us. But then again, neither is life.
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2 comments:
Hi, this is Condor and I taught this young man everything he knows about sports. Therefore, I take credit for everything he says, unless it is stupid, in which case he did not learn from my tutiledge. How about a post about the double edge sword that is being a fan of the astros.
Little known fact about this blogger is that he was a redshirt freshman on the diving team at the University of Miami in 2002-2003. With such high profile former hurricane divers like Greg Louganis and that Russian guy, boosters played a huge role in the life of the diver. At first, this blogger (we'll refer to him as "pocket hercules") enjoyed the gifts. First it was top of the line hair gel, then it was chinchilla fur shammy towels. Pocket Hercules was starting to forget the "student" part of being a student-athlete, and when he showed up to a meet wearing a gold plated banana hammock, the NCAA caught wind of it, as well as a glimpse of his package. This blogger knows first hand about the boosters in college sports, and I commend his honesty.
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