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We have corrupted college ball...
When I graduated from high school in the way-way back (56 summers back), you could play all year at a school like FSU, Auburn or Miami and not once be on TV in regular season.
The NCAA allowed the broadcasting of eight national games (half of which were Big Ten and Notre Dame was on Saturday night) .....and allowed regional broadcasts in five weeks of the year. Until 1984 that was college ball.
Now we have 111 games in regular season that have had at least 2 million watching per game...it is big entertainment, big money. Billions in media dollars flowing to conferences.
Bobby Bowden was paid $35,000 a year when he came to FSU....now, 100 times that amount for a coach does not make anyone blink.
The kids have long ceased to be scholar athletes at the higher levels of football....the NCAA has allowed sliding scales and other subterfuges to allow college players on the field who, otherwise, would never attend that college.
We have made up fields of study designed to keep up a facade of these players actually being bonafide students...all the while they are spending many hours in football preparation.
If, as the Department of Education has published, that only 17% of Black 12th graders can read at a proficient level and 6% are proficient at math, and a preponderance of the better players are Black, do we really believe that they all come out of that 17% that may be college material?
We have conveniently bought into that fiction so that we can enjoy an entertainment that we imagine to be an amateur product compared to the NFL.
And is it any wonder that it is the kids themselves who understand that and are now pulling back the curtain so that we all can not ignore the NCAA wizard pulling the levers?
When I graduated from high school in the way-way back (56 summers back), you could play all year at a school like FSU, Auburn or Miami and not once be on TV in regular season.
The NCAA allowed the broadcasting of eight national games (half of which were Big Ten and Notre Dame was on Saturday night) .....and allowed regional broadcasts in five weeks of the year. Until 1984 that was college ball.
Now we have 111 games in regular season that have had at least 2 million watching per game...it is big entertainment, big money. Billions in media dollars flowing to conferences.
Bobby Bowden was paid $35,000 a year when he came to FSU....now, 100 times that amount for a coach does not make anyone blink.
The kids have long ceased to be scholar athletes at the higher levels of football....the NCAA has allowed sliding scales and other subterfuges to allow college players on the field who, otherwise, would never attend that college.
We have made up fields of study designed to keep up a facade of these players actually being bonafide students...all the while they are spending many hours in football preparation.
If, as the Department of Education has published, that only 17% of Black 12th graders can read at a proficient level and 6% are proficient at math, and a preponderance of the better players are Black, do we really believe that they all come out of that 17% that may be college material?
We have conveniently bought into that fiction so that we can enjoy an entertainment that we imagine to be an amateur product compared to the NFL.
And is it any wonder that it is the kids themselves who understand that and are now pulling back the curtain so that we all can not ignore the NCAA wizard pulling the levers?
