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Whitlock:Expose the Ncaa Reggie Bush is Kunta Kinte,a slave

post #1 of 10
Thread Starter 
http://msn.foxsports.com/collegefoot...2210?GT1=39002


" The NCAA rule book is not the United States Constitution.

If anything, the rule book supporting the bogus concept of “amateur athletics” is akin to the laws that supported Jim Crow, denied women suffrage and upheld slavery.

The architect of the modern NCAA, the organization’s former president, Walter Byers, spelled out all of this in his 1997 mea culpa, “Unsportsmanlike Conduct: Exploiting the Student-Athlete.”

Byers wrote: “Today the NCAA Presidents Commission is preoccupied with tightening a few loose bolts in a worn machine, firmly committed to the neo-plantation belief that the enormous proceeds from college games belong to the overseers (administrators) and supervisors (coaches). The plantation workers performing in the arena may only receive those benefits authorized by the overseers.”

Byers was not and is not a Jesse Jackson sympathizer. Byers is a white, right-wing conservative from Kansas. He was the NCAA’s first president (1951-1988) and sole visionary. He admitted creating a monster. His NCAA memoir was his repentance and call for a fundamental overhaul of a corrupt organization.

Reggie Bush is Kunta Kinte, a runaway slave.

The media are slave-catchers, mindless mercenaries crucifying child athletes for following the financial lead of their overseer coaches such as Pete Carroll, Lane Kiffin and Nick Saban.

I graduated from a very good journalism school. Ball State’s program is not the equal of Northwestern’s or Missouri’s, but I feel quite comfortable that I understand the role of journalists.

Journalists are not trained to be attack dogs for morally bankrupt institutions.

At some point, we can recognize that an investigative journalism award and individual career advancement do not justify pretending there is some honor in safeguarding the NCAA’s plantation.

USC is giving back Reggie Bush’s Heisman Trophy. Call me when Pete Carroll gives back a dime. Call me when USC offers a refund to all the people who purchased Reggie Bush jerseys.

Call me when the phony moralizing stops and we, the media, quit demonizing black kids for cashing in like white men.

If you read this column regularly, you know I’m fond of the TV show "The Wire" and making Wire-related analogies. The pursuit of Reggie Bush and his Heisman Trophy is the equivalent of police commissioner Ervin Burrell demanding a “buy-bust sting” and “dope on the table.”

It’s a publicity stunt. Everyone is falling for it. It’s working so well that Nick $aban had the audacity to climb on his LSU-Dolphins-Alabama high horse and claim that the rules-breaking street agents are pimps.

It takes one to know one, Nick “Mr. White Folks” Saban.

Pack journalism must die. My industry/profession has sold the NCAA lie for too long. We’ve served as the NCAA’s volunteer investigative unit for 40 years.

Why?

We know exactly what Byers knows and admitted: amateur athletics is a for-profit scam.

Television and money perverted college football and basketball a generation ago. Coaches and administrators are making millions. The athletes are being compensated in a currency (a shot at a compromised education in their spare time) many of them don’t respect and haven’t been properly prepared to use. The NCAA takes most of the money generated by football and men’s basketball and invests it in welfare sports that don’t generate a dollar and are played mostly by kids who have nothing in common with the football and basketball players who produced the revenue.

Add in that we now have a far better understanding of the long-term health risks associated with playing football and it’s even more clear why these young people can’t resist taking what’s offered to them.

Reggie Bush is Kunta Kinte.

The media are going to chop his Heisman Trophy off, drag him back to USC’s plantation and let new athletic director Pat Haden lash his legacy in front of Chicken George, Fiddler and Kizzy.

And several reporters will get promotions, pay raises and a few plaques for “catching” Reggie Bush.

I have a great deal of respect for the reporters at Yahoo Sports, the media outlet that has led the Bush investigation. But I have no respect for the NCAA rule book. I have no respect for the sports journalism-awards culture that rewards NCAA rules-violation stories.

Yahoo Sports has done awesome work exposing financial links between summer basketball kingpins, the Pump brothers, and high-profile college basketball coaches and administrators. I mention this because I don’t want to create the impression that reporters I respect solely focus on supporting out-of-date NCAA/amateur athletics rules.

But this Reggie Bush story has infuriated me. I’ve listened to too many talking heads shred Bush and street agents as though they’re the problem in college athletics.

The problem is the lie, the original sin, the myth that our society is enhanced by protecting the fallacy of “amateur athletics.” Rather than destroy Reggie Bush and his Heisman Trophy, aggressive, righteous journalists should work to destroy the NCAA and every other institution in support of the amateur lie. "

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Whitlock is a douche but I have to admit he makes good points. The NCAA is total bullshit. Its alot like Wall Street the powerful pad themselves and loot the underlings.

My question is this though why isn't Pete Carroll and some of these other coaching douchebags put into the media garbage disposal like the players are? Universities get penalties and slapped around but come back again. Do these players?

Don't we have to open our eyes to the big money getting thrown around and made here? Who is it benefiting? Do you accept that? If so why?

I have heard it said many times college sports is pure but thats total BS. Why is that fallacy continued? Its as dumb as saying Walmart thrives in a free market system.

I don't feel a lot of sympathy for Reggie Bush but not all athletes playing in college football are Reggie Bush.

Why do we need the NCAA?
post #2 of 10
I remember hearing rumors a few years ago of a few big schools contemplating telling the NCAA to stick it and forming their own collegiate league. I think it would take something like that to happen before the NCAA sees any kind of real change. The system is simply too entrenched and makes too much money for too many people.

Now I'm not going to sit here and paint the athletes as these perfectly innocent little snowflakes being ground under the boots of the athletic programs. Kunta Kinte didn't get drafted #1 by South Carolina and paid millions of dollars because he did real good on another plantation. You can't tell me Reggie Bush got all the perks he supposedly got at USC and had no idea he was abusing the system. But I do think the athletes get taken advantage of, especially when it's their talents that let the schools sell their jerseys and t-shirts and rake in money from boosters. And when you have a system where a coach can be punished because he buys a hungry kid a meal or pays a medical bill for someone who can't afford it, it's no wonder the abuses pop up. A lot of these kids think it's worth the potential trouble to give their family a couple of hundred thousand dollars. Besides, there's no pension or injury coverage for college football. If you're a promising pro prospect and you blow out your knee your sophomore year, well, hey, hope that sports media degree comes in handy.
post #3 of 10
Good read, good points JD. The whole thing is a sewer. Money ruins everything, unfortunately.
post #4 of 10
Slavery might be a bit much. Indentured servitude seems to me more fitting.
post #5 of 10
Whitlock is adamant bringing in white-hot touchstone language, but his fixation on color is pointless. The NCAA is all about green. The hypocrisy of the organization is astounding, and the complicity of the NFL is also depressing. In short, it's about making money off of the kids and then dumping them. "The kids get rich in the NFL" is the excuse. Yes...a very small percentage.

Anyways, Whitlock is right, but he seems as interested in his race prism as he is in the facts of the issue - that the NCAA is perfectly fine with everyone making money off of athletes. And no one is actually protecting the interests of the students. You know, the one constituency in this debacle that ISN'T adult. Adults need to be there to protect the KIDS.

Never happen though.
post #6 of 10
Quote:
Originally Posted by Richard Dickson View Post
I remember hearing rumors a few years ago of a few big schools contemplating telling the NCAA to stick it and forming their own collegiate league.
With college football moving towards having a few super conferences, there's a lot of talk right now that they will abandon the NCAA. Yeah, that would be outstanding.

On point, that's a really interesting op-ed piece.
post #7 of 10
Normally Celizic is a douche, but he frames the issue at it's core: bald hypocrisy.

http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/383667...lege_football/
post #8 of 10
An interesting article focusing on the college basketball side of it, with anonymous quotes from several (evidently high-level) D-1 basketball coaches.

I hadn't realized that the majority of NCAA enforcement officers were women, which (among other things) produced this amazing quote from one coach:

"If the NCAA was serious, they'd hire someone who knew what they were doing, not these women out here trying to get a husband.''
post #9 of 10
Thread Starter 
Jesus its even worse than I first imagined good stuff.

I actually was behind the super conferences just because they could of ended up away from the NCAA.

That and maybe just maybe finally a playoff system. But nope.
post #10 of 10
It's funny that if you check ESPN or any of the other mainstream sports commentary outlets you'll find a lot of disdain for Reggie Bush or any so called "student-athlete" that takes money.

Meanwhile people with any ounce of common sense are thinking: "if I had god given ridiculous talent to be great at the most popular sport in the USA wouldn't I be frustrated about having to spend at least a few years in a notoriously dangerous sport risking career ending injury while I make other older people a ton of money with no other compensation but a college education I neither want nor need?" Hell yes I would take the money and I wouldn't give a damn if my school had to give back my stupid trophy or it's stupid "national championship".
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