Tag Archives: NCAA

Hating Marshall Henderson | NewBlackMan (in Exile)

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by David J. Leonard

I hate Marshall Henderson. There I said it. I realize that my disdain for all things Marshall ran deep recently, where I couldn’t help but sit in front of the television to watch Ole Miss-Florida in the SEC tournament finale. I am more likely to watch the Real Housewives of Iowa than an SEC basketball game, yet it was must see-TV because of my disdain for Marshall Henderson.

But let me clear, I am not a hater. In fact, my feelings have nothing to do with Marshall Henderson. I don’t know the man. Nor do I have an investment in his daily performance.

My thoughts about Henderson have as much to do with the myopic celebration of his accomplishments, “colorful” personality, and “swagger” given the sordid history of integration at Ole Miss. Given the “ghosts of Mississippi,” and given the historic mistreatment directed at African American students at this “rebel campus,” it is telling that Henderson has elicited praise. It is telling that he has been elevated at the expense of his teammates, erasing their contributions to the team.

My emotional reaction is not about Henderson himself but the narrative, the media coverage, and the double standards that he is embodies. “Marshall Henderson is the Charlie Sheen of college basketball – an unapologetic poster-child of white privilege,” notes Charles Moriano. “Despite a litany of on and off-court behavior that normally send sports media pundits into “what about the kids” columns with African-American athletes, Henderson has been most often been described as ‘passionate’, ‘colorful’, and ‘entertaining’.” Greg Howard describes the double standards that anchor the media response:

He messes with any racially essentialist expectations of what a white basketball player is supposed to be. He’s an incessant shit-talker who tosses up 30-footers, rarely passes, and has a conspicuous lack of “hustle” stats. He tokes an invisible joint after made three-pointers…Marshall Henderson by all rights shouldn’t exist. And if he were a black athlete, he wouldn’t—not as far as big-time basketball is concerned.

My contempt is about the public persona that he has created along with a media that seems not only OK but rejoicing in behavior that has become the basis of the sports-punditry-hater-industry when it comes to today’s black athletes.

Matt Rybaltowski is illustrative of everything I loathe about the Marshall Henderson story: “In an age of political correctness and the contrived sound bite, Marshall Henderson is an anomaly, a free-spirit college basketball hasn’t seen since Jason Williams brought his killer crossover to Gainesville in the late 1990s. Dating back even further, it’s not a stretch to consider Henderson a Bill Walton in a shooter’s body.”

Sports pundits are incapable of offering comparisons that are not racially segregated. Whereas Bill Walton loved the Grateful Dead, protested the Vietnam War (he was even arrested during his junior year), and joined Kareem Abdul Jabbar and others in support of the civil rights movement, Henderson loves playing quarters and his “hoes.” I guess we can say Henderson protested injustice, calling those coaches who didn’t vote him first team all-conference as losers. Comparing Henderson to Walton is like comparing Justin Bieber to Eric Clapton; white and involved in same vocation.

Whereas black ballers are continuously criticized for selfishness – “there is no I in TEAM” – Henderson’s aspiration to “get his money” or his propensity to taunt fans is a sign of his being free spirit. He is celebrated for saying what is on his mind even if his mind seems to begin and end with himself. It is a striking moment of hypocrisy where not only does Henderson get a pass for his trash-talking, self-promotion, and his shot selection, but when he is imagined as exceptional. In an age of media scrutiny, where (black) athletes are routinely criticized for deviating from the prescribed scripts, it is striking that he is celebrated by the same media that makes millions off telling today’s (black) student-athlete to shut up and play.

Continue reading at  Hating Marshall Henderson | NewBlackMan (in Exile).

BIGGER THAN PENN STATE: Does Our Culture Neglect Child Abuse Victims? – News & Views – EBONY

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BIGGER THAN PENN STATE: Does Our Culture Neglect Child Abuse Victims?

By David J. Leonard

 

Amid all the self-righteousness and demands for accountability, justice and changes are the realities that speak to a societal disregard for the injustice of child abuse. Clearly, Penn State, a culture of hero worship, and most specifically those who turned their back on Jerry Sandusky’s victims in the name of bowl victories and football tradition, are complicit. Dollars and wins were deemed more important than the safety of children, an indictment of many.

We can all point to the various enablers within Penn State – administration, the Board of Trustees, Joe Paterno and countless others. Yet, the NCAA and the sports media, which not only promote a culture of football, a “victory culture,” and a “win by any means necessary” are also complicit here. They provided the incentive, the financial remunerations, and the institutional support that gave rise to this tragedy. Did what the NCAA did today make kids any safer; did it change the culture of college sports; did it adjust societal priorities; did it change the ways we define heroes. The plague of child abuse necessitates systemic action, including budgetary support for the prevention of child abuse; it requires financial commitment that actually puts kids first, that cares for those who have faced the unthinkable injustice for child abuse. As the NCAA wags its finger at Penn State and as ESPN and others in the sports media congratulate them, I am left to wonder who will hold the American political structure accountable for making kids more vulnerable.

For the first time in 18 years, the budgetary support for the Victims of Child Abuse Act was cut to ZERO for the 2013 budget. Monies that supported the victims of child abuse, that served almost 300,000 abused children in 2011, are gone, unless Congress restores them. According to the National Children’s Alliance, the cutting of funding for the Victims of Child Abuse Act will result in among other things:

  • Fewer abused children will receive services in every jurisdiction;
  • CACs will not receive the technical assistance and training they need to do their work effectively;
  • Prosecutors would not receive the training and technical assistance they need to get successful prosecutions, hold offenders accountable, and keep our communities safer;

If we as a society are truly concerned about child abuse, lets put our money where our mouth is. Instead of purchasing tickets for one game, instead of donating to our favorite athletic program, instead of donating to politicians who vote against the interest of children, instead of forking over $$ for the latest game gear, lets make our priorities clear with some investment in those actually promoting justice.

Continue reading @ BIGGER THAN PENN STATE: Does Our Culture Neglect Child Abuse Victims? – News & Views – EBONY.

Why Shouldn’t Diddy’s Son Get a Scholarship? – Entertainment & Culture – EBONY

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Why Shouldn’t Diddy’s Son Get a Scholarship?

By David Leonard

The announcement that Justin Combs, son of Sean “Diddy” Combs, would take his talents – on the field and in the classroom – to UCLA has prompted widespread debate (err haterism). Despite excelling on the football field and with his academics, some have questioned whether he deserves or should be given a scholarship, especially in our current economic climate. More than the issue of the cost of collegiate athletics and rising tuition costs, the “controversy” surrounding his scholarship to UCLA comes from a belief that Combs is not entitled to an athletic scholarship because of his father’s wealth.

A blog post – “Should rich kids be ineligible for college scholarships?,” gives voice to those who have questioned the decision from UCLA and the Combs family:

Justin shouldn’t keep this money: Here’s the bottom line, says Dennis Romero at LA Weekly: “The son of a guy worth nearly half a billion dollars” doesn’t need a free ride to college, especially to “a school where student tuition and fees have nearly tripled in the last 10 years.” I mean, this is a kid who poses in front of “a $300,000-plus Maybach,” likely the car his dad got him on his 16th birthday. Now that’s “a free ride that could pay for half dozen full-ride scholarships to UCLA.”

The mere fact that this subject to debate on CNN or that CBS affiliate in Los Angeles sent a reporter to ask students their opinion is troubling and points to some larger issues at work. Justin Combs earned a scholarship; UCLA decided that his football skills and his academic preparedness were worthy of an athletic scholarship. That should be the end of the discussion yet for those who see his Diddy’s mogul status, his MTV Sweet 16 bash, his car, or his father’s stock portfolio as reasons to deny an earned, merit-based, scholarship, let me say a few things.

First off, the scholarship is “compensation” for his athletic labor; it is payment for not only his hard work but also a skill set that has proven to be valuable. It is compensation for the job of being a student-athlete, one that not only includes practice, games, media sessions, film sessions, workouts, travel, physical and mental wear and tear, and public appearances, along with being a college athlete. It is remuneration for the millions of dollars generated by collegiate football and basketball players, whose talents the NCAA, its partner institutions, and the sports media have converted into a billion dollar industry. While an exploitative relationship, this is still the “wage.” Unless the sons and daughters of America’s 1-percent are going to be asked to forgo wages at their various jobs, there is little one should say to Justin Combs.

Second, the idea that budgets or student fees are being impacted by athletic scholarships is without basis. Beyond the reality that state monies are not used for athletic scholarships, the efforts to link Combs to the budget is faux outrage. Where is the outrage over excessive salaries for coaches? High-price administrators? High cost tuition has nothing to do with scholarship athletes, or “overpaid professors” but an overall divestment in higher education. It reflects an unwillingness to invest public monies, to raise the necessary tax dollars, to maintain great universities. Blaming student-athletes and condemning Justin Combs is nothing more than a rhetorical weapon of mass distraction, one that so often cites hip-hop as the source of societal ills.

Additionally, if one is going to “mean’s test” scholarships, wouldn’t that ostensibly eliminate all merit-based scholarships? Does that mean all scholarships will be allocated based on need or just when involving the sons and daughters of hip-hop moguls?

For those who don’t think Combs deserves an athletic scholarship, are you willing to take the same position for a student who earns academic scholarship? If athletic excellence doesn’t matter for a student of wealth, should artistic or academic excellence matter either?

Continue reading @ Why Shouldn’t Diddy’s Son Get a Scholarship? – Entertainment & Culture – EBONY.

Drug Culture on College Campuses and the Criminalization of Student Athletes | Urban Cusp

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Drug Culture on College Campuses and the Criminalization of Student Athletes

By David J. Leonard

UC Columnist

In a world where the stigmas of drugs and the destructiveness of the war on drugs have been confined to the black community, particularly those segregated urban spaces, the recent announcement of the arrest of several students from Texas Christian University should cause pause. Following a 6-month investigation from the DEA, the police arrested 17 students, including 4 football players, selling a myriad of drugs – marijuana, cocaine, prescription drugs and ecstasy on and off campus. The inclusion of 4 football players resulted in widespread media coverage, few which made note that 3 of those arrested were white, an important fact given the media-produced stereotype about race, crime, and American athletes. Worse yet, the efforts to isolate the problem of drugs to student athletes, not only plays upon stereotypes about black athletes, even in instances such as this where only 1 person involved is African American, but once again exonerates whiteness from the discussion. In narrating the problem of drugs on college campuses through athletics, an identity difficult to disentangle from blackness within the white imagination, the media sensationalism perpetuates a racially-defined war on drugs.

Described as a “stain on the football program,” and “an especially embarrassing blow to the school because it included four members of the high-profile football team,” the media response focused on the arrest of the 4 student-athletes, simultaneously rendering the other students (at least 11) and non-students involved as insignificant to the larger story. Those from the football team became the story, the starting team, with the others involved reduced to peripheral bench players unworthy of media investigation or commentary. In “TCU Will Survive Shameful Day,” Jean-Jacques Taylor denounced the players as “shameful, embarrassing, stupid,” seemingly letting the other students involved, the school, and the coach off the hook. In fact, Taylor celebrates the coach for how he handled the situation even though according to the article, 80 players tested positive for drugs (other sources put this number between 5-16): “Perhaps he’s simply observed what’s happened at Ohio State and Penn State recently and decided the fallout from the cover-up is so much worse than the crime that it’s far better to come clean and deal with the consequences,” writes the reporter for ESPN Dallas. “Either way, Patterson should be applauded for having the gumption to reportedly order team-wide drug testing when a recruit told him that he was declining a scholarship offer because of the drug culture.” Like much of the media coverage, Taylor turns a 6-month investigation that netted the arrests of at least 17 people for narcotics distribution to the “drug culture” of the team.

He was not alone with a significant media emphasis on how the arrests were emblematic of an epidemic ravaging college athletes. Eric Olson, with “TCU Bust Sign of Increased Pot Problem,” sought to contextualize the arrests as evidence of a larger problem. Noting that 22.6% of student-athletes reported using marijuana once during the last 12 months, and how that number is up from 21.2% in 2005, Olson argues that these arrests are indicative of a larger problem for college sports. Yet, the “evidence” provided by this study is actually contradicted by the study itself, which argues that the slight increase in marijuana use reflects a societal shift rather than something specific to college athletics. Moreover, the study found that within the NCAA, marijuana use is least common amongst Division I student-athletes (16.9%), with Division II student-athletes (21.4%) and those from Division III having the highest level of usage with a number of 28.3%. In fact, while drug usage declined at the Division I level, those other two levels saw increases. Olson also references usage amongst student-athletes playing football and basketball, coincidentally those sports with the most visible number of African Americans, implying that the problem is acute within these sports. While basketball (22%) and football (26.7%) mirror widespread findings within all sports (the study doesn’t break the information down for each sport within each division), men’s lacrosse (48.5%), women’s lacrosse (30%) and women’s field hockey (35.7%) might as well get a feature article in High Times.

Conflating their arrests for alleged drug distribution with drug use amongst student-athletes, all while arguing the existence of a growing problem (up 1.5%), the efforts to construct this as a product of athletic culture and specifically an out-growth of football and basketball programs is telling.

The efforts to narrate a story specific to a college athletics, playing upon the sensationalism and particular stereotypes, has significant consequences. In isolating and confining the narrative to basketball courts and football stadium, the media representation continues the erasure of drug uses and criminal activity amongst college students. Most studies put drug use amongst college students at rates higher than general public, with almost 23% of college students meeting the clinical definition of alcohol or drug dependence.

Continue reading at Drug Culture on College Campuses and the Criminalization of Student Athletes | Urban Cusp.

SLAM ONLINE | » Ballers, Political Shot Callers and the ‘Show Your Papers’ Movement

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Ballers, Political Shot Callers and the ‘Show Your Papers’ Movement

An outbreak of racist taunts continues to be a problem at NCAA basketball games.

by C. Richard King and David J. Leonard

The past month has witnessed a series of racist cheers at sporting events. Fans at a University of Minnesota at Duluth mocked the visiting University of North Dakota hockey team, jeering “Small Pox Blankets”—a chant that belittles the school and Native Americans through a reference to its mascot, which converts the reality of genocide into a sporting smack down. In Pittsburgh, during a recent basketball game, fans (as well as players) from Brentwood High hurled racial epithets at Monessen High players. Three fans dressed banana costumes surrounding the primarily black Monessen team, as the left for the locker at halftime, yelling epithets while making monkey noises. Some parents reported that members of the Brentwood squad joined in, calling its opponent, “monkeys and cotton pickers.”

More recently, students at the predominantly white Alamo Heights High School celebrated the defeat of the largely Latino Edison High School with a chant of “USA, USA!” So, it was little surprise in the round of 64, members of the pep band from the University of Southern Mississippi (USM) yelled, “Where’s your green card?” at Kansas State University freshman Angel Rodriguez (who was born in Puerto Rico) as he took foul shoots.

Administrators were quick to apologize following each transgression, offering some variant on the standard refrain: we regret any offense…this is not us…we are not racist…we will take appropriate action. And to be fair, these chants are brief, spontaneous, and passing utterances. They lack sanction and surely do not represent the image that these schools hope to project. Their apologies to the contrary, in an historic moment marked by the rhetoric of color blindness, but not the alleviation of structural racism, the eruption of overt bias, particularly in the guise of clichéd hate speech and “jokes,” far from being abnormal actually reveals the norm, offering keen insights into historically white institutions and the persistence of white supremacy.

While taunting a fellow American citizen by inquiring about his green card exposes great ignorance (Puerto Ricans are US citizens and have been since 1917) and reflects deep antipathy toward Latinos, it is actually in keeping with the history of the University of Southern Mississippi (and countless other colleges and other universities). In fact, USM epitomizes the arc of white supremacy in college sport. Founded in 1910 as an institution devoted to training teachers, USM was like most peers in the South segregated. And like many other public spaces in the USA, students at USM were enamored with Indianness, despite (or perhaps because of) the historic removal of embodied Indians to make way for settler society in southern Mississippi. They choose Neka Camon, “a Native American term meaning ‘The New Spirit’,” as the title for the school’s yearbook. Later, the student body opted to formalize the moniker of the sport teams, selecting the Confederates in 1940. A year later, a slight modification, the Southerners, was substituted. Although in light of the better known history of Ole Miss, this is not surprising, the mascot chosen for athletics a decade later is: USM did not name an anonymous rebel or plantation owner; no, it enshrined Natan Bedford Forest, the infamous leader of the Ku Klux Klan, as its mascot. Desegregated in 1965, USM changed its moniker and mascot to the Golden Eagles in 1972. USM is a quintessential institution of higher learning: historically white, segregated, playing Indian, and celebrating the Confederacy in defiance of the civil rights movement.

The jeer from members of the pep squad (or band) also suggests that USM remains typical, and, despite protestations from administrators, that what is chanted at a basketball game says much about the social landscape of Mississippi today and much about all of us today.

The students chanting, “where’s your green card” were not alone this day, with the state’s politicians legislatively demanding the same of Latinos throughout the state of Mississippi. The state’s House of Representatives passed the “Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhood Act,” a copycat bill to Arizona’s anti-immigrant legislation. Among other things, the bill mandates the police verify immigration status for any person arrested

continue reading @ SLAM ONLINE | » Ballers, Political Shot Callers and the ‘Show Your Papers’ Movement.

Why the NCAA Should Pay Student-Athletes and Pay Them Fairly (Part 2 of 2) | Urban Cusp

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Why the NCAA Should Pay Student-Athletes and Pay Them Fairly (Part 2 of 2)

By David J. Leonard

UC Columnist

Beyond graduation rates and the compromised quality of the education provided in exchange for athletic participation, it is crucial to think about the overall value of an education and degree in the twenty-first century. Remember, this is the unit of exchange. The national unemployment rate for college graduates is roughly 5%. While significantly lower than those without a college degree (or a high school diploma), the increased unemployment amongst college graduates along with underemployment illustrates the increasingly shrinking value of a scholarship. Worse yet, the 5% unemployment rate includes all college graduates, a figure of limited value when reflecting on compensation levels of current and future student-athletes. In “Jobless College Graduates Struggle Under Ongoing Recession” Amanda Fairbanks and Andrew Lenoir elucidate the profound issues facing today’s college graduates:

College graduates still fare better than their peers with only a high school diploma, but even their job prospects show signs of fatigue. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Current Population Survey, the unemployment rate for college graduates between the ages of 20 to 24-year-olds soared five percentage points in the past month — from 7.1 percent in May to 12.1 percent in June, compared with a three percent jump during the same period last year.

The rates of unemployment, the limited opportunities in career-track jobs, and heightened underemployment are all evident in the number of college graduates moving back home upon graduation. Since the recession began in 2007, there has been a 25% increase in students moving back home after college. As the value of college education has declined, the profits within collegiate sports have grown dramatically, illustrating the growing gap between revenue generated and the level of compensation provided to “student-athletes.” It points to the heightened level of exploitation, so much so that it might be time to renamed the NCAA: NEAA – National Exploitation Athletic Association.

Sports, particularly basketball and football, and its athletes generate millions for the NCAA, its representative schools, coaches, and a number of corporate partners. It is a billion dollar industry. Yet, the wages paid are dubious at best and the value of that compensation is in steady decline. This becomes even more striking as we focus our attention on the disproportionate number of African American student-athletes within revenue sports. The level of exploitation is certainly aggravated by the amounts of money generated by these athletes within these sports. Worse, yet given the continued significance of race, the level of compensation provided to black “student-athletes” is that much worse. The unemployment rate for black college graduates over 25 is almost twice the national average for blacks compared to whites (8.4 versus 4.4)

Michael Luo, with “In Job Hunt, College Degree Can’t Close Racial Gap,” highlights the grim economic prospects facing black graduates.

But there is ample evidence that racial inequities remain when it comes to employment. Black joblessness has long far outstripped that of whites. And strikingly, the disparity for the first 10 months of this year, as the recession has dragged on, has been even more pronounced for those with college degrees, compared with those without. Education, it seems, does not level the playing field — in fact, it appears to have made it more uneven.

Presumably worse for those recent college graduates, the value of scholarship for a black “student-athlete” remains in steady decline even as coaches salaries and television contracts have skyrocketed. Attributable to persistent discrimination, denied access to social networks, and other issues, black college graduates face a bleak future upon the conclusion of school.

Continue reading at Why the NCAA Should Pay Student-Athletes and Pay Them Fairly (Part 2 of 2) | Urban Cusp.

Why the NCAA Should Pay Student-Athletes and Pay Them Fairly (Part 1 of 2) | Urban Cusp

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Why the NCAA Should Pay Student-Athletes and Pay Them Fairly (Part 1 of 2)

By David J. Leonard

UC Columnist

The excitement for the upcoming bowl season has just begun. With 35 games beginning December 17th and not ending until January 9th, the bowl season may be the gift that keeps on giving. The national championship game, a rematch between Alabama and LSU, is some 16 days after Christmas, staggering evidence of the extent of the NCAA’s fall economic extravaganza.

This year’s bowl season will also mark another year without reform to collegiate football and college sports in general. It will mark the culmination of yet another collegiate football season where those whose labor, talents, and sacrifices receive the least from the system. Dave Zirin, in “Saluting a Sick System: ‘Sports Illustrated’ Honors Duke Coach Mike Krzyzewski,” brilliantly described the year of college sports in the following way:

In 2011, we all learned just how low the NCAA and its member schools would go to defend their bottom lines. We learned how people in power at Penn State University would put the lives of children at risk, if it meant preserving the lucrative legend of Coach Joe Paterno. We learned what Syracuse University and the surrounding community would be willing to cover up—and how many children they would endanger—to protect their own Hall of Fame Coach Jim Boeheim and the $19 million dollar annual cash-cow of Syracuse hoops. We saw Ohio State football coach Jim Tressel resign after a series of scandals that now look quaint, and we witnessed the University of Miami Athletic Department reel under the weight of the gutter economy of exchange between criminal boosters and the school’s President Donna Shalala.

Amid the scandals, the persistent exploitation, and systemic prioritizing of money over anything else, 2011 has also seen an increased emphasis on reform. “Fifty years ago, there was not any kind of money, and the players got full scholarships. Now they’re still getting full scholarships, and the money is just in the millions,” argued South Carolina Coach Steve Spurrier. “I don’t know how to get it done. Hopefully, there’s a way to get our guys that play football a little piece of the pie… They bring in the money,” Spurrier said. “They’re the performers.” Similarly, Robert Lipsyte highlights the hypocrisy that is the NCAA: “The true madness of March is the millions of dollars — generated by the kids who touch the ball — that goes mostly to the advertising hustlers, television suits, arena operators, concession hawkers, athletic gear manufacturers and retailers, university administrators, coaches and sports media noisemakers. No wonder they don’t want to share any of that money with the players. They’ve locked the doors on their sweat shop.”

Focusing on the financial difficulties facing many college athletes and the gross disparities between the billions generated the pittance awarded to “student-athletes,” much of the discourse has focused on the question of compensation. Invariably opponents and naysayers dismiss the idea of paying “student-athletes,” arguing that it would be impossible to administer and that paying “student-athletes” violates the core mission of higher education. Despite such claims, what they fail to see (or acknowledge) is that “student athletes” are paid: they are paid with the opportunity to showcase their talents (especially within the revenue sport), have a college experience, and receive a college education/degree. As such, the question isn’t or shouldn’t be whether college athletes should be paid but whether the current levels of compensation are just and fair.

Continue reading @ Why the NCAA Should Pay Student-Athletes and Pay Them Fairly (Part 1 of 2) | Urban Cusp.

Dave Zirin: DON’T Give the Miami Hurricanes the Death Penalty: Give it to the NCAA | The Nation

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DON’T Give the Miami Hurricanes the Death Penalty: Give it to the NCAA

Dave Zirin

August 18, 2011

Thursday morning’s cover of USA Today blared the two words on everyone’s lips: “the death penalty.” No, this isn’t because Texas Governor Rick Perry – who just loves executin’ innocent and guilty alike – is now running for President. It’s the fate that most people believe awaits the storied football team at the University of Miami. The death penalty means that the NCAA will for an indeterminate time shut down the entire Hurricanes program. It’s a brutal, financially crippling fate that many believe Miami has more than earned, following a Yahoo Sports expose by Charles Robinson which detailed eight years of amateur violations that would make Dennis Rodman blush. A mini-Madoff financial criminal named Nevin Shapiro, currently serving 20 years behind bars, offered prostitutes, payola, jewelry, yacht parties and every possible South Beach excess for the Hurricane players. While corrupting the athletic program, he was simultaneously being feted by school President, former Clinton cabinet member Donna Shalala and Hurricanes athletic director Paul Dee. They even let him on two occasions lead the team out of the tunnel on game day.

This bombshell has the moral majority of sports journalists in full froth, rushing to the barricades to defend amateur sports. We have people like Sporting News columnist David Whitley, to use merely one example, writing, “The only way to make Miami behave is a long timeout. No more football, smoke and parties for a couple of years. Nothing else has a chance of ending the culture of corruption that is The U.” He even calls Miami “the Ben Tre of college football”, writing, “American forces wiped out the village to get rid of the Viet Cong, prompting a timeless explanation from the U.S. commander: ‘It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.’ The only way to save Miami is to destroy it, stripper pole and all.” But like the war in Vietnam, not to mention the actual death penalty, the call for the NCAA to shut down the program is dead wrong. As with capital punishment, eliminating the Hurricanes is an exercise in hypocrisy that does nothing but ensure these scandals will happen again and again.

What this scandal should produce, instead of the isolation and destruction of one program, is a serious reflection on the gutter economy that is college athletics. Players cannot be paid openly and legally so instead we get the amoral wampum of “amateur sports.” Reading the Yahoo Sports story, it’s difficult to not be chilled by the casual misogyny detailed as strippers, “escorts” and hookers were purchased and handed to players like party favors. You wonder why over 80% of NFL players get divorced after retirement. It’s because as teenagers, they are mentored by parasites like Nevin Shapiro who show them that women are the exchange value for their lucrative labor. This kind of gutter economy also has an ugly echo in old slave plantations, as the prized sports specimens in the antebellum South were handed women by the masters in return for their athletic prowess. Or as David Steele wrote earlier this week, ”Of course, America’s tender little feelings will be bruised if this is equated to slavery, or a plantation economy, or a plantation mentality. Fine. Maybe it can live with a metaphor like sharecropping. You do all the work, we take all the profits, we compensate you with the bare necessities of life, and tough break if you don’t like it.”

The metaphor works because once you wave away the smoke and hot air, this is about jock sniffing criminals and corrupted college Presidents taking advantage of primarily poor African Americans from the South, who see everyone getting paid but them. One anonymous University of Miami player told Yahoo Sports about University running back Tyrone Moss, who took $1,000 from Shapiro. “The guy had a kid while he was in college, a little Tyrone Jr.,” the player said. “He comes in poor as [expletive] from Pompano and he’s got a little kid to feed. I could barely feed myself. I can’t imagine having to feed a kid, too. Of course he’s going to take it when someone offers him $1,000. Who wouldn’t in that situation?”

via/continue reading at DON’T Give the Miami Hurricanes the Death Penalty: Give it to the NCAA | The Nation.

David Steele: College athletes used, abused by NCAA system – NCAA Football – Sporting News

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College athletes used, abused by NCAA system

David Steele

Are you happy, Nevin Shapiro? You, University of Miami athletic department? You, NCAA? You, College Football Nation?You’ve made Luther Campbell look like a paragon of virtue in comparison.Much of the allegations of impropriety happened while Paul Dee was the AD at Miami.

You all had various obligations and responsibilities to the welfare and progress of the members of the Miami football and basketball teams. All of you abandoned them.

Those young men – actually, boys in some cases, since the actions described in that damning Yahoo! report Tuesday were sometimes initiated with high school recruits – should have been able to use you for guidance to help them move to the next stage of their lives. Instead, you all used them. You bought, sold and traded those human beings, calculated the costs and benefits of your expenditures and raked in the profits.

In short, you all displayed scruples and values that are somewhere beneath those of the guy who wrote and performed “Me So Horny.’’

Uncle Luke did get a previous version of “The U’’ in trouble, for sure, with allegations of bounties and cash payouts. But, as he pointed out Wednesday in his own blog for the Miami New Times, he was not a booster for the school when he did it, didn’t have direct access to the halls of power as he did it. His connection was lower on the ladder. On the bottom rung, as far as the sport is concerned.

Laugh if you want at his claim that he “dedicated part of his life to helping kids in Miami’s inner city neighborhoods get a college education.’’ He sure gave more of a damn about the welfare of those players than Shapiro did. Or, for that matter, anyone else connected to the Miami program. Or anyone else in college football, or anyone else who follows the sport.

Shapiro bared his tainted soul in a series of jailhouse interviews for Yahoo, detailing how he indulged his deepest jock-sniffing desires for nearly a decade by throwing money at Miami players, utterly unconcerned about whether school officials knew. Oh, and how he funded it by robbing investors in a $930 million Ponzi scheme.

via College athletes used, abused by NCAA system – NCAA Football – Sporting News.