The Morning Offering--March 30th 2005

Written by Ape on March 30, 2005

So here we are again at tourney time. Every hack announcer and sports analyst CBS and ESPN can find is out front grandstanding about how good and pure the NCAA tournament is and how college sports is the last bastion of uncorrupted competition left for the general public to consume. We get Amex commercials about Coach K and then we get Amex commercials about Jeff Caple (whaddafuck?)…leading us to wonder if the 294 higher profile college hoops headmen just turned down the spot, or if Amex has its jaws clamped as tightly to Duke’s nut sack as the major sports networks do. I think you can guess the answer.

Duke and the laughable favoritism it is shown aside (The Ape doesn’t really need to be the 5 millionth person to say “Fuck Duke”), I have serious problems with the portrayal of the NCAA tournament as pure and uncorrupt. In fact, the NCAA as an institution smells rotten to me —and no, I’m not just pissed that they refuse to license player names and stats to roto sites for more interesting and competitive roto seasons, though they really should.

Here’s my beef with the NCAA.
If college sports were pure, the athletes on college basketball teams would actually be able to get into the colleges they play for the same way you and I get in; with their academics and test scores. Pure college sports would be about guys who went to a given school and, once there, decided to try out for that school’s team. Students from those schools could really feel a connection to their team and the players on it if that were the case. Instead, if you were the Ape and you went to BC, you never once saw a basketball or football player in any class (because they didn’t go). Most of those guys never leave the tutoring office at the athletic department —and this is at BC, a school at which most of the basketball players actually graduate. Many schools don’t even graduate a single player on their teams.

So why isn’t there more of a stink about this?
The answer is money, whether it’s TV contracts, shoe contracts, corporate sponsors or any other venture where businessmen and women capitalize on the sweat equity these kids provide. The NCAA is just as tainted by the almighty dollar as its professional sports counterparts. The only part that's different is that no portion of NCAA money gets siphoned directly to the players (slave labor) whose backs form the foundation of this greedy edifice.

So as we head to final four weekend, you may want to ask yourself, if only 55% of these guys are actually going to graduate and less than 2% of them are going to be playing basketball for money once their eligibility is used up, what the hell are the other 43% of players getting out of their college experience?

Enjoy the games, but look for your purity elsewhere. And the next time your cynical uncle (insert name) remarks that schools should start paying these guys to play basketball, think about what else they will leave their colleges with before you dismiss his remark.

-- Written by Ape on March 30, 2005