Wanna See My New Tat?

It has been far too long since I visited this page. I had every good intention of getting back on track after getting my computer restored after the crash. But, as they say, the road to hell is paved…

What brings me out of my shell, awakens the sleeping giant, got the blood stirring, roused the unwashed, etc, bad metaphor, etc, was the recent trials and tribulations of The Ohio State University football program. I’m a Duck, Duck, Duck, and I am crying no tears over the poor Buckeyes travails. And yet, I am still outraged at the whole affair. Not in the way you think, I’ll bet.

The consensus is that Ohio State’s program, its players and coach are cheaters. They knowingly broke the rules and they must all suffer, quit or be fired, and be damned forever. But what rules did they break? Notwithstanding future developments, and I for one suspect there will be more, the currently known violations are that players sold or traded their autographs and other personal property like jerseys, championship trinkets and rings, and the like for tattoos and other merchandise and possibly money. Yes, they broke NCAA rules that specifically forbid doing those things. Yes, they probably lied about it when caught. Yes, one supposes there should be penalties for these actions.

And what a bunch of no good hypocrites and rotten scoundrels that makes the rest of us.

The NCAA, colleges and universities, Nike, Budweiser, ESPN/CBS/NBC/ABC/FOX, memorabilia manufacturers, stadium vendors, parking lots, hotels, restaurants, and a host of other companies and entities large and small, collectively make billions (with a B) from college football every year. College football is just about as good as a license to print money for many.

The rest of us don’t have a thought about the fact that we send those kids onto a field to play (the lucky ones with a full ride scholarship) for the cost of their tuition and board and perhaps a small stipend. They will to a man be injured at some point and in their later years suffer from the stress and damage incurred in the few short years of their college career. Most will never play professional football; even most of the ones who are college stars will not end up making a living in professional football.

But we have a rule that says a kid cannot sell stuff that belongs to him if it in any way touches on the fact that he plays college football.

How insane is that? How hypocritical? How essentially rotten to that kid?

When the good players are in high school, the colleges start recruiting. They come sniffing around like some sort of weasels looking for something good to eat, promising, cajoling. The kids are told how wonderful they are, how good a player they are and will be, how much we love them, will love them, just come play for us. They show up on campus and the adulation from the press, boosters, coeds, and fans kicks in. Let them actually be successful on the field and before long they are treated like gods. Is it any wonder they start to wonder just what it is they can’t do if they want to do it? Can any of us doubt, if put in that position, that we would begin to understand how it is that everyone is making money off of me except me, and I really want that bitchin’ tattoo, so okay, here’s my old red jersey, and see I even signed it for you. Oh, and the kid is maybe 19 or 20.

Do you remember when the Olympics were restricted to just amateur athletes? Every four years the Russians, East Germans, and all the rest of the communist/socialist countries would send athletes to the games whose only job in their country was to train for and play their sport. Because of the different definitions applied to “socialist” workers than those in the capitalist nations, they were defined as amateurs. Of course it was a big joke; our amateurs really were (for the most part) and we policed it scrupulously. Each succeeding set of games our pimple faced kids and independently wealthy athletes were becoming less and less competitive facing these communist professionals. Finally, in a fit of rare common sense and understanding of the true nature of the situation, it was decided that western professionals could compete, too.

I know some lamented that loss of the sense of the amateur athlete. It was a shame in many ways. However, what most of us think we know about it is sort of wrong. The whole idea of “amateur athlete” was a complete fiction from the get go. It was an artificial construct of the Victorian age created by well to do men who could indulge their Grecian fantasies (there is sport and then there is sport). What distinguishes an amateur from a professional? Well, at the turn of the previous century it wasn’t just whether one got paid to play the game. It also meant, among other things for example, that an amateur should not have a personal private coach, and absolutely could not one have one in the stadium while the athlete was performing. Apparently, an amateur was not only someone who did not get paid to play the game, but also didn’t pay someone else to teach him or train him to get better at it. It just wasn’t the gentlemanly thing to do, eh what?

Why do we persist in this ridiculous notion that our college football players are “amateurs” and should remain so? Are they still amateurs if they get paid to attend the university with a scholarship? Isn’t that the same as trading their game playing for money and other valuable considerations? Why is it okay for a college to buy the services of an athlete this way, but it is not in other ways? Oh, I forgot, with a scholarship he will get an education that he might not otherwise be able to get. I guess that means that just about every college football player is poor and only plays (hires out his body and skills) so he can get an education, and that’s why we set it up this way, out of the goodness of our hearts in order to educate the needy. Please, pull the other one.

But we regulate how many scholarships and for how much each school can give, so that makes it fair and okay, right? Sure it does. It just means there is more competition for the scholarships, which naturally are only given to the best players we can get to come to our school. Let’s face it; we don’t give football scholarships to the neediest players, or to the smartest or the most personable. We give it to the ones we believe will be the best players. Why? So we can win, baby!

All this other nonsense about forbidding money from boosters or trading jerseys for tattoos is really just about controlling the NCAA franchise, which is designed to make money for the members of the NCAA and all the rest of the television, beer, and shoe companies, et al, who know on which side of the bed their golden goose is buttered.

The minute you pay kids, set them up with houses, girls and cars (wait, I think they already have that), is the minute you lose control of your slave. He’s not your slave anymore, he is a free agent. The thing about free agents is they tend to go to work for those who will pay them the most. Heavens, some schools might even try to buy a championship team by spending more than others! What kind of world would that be? No, we are much better off with our clean system where schools attract athletes on the basis of their training facilities, the quality of their coaches, the finest living and eating facilities, the chances of winning a championship and the success rate of its athletes turning professional. And let us not forget how terribly important it is to pick a college football program that also happens to belong to a school with a top ranked Sports Communication bachelors degree. That’s the way to really do amateur athletics right.

I’ll bet you don’t like the slave analogy. Okay, slave is harsh. Indentured servant is perhaps more accurate. No, still not quite right. The gist of both is right, however. Let's face it, the kids aren't under contract. Or are they? Consider, once a kid plays football for one school, and then leaves that school, according to the rules in most cases he cannot play for another school the following year, but must sit out a season. Why?

Well, for one, like a non-compete contract, it provides a powerful incentive not to change schools, for a whole bunch or reasons. For another, many colleges and universities would try to hawk each other’s best players, offering ever increasing inducements to change. It would be a free for all. Yeah, sounds terrible. For the school. So what? Why is that so bad? For the rest of us I mean? For the athletes? Who actually loses in that scenario? Well, the slave owner of course, and … gee, I can’t think. No, wait, I remember. It would inevitably result in somebody paying kids to change schools and that would ruin their amateur status and make them ineligible to play. Yeah, that's it. It's about maintaining the integrity of the game.

It’s time for us to seriously reconsider the paradigm. Everybody associated with college football is getting paid real money except the athlete himself. All the rules are basically set up to protect the NCAA franchise (and its co-conspirators, I mean, business partners). All of these rules really don't have much to do with the spirit of amateurism or this figment of an idea we call the student athlete. It’s all about the money. Period.

The athletes themselves, especially those ones on scholarship, are mostly still better treated and compensated than most other students on campus, but that isn’t really the point. It’s not a competition between the different kinds of student on campus, athlete or not. Do I feel sorry for the OSU football players and their coach? No. Am I defending them for breaking the rules? No. Do I condone it? No. Are they getting what they deserve? I don’t know, but I know I am not happy to see it.

I am ashamed of us, however. We’ve bought into the fantasy of NCAA football and the whole concept of the amateur football student athlete. It’s a mostly imagined concept and a false one. We’ve erected this high sanctimonious structure on top of the shaky foundation of a hypocritical system.

Changing metaphors, it smells rotten and is getting worse.