College Football Season is Here Again!
After recently listening to hosts Mark Van der Meer and John Lopez of Sports Radio 610 in Houston kick around the idea of the “worst lie” in sports, I was led to my own thoughts on the subject, which is always the most dangerous place for me to go. To me, the answer was as obvious as the absence of rain in Texas. – “Student Athlete” is the biggest sports lie of them all.
Where else are you going to find “students” being held accountable for winning a television contract for their university on the basis of their little “amateur” accomplishments in games of inter-collegiate “play”?
I say – let’s, at least, clean up the lie. Give these university task-burdened students a chance to study and graduate in something that fits in better with their future plans and life styles. Student athletes can’t all become high school PE program coordinator and auxiliary history teachers, can they? We need to give them more future options – ones that will better match the demands of their potential careers as professional athletes.
I have a couple of modest subject matter suggestions. And, “WOW!” These seem so obvious. You would think that a certain nearby university that now sits on its own media glory hill with a sports network all-its-own, one that is bound to hook everybody, one way or another, would simply jump at the chance to add these two prestigious and practical items to their academic calendar list of degree offerings.
If not, they could leave the creation of these academic fields to that other state university, the one now leaving the Big 12 with their feelings hurt because they also do not have their own TV network. And that might be an even better fit. Since Governor Rick Perry is an alumnus of that other place, they could even give him credit for all the additional jobs in Texas that these two fields are going to create.
Here are my obvious choices as new academic degree fields that will help unsting the lie that now rings from the phrase, “student athlete:”
(1) BLINGOLOGY / Subject Coverage Areas: How to buy, wear, implant, chew with, and, otherwise use bling (gold) in your everyday life – and how to deploy bling as an attractive crack-filler on walls and foundations of your various homes during periods of drought. Requirements: Class attendance is optional. Everyday interest is glitter and glamour is essential. Acquiring and showing off bling daily is recommended. Suggestions: Avoid enrollment in schools and states where the legal ways and means questions surrounding your acquisitions of bling as a student athlete are held to high levels of ethical and legal consideration.
(2) SHARKOLOGY / Subject Coverage Areas: How to win the confidence and trust of those who may be able to lift your own personal level of life to a higher standard that goes far beyond your deservedness, based on actual qualifications or effort. Graduates in sharkology move rapidly into positions of authority as sports agents, political campaign managers, political office holders, reality TV stars, TV infomercial directors, and TV evangelists. Requirements: Must score high in tests for narcissism and sociopathy to achieve maximum results. People with consciences and guilt-based neuroses need not apply. Suggestions: Before making application for acceptance as a student in this area, try ripping off your sickly grandmother’s equally unwell pension fund. If you succeed with no whims of remorse, sharkology is definitely for you.
Perhaps, some of you have other ideas about what we might do to make “student athlete” less the lie it has become in college sports. Should we just go ahead and pay these talented young people as talented young professional athletes – and give up the student-ruse altogether? Or do we take away football and basketball from the powerful alums who simply want to use their universities as a forum for self-glorification of their own ego-driven desire for power at all costs?
When I think of the real potential students who may now only graduate from college by taking on an $80,000 student loan to pay off over the course of their working lives, it makes me sick. If some of that profit generated from college football actually went to making college affordable to more real students, I would be more inclined to say “let the thing role on as is.”
But that’s not what’s happening. For now, the money goes into the kind of perpetual recruiting and capital improvements all universities need to make to stay competitive – and also to how many deep pockets of those who work to run each program? The best coaches alone cost millions these days.
Wait! Here’s an early score: Sharkology University 14 – Blingology Tech 13. (10:04, 1st QTR)
The Pecan Park Eagle 
September 9, 2011 at 5:30 pm |
A) The Bulls (short for the true team name Bullion) are being slowed by the weight of the bling they wear even during the game. The Sharks only hindrance is having to have their Armani uniforms pressed between plays.
B) Student-athlete remedy: each athlete is assigned na ‘sacademic value’ rating (based on some standardized test) and this value is used along with a time-played value to apply a handicapping factor for all games. In addition, school handicapping values are also factored in, based upon the overall improvement (if any) ot its players. The school factor could be applied pre-game, but the player factors are applied during the game on a real-time basis. Thus a team couldn’t use its nonstudent-athletes to run up the score and then put its brainiacs to lower the penalty. Vegas would love it because it adds a whole new dimension to bet on. I expect Stanford would become the perennial national champs, and I’d suspect a lot of the Florida schools would suffer a bit (unless the testing was based on the criminal justice system), but there might be some surprises here and there.
September 9, 2011 at 5:40 pm |
Good stuff, Tom! Good stuff!