Of Course O.J. Mayo Got Paid. Who Doesn’t?
If the movie “Blue Chips” wasn’t enough to convince you, then perhaps the snitching that is about to do in O.J. Mayo will. How many star athletes out of USC have to get caught up in money scandals? Better yet, how long are we going to pretend that college sports is just too big of a business not to pay these kids?
For the same reasons that the University of Maryland-College Park won’t ever be national contenders in any major sport is the same reason that countless other programs will. They know how to get that dough to these players, their families and their entourage. In today’s world where students are as fully aware of the college sports money machine as they are about new messages on their Facebook inbox, it’s crazy to think that these athletes don’t or shouldn’t get paid. The hypocrisy of the NCAA is to ensure that athletes have the same opportunities in school as non-athletes do, even though they are among the chief fundraisers, brand builders and admissions officers any university can ask for.
But their reward should be a college education? Just a college education? They should go hungry like other college students when their games sells enough concession hot dogs to combat hunger in the Congo for two years?
Come on.
Name one business enterprise in this country where the primary stakeholders of the organization are rewarded with the opportunity to advance to a better job. Imagine IBM telling its CEO, “yeah, we can’t pay you six figures, but your resume’ is going to be off the chain when you are ready to leave, homey.” That’s what colleges are supposed to be asking these athletes to sign up for. The chance to go to class, and to get a great job if they don’t make the professional ranks. Oh, and thanks for the millions in jersey and ticket sales, increased applications, and heightened levels of alumni gifts to the athletic department.
Most of your schools know how to do this with tact and care. I can guess on a number of high-caliber programs that do their thing far enough under the table that the self-righteous media’s high horse can’t get low enough to uncover the story. But the problem is that there shouldn’t be a story. There shouldn’t be restrictions on compensating athletes who sacrifice body and privacy for a university’s bottom line. Is the pay-off big? Absolutely. But who reading this can honestly say that anyone, athlete or non-athlete, should work for alma mater when there are millions of dollars being made every year.
And the crap about non-athletes don’t get a cut of the pie? Those students aren’t even in the kitchen. If I ever brought money, acclaim and television contracts to Morgan State University as a newspaper editor, you best believe I would’ve been in Alumni meetings like Mookie on “Do The Right Thing,”
I gots to get paid.
Enough is enough. If no one else will do it, I’m starting the movement to end the self-righteous stance choking the life out of college sports. There’s a reason that college baseball isn’t a collegiate cash cow, and its because the MLB and the players know the score on how to get money. Pretty soon, basketball and football players are going to wise up, and if the minor-leagues that are the BCS and NCAA basketball aren’t going to pay their players for the barnstorming circuits, then the arena leagues and overseas basketball clubs will.
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Preach it, JC. The hypocrisy, the willful ignorance, the stupidity…all of it needs to go.
However, to take issue with the contention that successful programs “know how to get that dough to these players” et al. It’s not like someone paying OJ Mayo got USC any more NCAA tournament wins than Coppin; meanwhile, schools like Stanford and Davidson were within spitting distance of the Final Four, and who got paid on those teams? Or anyone who played on the Maryland title squad a few years ago?
If you love the idea of college sports, it’s hard to give up the dream and simply ape Europe–with academies and minor leagues for talented youngsters. But maybe it’s time.
I agree to what you said. There should be an element of hard work involved when we are talking about big bucks.
[...] You could have seen this coming a mile away, several years away. A high school player who had surrounded himself with the wrong people, would be guided into thumbing his nose at the NBA’s age limit and testing the waters in overseas play. A player, who by all accounts would have plenty of face time and scrutiny playing for a powerhouse college hoops team, will now have the same opportunities outside of his native land. [...]