The problem in college football isn’t that universities don’t know about corruption, it’s that they don’t want to know about the corruption. Much like Sgt. Schultz, they want “to know nuth-zing!” about the money and gifts that their players are receiving from boosters and agents. Same with coaches – they busy themselves with gameplans and schemes rather than wondering how a college kid with no job can be tooling around campus in an SUV sporting rims worth a half year’s tuition. Why trouble yourself with something like that? Let’s figure out how to beat Nebraska!
It’s been quite the year for college football. USC was sanctioned and stripped of a national title, Reggie Bush was stripped of his Heisman title (although he apparently is still hanging onto the hardware), a handful of Ohio State players were suspended for selling memorabilia, Ohio State head coach Jim Tressel was encourage to resign after he got so deep in allegations he needed stilts, and now a convicted felon is spilling his guts on what’s been happening behind the scenes at “The U” for almost a decade.
From the NCAA’s perspective, the problem here isn’t that all of those people were doing bad things, it was that they got caught – that much is obvious. Were the Ohio State players suspended immediately when the NCAA uncovered what had happened? Hell no – they were allowed to play in a bowl game, make some money for the NCAA and their school, and then were suspended for the first five games of this coming season. Maybe the players head to the NFL, maybe this whole thing blows over by the next season – either way, the guys at the top get their money and that’s what really counts.
College football is big business, but more Amway than Microsoft or General Motors. The first ones in – the NCAA and the schools – make the biggest money, then the coaches – their recruits – get the trickle down. The players are the last ones in and essentially cheap labor, the ones who don’t see much out of the scheme and rotate in and out after a few years. In much the same way Amway and other pyramid schemes attempt to hide the fact they’re the same old tired business plan, college football tries to cloak itself in the guise of “student athletes” and “amateurism” – instead of boasting about how much those lower echelon worker bees are taking in, they’re desperately trying to hide the trickle down that comes through boosters, agents, and in some cases, the schools themselves. Neither one wants to admit what they are and both of them are scams.
Even the journalists bringing down the whole house of cards are buying into the scam in some way. Notice the “renegade” part of that headline? It’s implying that this type of behavior – these types of benefits, gifts, bribes, and the like – are outside of the system when, in fact, they are part of the system. It’s how the corruption is perceived – from the bottom up or the top down? Do you think this is merely a problem with greedy college kids not honorable enough to take a free college education as enough payment for a few years of wear and tear on their body? Or do you think it’s a problem with organizations making billions of dollars – a de facto professional sport – off cheap labor?
Although I know nothing is ever as simple as it seems to be, there are times when being a sports fan in 2011 is just too damned complicated. Perhaps all those heroes of the past had their problems but they weren’t subject to the same 24-7 media scrutiny that we have today. Maybe it’s just a case of ignorance is bliss. Either way, I’ve found that being a fan has involved a bit more moralistic tap dancing than I’d like.
