The Heisman Trophy is easily the most coveted award in college sports. Indeed, it is so respected and revered among football players that I suspect many of them would rather have a Heisman Trophy in their home than a Super Bowl ring on their finger.
The Heisman is awarded annually to:
… the outstanding college football player whose performance best exhibits the pursuit of excellence with integrity. Winners epitomize great ability combined with diligence, perseverance, and hard work… Our goal … is for the Heisman Trophy to symbolize the fostering of a sense of community responsibility and service to our youth.
(Heisman Trust Mission Statement)
Notable recipients since it was first awarded in 1935 are O.J. Simpson of USC in 1968; Tony Dorsett of Pittsburg in 1976; Doug Flutie of Boston in 1984; Ricky Williams of Texas in 1998; and Reggie Bush of USC in 2005.
Of course, it’s no accident that I began this list with O.J. Simpson. After all, no recipient has done more to betray all of the (off-the-field) ideals the Heisman Trophy purportedly symbolizes than this incarcerated thief who got away with double murder.
Therefore, if any recipient should have been the first in history to forfeit his trophy it is O.J. Well I suppose he has – considering that he was forced to forfeit it as part of a $38 million judgment after he was convicted at civil trial for murdering his ex-wife Nicole and her boyfriend Ron Goldman. But I digress.
Instead, it was Reggie who made history yesterday by forfeiting his trophy after it became clear that the trustees of the Heisman Trust were about to strip him of it. This extraordinary development stems from a four-year investigation by the National Collegiate Athletic Association into allegations that Reggie violated NCAA amateur rules by accepting gifts (for himself and other family members) from sports marketers and agents while he was at USC.
But I think he was a fool for giving it up without fight. And here’s why:
There’s nothing amateur about college Football. It’s a multibillion-dollar business for Christ’s sake! More to the point, the people generating its revenues are not the university presidents, athletic directors, or coaches who, incidentally, make millions of dollars in salary and endorsement deals. Instead, they are the poor, mostly black athletes whose raw talent colleges exploit to pack 100,000 fans into their stadiums on game day.
I have always felt that it’s tantamount to modern-day slavery for universities to recruit poor and, all too often, uneducated athletes just to play Football and not compensate them for their services, especially considering they rarely get an education. After all:
While many young people every year set their goals on becoming NFL players, it is extremely difficult to reach that level. Statistically of the 100,000 high school seniors who play football every year, only 215 will ever make an NFL roster. That is 0.2%! Even of the 9,000 players that make it to the college level only 310 are invited to the NFL scouting combine, the pool from which teams make their draft picks.”
(NFL Players Association, nflpa.org)
But this indentured servitude is made much worse by branding these poor players as cheaters for accepting a little cash on the side. Mind you, those offering the cash are often boosters just trying to make life easier for players to enable them to perform better … out on the field. Not to mention that, if the NCAA were to penalize all college players who accept such gifts, there would be no college Football (or Basketball) worth watching.
The hypocrisy inherent in this is beyond shameful.
Colleges should compensate student-athletes in direct proportion to the way NFL teams compensate their players. They could then reallocate the scholarship money they spend recruiting jocks to fund financial aid for poor (black) students who aspire to be more than professional athletes.
By the way, if you don’t think this is all about big money, here’s how the Los Angeles Times reported on the sanctions the NCAA handed down against USC:
[T]he governing body for college sports hit USC with a string of penalties Thursday that will keep the powerhouse Trojans football team out of bowl games for the next two seasons and could cost the university millions of dollars. [To be fair to Reggie, players on USC’s basketball and tennis teams were also cited for violations.]
(Los Angeles Times, June 10, 2010)
To add insult to injury, USC has purged every trace of Bush’s record-setting tenure and even banned him from ever setting foot on its campus again. And the trustees have evidently decided that Bush has brought the 2005 Heisman Trophy into such disrepute that – instead of giving it to runner up Vince Young of Texas – they are simply “vacating” the award for that year. It seems lost on these nincompoops that this glaring gap in the annals of Heisman winners will only fuel this scandal in perpetuity….
Meanwhile, as indicated above, Reggie would probably give back the Super Bowl ring he won with the New Orleans Saints earlier this year if he could retain his Heisman Trophy with dignity as a result.
Related commentaries:
O.J. gets 16 to life!!!
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