Surely Jameis Winston, Florida State’s Heisman Trophy winning-quarterback, could be forgiven his excited utterances during a post-game interview on January 6; after all, he’d just led his team to the national championship (34-31) over Auburn.
Except that the (White) mother of Alabama quarterback A.J. McCarron was not in a forgiving mood. Because she reacted to his interview with tweets and re-tweets questioning whether (the Black) Winston actually knew how to speak English:
Am I listening to English?
For the record, I’ve heard him speak on a few occasions, and also happened to watch this interview. He speaks perfectly comprehensible English … even if with the diction and grammar of an eighth-grader.
Twitter of course is a snarky, unforgiving, tit-for-tat medium. Therefore, it was hardly surprising that, within minutes, McCarron’s mother was tweeting apologizes and trying desperately to convince not just trolls, but the entire world, that she is not a racist.
In fact, her perceived racial slur drew such unrelenting backlash that her son’s girlfriend, Katherine Webb, felt compelled to defend her. Unfortunately, Webb soon learned that being famous just for looking hot does nothing to win friends and influence people in the twitterverse.
Maybe this Winston critic is just one naïve mother. Or maybe she’s like far too many parents these days who see nothing wrong with aping their trash-talking kids when it comes to college rivalries. Indeed, she was probably still smarting over the fact that Winston not only beat out her son for the 2013 Heisman Trophy, but added insult to that injury by defeating his Alabama confederates at Auburn for the national championship.
Whatever the case, there’s no gainsaying that her tweet hinted at College Football’s dirty, dark secret – namely that most (Black) college athletes can barely speak English and are functionally illiterate.
Coincidentally enough, this was brought into stark and vindicating relief just hours later with this CNN breaking news:
A CNN investigation found public universities across the country where many students in the basketball and football programs could read only up to an eighth-grade level.
I submit, therefore, that instead of accusing this silly woman of racism, Winston’s defenders should’ve been questioning why Florida State and other powerhouse sports colleges get away with continually graduating so many dumb jocks. After all, they’ve made it so abundantly clear they have no interest in educating their student-athletes that I’ve argued these putative institutions of higher learning should at least pay them.
This brings me to “The Case for Paying College Athletes,” which U.S. News and World Report published, again coincidentally, on the same day (January 6) McCarron’s mother published her ill-advised tweet. The case can be summed up as follows:
The college sports industry generates $11 billion in annual revenues… These college sports revenues are passed along to NCAA executives, athletic directors and coaches in the form of salaries…
Nevertheless, the NCAA member colleges continue to vote to forbid the sharing of revenues with student-athletes.
In other words, why pay students to do what you can get them to do for free: not exactly slavery but clearly a form of indentured servitude. This is why I’m exceedingly encouraged that this powerhouse news organization has taken up the cause for student-athletes to be compensated, which some of us have been championing for years:
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, athletics 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 colleges 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.
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 the players to enable them to perform better … out on the field…
The hypocrisy inherent in this exploitation 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.
(“Reggie Bush Forfeits Heisman Trophy,” The iPINIONS Journal, September 16, 2010)
Granted, barring injury, top college athletes like Winston can bank on professional careers, during which they can make tens of millions. Unfortunately:
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, nflplayers.com)
What’s more, the way Tim Tebow’s NFL career ended in abject failure after just two years demonstrates that even some top college athletes cannot rely on making up in the professional leagues all of the money they could have (or should have) made in college. Remember, like Winston, Tebow won the Heisman too….
Which is why, in addition to condemning colleges for this form of indentured servitude, I’ve recommended the following way student-athletes to redress this exploitation:
I urge the star players on all NCAA Division 1 Football teams to organize a wildcat strike this fall and demand fair compensation for the services they provide. Dare the NCAA and university presidents to take legal action. Because whatever contractual arguments they make would be far outweighed by the moral and equitable arguments these players could make.
Foremost in the players’ favor is the legal concept of quantum meruit, which holds that person should be fairly compensated for services rendered. Hence, it would be unconscionable and utterly unsustainable for the NCAA and university presidents to argue that they should be forced to continue generating billions in revenues, in exchange for nothing more than a college degree that, in most cases, is not worth the paper it’s written on.
(“Death Penalty for University of Miami Hurricanes,” The iPINIONS Journal, August 23, 2011)
I hope they take heed….
For the record, let me hasten to clarify that damning colleges for exploiting student-athletes who can barely read or write does not excuse their parents and teachers (from kindergarten through high school) for failing them so unconscionably.
Related commentaries:
Reggie Bush forfeits…
Death penalty…
Tebow’s career sacked