Apparently there's some kind of college basketball tournament going on these days. I haven't been watching, because I don't care about college sports.

Right now you are gasping. "How can you not like college athletics?" you are saying. "You'd rather watch spoiled, steroid-addled millionaires playing at half-speed than amateur athletes playing only for the joy of competition and their passion for the game?"

If you're 98 years old, recalling your days rowing for Rutgers against Dartmouth, or if you follow Division III women's field hockey, then you got me. Yes, the overwhelming majority of college athletes are true amateurs whose athletic careers will end when they graduate. But we enter a different world when we talk about big-time Division I basketball and football. The NCAA -- spinning what King Kaufman calls "The Big Lie" -- claims that the young men shooting hoops for Duke or playing cornerback at Nebraska are just "student-athletes" taking part in an extracurricular activity, like when you competed on the speech team in high school. The stinky little difference here is that in college sports, everyone gets to stick their grubby hands in the money bag. The schools rake in millions from gate receipts, TV deals, and sales of merchandise. The coaches cash huge paychecks and sign endorsement contracts. The TV networks make gobs of cash selling time to advertisers. The NBA and NFL save big by not having to create a professional developmental system (like baseball's minor leagues). The fat and greasy NCAA defends all of these moneyed interests. In short, everyone gets rich except the laborers (a.k.a "student-athletes"), who play for nothing, and can lose their eligibility for holding a job or accepting a free taco platter.

Except the athletes don't play for nothing, and everyone knows it. And don't bother pointing out that the athletes get free college educations, because at big-time schools they don't have to go to class, and everyone knows that too. Academic, recruiting, and coaching scandals tear through the college sports world so often that we become numb. Rape allegations at Colorado? La la la, I'm not listening. March Madness is on!

+posted by Lawrence @ 3/20/2004 05:23:00 PM