BLACK, WHITE AND BROWN – Stop the Hypocrisy
Bumerton is a retired Navy fighter pilot who had been missing in action for several years while he traversed the globe looking for greener grass. He discovered the grass is only greener here (it’s blue in Kentucky), so he returned to again take charge of his 1954 green Hudson Hornet that had been in storage, refilled his pipe, and is continuing his smokin’ ways. Here is what he recently told us at the Sports Paper.
By Bill Bumerton
It’s stupid that colleges profit while pretending they are educating their basketball athletes by giving them free scholarships to ply their trade.
C’mon, what the Sam Hill do they take us for – numskulls?
Big power athletic schools aren’t educating the ones and done players. No, Big Dawg, they aren’t. They are profiting from18-year-olds who know they are only going to a university because they have to wait a year after high school until they are eligible to play for profit with the pros. These kids likely are not getting much education in the classroom because they know they are there for only a short time before they ride off into a beautiful sunset.
It’s wrong then to pretend they are doing these young men a favor. Most – probably all of them – would not be there if they could go directly from high school to the pros. I know I would not, Big Dawg. If I was talented enough and had the chance to make millions I would sign on the dotted line yesterday. Instead the NBA and NCAA require these young guys to wait a year before they can order a Lamborghini.
It doesn’t make sense and is stupid. Stop pretending you are doing these kids a favor. You are not.
I know a better way, Big Dawg. Allow all the high school kids who have completed their high school education to be eligible for the NBA draft. The ones who go undrafted are then free to sign a letter of intend to a school that will offer them a scholarship.
Those kids on scholarship will be paid a maximum amount in addition to free tuition, books and room and board while they play for their university. We will cap that maximum at $30,000 for the school year. In return, the school will be allowed to use that player’s likeness for merchandise profit.
After one year, all the one-year players will again be eligible for the NBA draft. Those that are drafted will have their NBA team pay back the school the amount of money they have paid that player for their one year of service and the university can no longer use that player’s likeness on merchandise for profit.
Each player on scholarship will be eligible for each year’s NBA draft over the length of their schooling up to five years maximum. If a player gets two, three, and four or five years of free education in before being drafted his NBA team will play back all the years of maximum payment to that school and the school discontinues that player’s likeness on merchandise.
This will cut out the obvious stupidity that a player on scholarship to a university cannot even as much accept a free ride across campus from a school official for fear of the school and the player being sanctioned by the NCAA.
Under the current system, it’s all right for a university to make millions off its athletes while keeping them in a sort of slavery bondage that doesn’t allow them often to have enough money to buy a hamburger. And if a coach dares buy a player a hamburger the NCAA will put the fear of god into him or her.
The hypocrisy is so blatant that it’s sickening. Coaches can make millions and players can’t afford a hamburger? Why have we allowed this all this time? It’s time to make the fiction of the life of a college basketball player fit reality and afford them the means to live a reasonable life fitting their talent and circumstances.
Now, Big Dawg, go get me a tall latte. I’m exhausted
