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Bad Newz
Big-time college sports should be taking a hit right now
With so many serious problems in the world, these games we tune in to can seem a wasteful distraction. Depends on how you look at it.
The naked exploitation of college football and basketball players makes me feel bad, like, all the time. But it hasn't seriously derailed my interest in the games. I'm gonna watch 'em. My addiction is so serious that it trumps my values, same as anyone else. So, on a working Saturday afternoon, I had my mags laid out on the floor, with the Arizona-Illinois game on. A DVD of The Outsiders was on the remote's toggle. And intermittently I was writing. (Not a blog or anything about sports. I do a variety of work.)
Later I hit Firefox, and all the background noise went away when I came across a piece by Michael Lewis. On The New York Times op-ed page last month the Moneyball author wrote:
"College football's best trick play is its pretense that it has nothing to do with money, that it's simply an extension of the university's mission to educate its students. Were the public to view college football as mainly a business, it might start asking questions. For instance: Why are these enterprises that have nothing to do with education and everything to do with profits exempt from paying taxes? Or why don't they pay their employees?"
The naked exploitation of college football and basketball players makes me feel bad, like, all the time. But it hasn't seriously derailed my interest in the games. I'm gonna watch 'em. My addiction is so serious that it trumps my values, same as anyone else. So, on a working Saturday afternoon, I had my mags laid out on the floor, with the Arizona-Illinois game on. A DVD of The Outsiders was on the remote's toggle. And intermittently I was writing. (Not a blog or anything about sports. I do a variety of work.)
Later I hit Firefox, and all the background noise went away when I came across a piece by Michael Lewis. On The New York Times op-ed page last month the Moneyball author wrote:
"College football's best trick play is its pretense that it has nothing to do with money, that it's simply an extension of the university's mission to educate its students. Were the public to view college football as mainly a business, it might start asking questions. For instance: Why are these enterprises that have nothing to do with education and everything to do with profits exempt from paying taxes? Or why don't they pay their employees?"
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