Saban had the audacity to climb on his LSU-Dolphins-Alabama high horse

Published on July 22, 2010 by     

It’s a publicity stunt. Everyone is falling for it. It’s working so well that Nick $aban had the audacity to climb on his LSU-Dolphins-Alabama high horse and claim that the rules-breaking street agents are pimps.

It takes one to know one, Nick “Mr. White Folks” Saban.

Pack journalism must die. My industry/profession has sold the NCAA lie for too long. We’ve served as the NCAA’s volunteer investigative unit for 40 years.

Why?

We know exactly what Byers knows and admitted: amateur athletics is a for-profit scam.

Television and money perverted college football and basketball a generation ago. Coaches and administrators are making millions. The athletes are being compensated in a currency (a shot at a compromised education in their spare time) many of them don’t respect and haven’t been properly prepared to use. The NCAA takes most of the money generated by football and men’s basketball and invests it in welfare sports that don’t generate a dollar and are played mostly by kids who have nothing in common with the football and basketball players who produced the revenue.

Add in that we now have a far better understanding of the long-term health risks associated with playing football and it’s even more clear why these young people can’t resist taking what’s offered to them.

Reggie Bush is Kunta Kinte.

The media are going to chop his Heisman Trophy off, drag him back to USC’s plantation and let new athletic director Pat Haden lash his legacy in front of Chicken George, Fiddler and Kizzy.

And several reporters will get promotions, pay raises and a few plaques for “catching” Reggie Bush.

I have a great deal of respect for the reporters at Yahoo Sports, the media outlet that has led the Bush investigation. But I have no respect for the NCAA rule book. I have no respect for the sports journalism-awards culture that rewards NCAA rules-violation stories.

Yahoo Sports has done awesome work exposing financial links between summer basketball kingpins, the Pump brothers, and high-profile college basketball coaches and administrators. I mention this because I don’t want to create the impression that reporters I respect solely focus on supporting out-of-date NCAA/amateur athletics rules.

But this Reggie Bush story has infuriated me. I’ve listened to too many talking heads shred Bush and street agents as though they’re the problem in college athletics.

The problem is the lie, the original sin, the myth that our society is enhanced by protecting the fallacy of “amateur athletics.” Rather than destroy Reggie Bush and his Heisman Trophy, aggressive, righteous journalists should work to destroy the NCAA and every other institution in support of the amateur lie.

Expose the NCAA, not the athletes – CFB News – FOX Sports on MSN.

Tags: Aban, Amateur Athletics, Basketball Players, Chicken George, Health Risks, Heisman Trophy, High Horse, Investigative Unit, Journalism Awards, Kizzy, Long Term Health, Mr White Folks, Ncaa Rule, Ncaa Rules, Pat Haden, Publicity Stunt, Reggie Bush, Sports Journalism, Takes One To Know One, Yahoo Sports