It's Right in Front of Your Eyes

The media hype now days is classic. All these "reporters" come out with these breaking stories trying to explain something as if nobody else had conceived this idea. On Yahoo! today, I stumbled upon an article that stated, "Whistle-blower at UNC calls out academic performances by athletes" (or something close to that). The article goes on to and gives an example of a written test by an athlete then noted that the paper received an A- when clearly it appeared to have been written by a 4th grader. So to the writers defense, the paper was dreadful, but the problem I have is the writer appears to be shocked by this, as if he is stunned that colleges help out their athletes, and what a crock it is that their entrance requirements are less than traditional undergraduate students. **News Flash**: The NCAA and college sports are as corrupt as the mafia!!  

I mean honestly, if people think that colleges and universities treat athletes the same as other students, you've been living in a hole (unless you go to BYU, those guys do not fuck around). The majority, and I stress majority of  athletes who attend top schools for top athletes (in the respected sports) couldn't give a shit about their academics. Are you shocked that the inner city kid who went to a high school with a 50% graduation rate, no family structure didn't take college seriously because he's 6'8", can shoot like Larry, and can take off from the free throw line? I can't believe he take his calculus I class more seriously...

Now the concern is that the school is allowing poor performance and pushing kids through. OF COURSE THEY ARE! these guys are bringing in millions of dollars worth of revenue to the school. The University of Texas has approximately 40,000 undergraduate students, do you think the school gives a damn how 150 (just a rough estimation of the football and basketball team rosters) students do academically? Fuck no! statistically those people are making zero difference for the school as a whole academically, but when recruits see that these guys are getting 3.5 + GPA's after going to school for 4 years, that looks real good, so why not help these guys out. The article went on to mention that some are concerned with the players reading and writing levels, stating that some of them were still on elementary levels of the two. What this guy didn't research (and I did) is that the United States as a whole, on average, only reads at a 7th grade level. So my argument to the writer is that these athletes who are constantly startling him, are actually almost at the national average. 

I mean people need to get over this whole thing with college athletes. Yes they get help academically, yes they are only there to play sports, yes some of them are getting money on the side, or fully furnished apartments waiting for them when they get there their freshman year. People want to win, and these guys bring in more money than the entire school COMBINED. 

Oh and don't believe me on the money thing? Quick solution to find that out. Explain to me how these guys that talk about how grateful they are for a scholarship cause they come from a single-parent household with 8 brothers and sisters in a low-income area, end up with two sleeves worth of tattoos? Unless they are hitting up the prison yards in their spare time to get this done for free, then they are probably getting some sort of compensation from a generous donor or rich alumni, which leads me to discuss why athletes do not deserve to be paid to play in college, but that's for a different time. 

*  In the second paragraph speaking about UT, I just used them as an example, I was not calling them out by any means.

**Sorry DII and DIII people, this has nothing to do with us athletes. I mean it might it some rare situation, but as far as I know going to a DIII school, the only payment I received was free subway on road trips, and a new uniform.

***Girls, this also isn't for you. As big time of athletes as you may be, in all DI schools there is not one women's program who makes profit from their sports, and typically is floated by the men's biggest sport.