The Greatest Story Ever Told
NCAA's educational mission is a scam of 21st century
boycewatkins@blackathlete.com •
View all articles by Dr. Boyce Watkins, BASN Contributor
POSTED: Dec 22, 2009
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In order to win games and make millions, football players are having
their majors chosen for them, and many athletes are being conveniently
misdiagnosed as learning disabled.
One recent episode stated that
one-half of all Florida State University football players and
three-fourths of their African-American athletes are Social Science
majors (indicative of major clustering).
One of the academic counselors said that when she started her tenure, there were 15 football players tagged as learning disabled. That number has since spiked to 65.
When the allegations were released, Florida State University started backpedaling faster than an NFL defensive back. The NCAA has done its usual grandstanding, detaching itself from the Seminoles, as if this doesn't also happen at nearly every other campus under its domain.
But the truth is that this behavior is not uncommon. If you think that Florida State University is the only
NCAA school
to engage in such destructive and irresponsible behavior, then you need
to be educated on how many campuses now do business.
College athletes, many of them African-American, are brought to college as hired guns, under the guise of getting an education. The entire charade is sustained for the sake of helping the NCAA maintain its multi-billion dollar professional sports league.
Yes, I said professional, not amateur.
Any league that earns money on par with the NBA, NFL, NHL and MLB is a professional sports league. NCAA coaches, commentators and administrators - mostly white - earn six and seven figure salaries while simultaneously robbing athletes of their educations, their futures, and the money that they and their families have earned.
In order to avoid paying taxes on their revenue, the
NCAA spends
millions on marketing to convince us that their multi-million dollar
corporate extravaganzas are polite little weekend activities that
students barely remember to keep on their schedules.
All the while, players attend four years of college and barely learn how to read.
For the NCAA, the educational mission of their professional sports league is one of the great scams of the 20th and 21st centuries, no different from the Ponzi schemes of Bernie Madoff. It is a convenient illusion, like Tiger's wife using the golf club to "save him from a car accident."
I've worked on college campuses for 16 years and it's unfathomable to me that young men and women are being dragged into long hours of practice and weeknight games across the country, while then being expected to stay on top of the course work of normal college students.
Upon arrival to campus, athletes are immediately sequestered by the
university, mainly to control the athlete's thinking. Exhaustive
practice and brainwashing sessions keep the player mentally and
physically numb, like a
KFC chicken waiting
to be taken to the market.
Nowhere is the damage more pervasive than in
the African-American community, where those responsible for educating
young black men are feeding them daily helpings of
NFL dreams
that either never come to fruition, or turn into nightmares of
26-year-old retirement, concussions and busted knee caps.
Dave Pear, a former all-pro defensive lineman for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, says that after his body was destroyed by professional sports, he wishes he had never played.
The
NCAA needs independent oversight.
The
federal government should take the lead and give meaningful
disciplinary power to individuals who care more about education than
winning percentages.
When schools like The University of Kentucky
choose to pay millions to coaches like John Calipari -- who has
consistently violated
NCAA rules and carries
a horrific graduation record -- they are making their intentions as
clear as the red on the devil's skin: Educating the athlete is not the
university's top priority.
With every young student being misled by this corrupt system, there is a lifetime of pain and turmoil being created by the selfish choices of greedy and unethical individuals. Many American universities have lost their academic souls, and it's all due to the drug of money.
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