Letters to the Editor
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Another use for the excess money
Doesn't sound like a "non-profit" to me.
Perhaps the Bama athletic department should be paying taxes.
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I Hate Myself
Jett sure didn't do any favors for rock n' roll by letting Pink turn herself into the new Hank Jr. with "Waiting All Day For Sunday Night." I almost wish she'd let her songs into commercials if it meant not having to see that mess every week.
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Money and football.
I do tend to agree that college football players should be compensated to a certain degree (beyond scholarships) but there's certainly a difference in the amount of money a program like Alabama brings in versus, say, Vanderbilt.
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Joan Jett
Hurray for Joan Jett! More Hurrays! for Jello Biafra not taking Levi's money and for whichever member of the Doors it is that blocks the use of their music in advertisements.
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Samoe old arguments
King, there really isn't money there to pay the players for most Division I-A programs. Football and basketball (and in some places hockey, baseball, and even women's basketball) support the rest of most schools' athletic departments. of course every knows this - the same arguments come up over and over again.
So let's consider your proposal.
There are probably a dozen or so
programs similar to Alabama that have the resources to pull off paying the players. But where would that leave everyone else? As it is the race to keep up with facilities and coaches pay is a serious problem for most the D-I schools. If players could be paid things would get even worse, especially for the lower echelon teams in the big conferences. This would further hurt the competitive balance in college football and basketball.
I suppose that you could instate salary caps and revenue sharing, but it would be a nightmare. You would be exchanging the problems of the current system, for worse problems.
And let's look at your numbers. You come up with an average salary about 20 k$. That's not bad - that's roughly what some full year RAs and TAs make now. But it is also not that much. For private schools, that's less than current value of a full-ride athletic scholarship, and if you consider out-of state tuition, it is about the value of the scholarship at state schools. So at a school like Alabama that could probably find the resources to pay its players, you could maybe double the players' total compensation, but in my opinion, you would wreck the sport while doing it. It is not a good bargain.
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OSU v. Florida
Urban Meyer was born and raised in Ashtabula, Ohio. He grew up rooting for the Buckeyes. These are facts. Okay, we must spread the word - tell 5 people you know.
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Same Lies
Nick Saban told similar lies while at Michigan State:
That he was going to stay to rebuild the program, he loved the East Lansing area, had no interest in coaching any other team, etc...and then suddenly he is signing a contract with LSU. More or less he did the same thing at LSU.
That is what made it easy for the writers and reporters to continue to ask him the same questions...and maybe they wanted to see how far he would go with his ridiculous statements. I think many people see his lies as acceptable only while the Dolphins season was still occurring but not once the season had ended.
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Ah the poor benighted media!
I take your point that media had it right and Saban is a step or two beyond the normal coach ration of bunko, bull, deceit & obfuscation. However, to me this seems to be like the when the political press complains that the White House press secretary is stonewalling or that Reagan refused to take questions at photo-ops.
It is not as if the press doesn't have something the politicians and coaches want, namely ink and air-time. What would happen if every time a reporter saw Saban they asked for an explanation for a public apology for his questioning of the integrity and professionalism of the reporters who were correct? Then when he refuses, they follow up with more questions in the same vein until either he or they have to walk out.
If the white house press corps had stopped showing Reagan going to and fro on the helicopter with his hand behind his ear pretending he couldn't hear questions about Iran-Contra, the WH would have had to make a decision, do we answer questions or lose the free PR? Who knows what they would have chosen, but they were never forced to make the choice.
Why not make Saban make a choice: does he want to address that he's a schmuck and apologize or does he want to be hounded relentlessly by the same questions which will interfere with his PR plan and his recruiting? Of course, the sporting press would need to actually have to run the risk of insulting someone and possibly losing valuable jock-sniffing opportunities.
Jim Gray paid a price for going after Rose but only because the other so-called journalists in the profession not only didn't have his back, they joined their ex-athlete colleagues is excoriating him. Cowards.
Why do reporters go through the whole Nuke Laloosh charade of asking stupid questions and then writing down the stupid answers? If you don't want cliched answers, don't ask cliched questions. It is what makes 95% of sports writing unreadable. (Present company usually exclude, King.)
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Be Like Spike
The Joan Jett example is funny since she too obviously gave into the temptation to sell out (see: Sunday Night Football).
As for whether there is any reward for beat reporters gettting it right:
Aren't there journalism awards? Don't journalists get paid by their employers? Don't they get raises and promotions for good reporting work?
Doesn't the press tell us that they "speak truth to power" and act as a check on power (sports organizations or government ones)? Doing the right thing is its own reward, is it not?
I think Saban is getting rightly lambasted for his hypocrisy but at the same time, let's not go overboard here in praising the media. There's a lot wrong with the sports media which often seems to consist of either pure fluff (like sideline reporters and their mindless anecdotes) preening moralism (Jay Mariotti) or rumor-mongering (see: nearly all trade rumors). And since getting it wrong often seems to have no consequences -particularly in sports journalism- well, why should their be a reward for getting it right?