Is truth racist? The NCAA is.
In this politically correct world of ours, one thing seems to be increasingly obvious: those of the political left have decided to ignore truth in preference to politically convenient lies. What do I mean by that? There are certain things in the United States that are simply true -- numerically and irrefutably true -- but to recognize the truth is to be branded "racist."
Fact: African Americans comprise 12% of the population of the United States. African Americans comprise 45% of all murder victims, of whom 91% were killed by African Americans. The leading cause of death for African American men is homicide. For African American women is the second leading cause. Annually, the United States spends over $5 billion on emergency and physical or occupational therapy associated with crime-related injuries and deaths. (Women's Council on African American Affairs, Inc.). It is simply dangerous to be black -- and that is wrong, wrong, wrong.
While we are about it, let's get this "African American" crap out of the way. If you are an United States citizen, then you are an American -- full stop. Your ethnicity or race is related to a population whose members identify with each other on the basis of common ancestry or geneology, cultural, linguistic, religious or physical traits. Africa is not comprised of peoples of one ethnicity -- there are many races in Africa, from Bantu to Coptic Egyptians, to Berbers to Tuareg tribesmen. The Tutsi are tall peoples with very black skin. The Tuareg are shorter with thin aquiline noses and lighter skin. Coptic Egyptians are separated by religion and physical characteristics from the Islamic Egyptians. They are all African Americans in the way that I am European American. But what would that say about me? I could be of Sicilian origin -- typically dark skinned, black hair and shorter. Or Norwegian, tall and blond. Catholic or Lutheran. From dirt-poor, starving Irish stock or aristocratic French heritage. But generally, I would be "White." As people from West African (or tropical African) descent are "Black." Those from the Far East, "Asian." If the general description does not fit, then don't use it. Though "Hispanic" is less a skin-based collective description and more a cultural assessment of ethnicity ... one based on the fact that the Spanish were aggressive imperialists, and thought that all conquered people should speak Spanish and worship the Pope. So you have people as different as Mexicans of Mayan ancestry and Cubans of Castillian Spanish descent being described as "Hispanic." Weird.
Both the quote of statistics and my rant about race/ethnicity would earn me a front row seat on the downtown express to damnation if up to the liberal left. But that would not necessarily make the comments incorrect or risible.
Let's get this straight, I AM NOT RACIST. Two of my mentors growing up are black men. My mentor with the Federal Government is hands down the one of the most decent and intelligent men I have ever known -- and black. I would vote for Condi for President -- seriously -- not because she is black, but because she is incredibly smart and has real integrity. Get in her way and she will squash you like a bug. I actually support Obama -- certainly in preference to ANY other Democrat and most Republicans. I abhor the fiasco of the Jena 6 -- a crime by one person on another must be met with equal force of the law, irrespective of race, ethnicity or gender. And the bullshit about asking for permission to sit under the White Tree ... the administration of that school should be in jail for permitting de facto segregation to exist in this day and age.
But the point of this is to talk about sports. Huh? Yes, sports. You see, universities and colleges across this fair nation of ours recruit athletes for scholarships so that the business machine of NCAA sports has its cannon fodder. The supporters of this system loudly claim that this is the "ticket out of the ghettos" for the lucky few. The trouble with this is that it is based on a few lies: (a) scholarship implies a basic ability to read and write, perhaps even to perform elementary math; (b) the recipients of the largess will actually learn something in college; (c) it is right and worthy to spend the funds available on athletes as opposed to poor but intelligent (or at least partly educated) persons looking to better their lots in life; (d) each of the recipients will stay out of the ghetto thereafter -- itself implying that they will all proceed to good jobs or professional sports after they leave; (e) they will actually be spend any time on academic pursuits. I could go on.
College sports is big business. Huge sums of money are generated from media rights and advertising -- not to mention the Vegas aspect of gambling. Much of it is plowed right back into the machine, but little makes it way back for the purposes universities are established: to promote learning. The kids that get recruited for college are recruited for their athletic ability -- solely -- and not because they are good students that happen to be proficient at some sport. The community from which the students are culled does not benefit from educated persons that may re-enter that community with knowledge and a desire to raise the standard of people living in it benefit it. Instead, it receives back people whose bodies have been damaged and can no longer participate in NCAA sports, or those that "did not make it to the pros." They are also often functionally illiterate. Their whole college career a sham in which "Art Appreciation 101" features as core courses designed to maintain a minimum grade point average required by the NCAA. Puh-leeze.
A certain William Dowling from Rutgers University has a history of taking flak for his brave stance on the subject (2003):
"One Nate Robinson, a lineman highly ranked in SuperPrep, had earlier signed to play for the University of Miami. It turned out that he was unable to make even the dismally low 820 SAT score Miami requires for football players. So he came to Rutgers instead.
The NJ Star-Ledger writes: "He makes no mention of the athletes who enter Rutgers with below average SAT scores, apply themselves in the classroom and end up the pride of their families. Rutgers is seventh out of the 119 Division 1 football programs according to the NCAA's Academic Progress Rate, and first among all state universities. The cumulative GPA is 2.7, with more than 30 percent achieving a grade-point average about 3.0."
Which students might they be referring to? Just because Rutgers is first among the ignorant does not necessarily mean that they are attending to the academic needs of its students. They might simply be better at stuffing the ballot box of basket-weaving courses. Let's be clear: only 30% of scholarship students achieve a grade average of "B." We know nothing of the courses studied or the graduate rates. Nothing. If there was anything positive to say about that, you can be sure that the President of Rutgers would have trotted that out for display.
The Editor in Chief of the Washington Times (liberal-weenie newspaper) Wes Pruden, has this to say on the subject: " Fewer than half of the scholarship athletes at major schools graduate; not a single player on one recent national championship basketball team bothered to finish school." That was the NCAA Div. 1 Cinncinatti. And it is not like good schools are immune from this virus: Duke is reported as awarding $4 million in scholarships to 550 student athletes in a recent year when 5,900 other undergraduates received scholarships worth only $400,000. Duke, as you may know is a perennial powerhouse in basketball.
We supposedly stopped selling humans for profit in this country at the end of the Civil War. But the trade goes on under the guise of athletics: "[t]wo high-school football coaches who prosecutors say schemed to sell a high-school athlete to the University of Alabama have been indicted by a federal grand jury in Memphis for extortion, promotion of bribery and conspiracy. One of the coaches testified that he collected $200,000 from a 'Bama booster to deliver the player to Tuscaloosa. No one can say that Milton Kirk and Lynn Lang didn't work for the money. Before delivering the boy to the Crimson Tide, they shopped him to boosters or coaches (or both) at Arkansas, Tennessee, Ole Miss, Florida State and Michigan State. The player, who was apparently unaware that his coaches were getting paid to "guide" him, finally wound up at the University of Memphis as a kind of consolation prize." (JWReview).
The character of the recruits is an open sore for anyone that cares to look at it. Hardly a day goes by in which we don't read of some crime committed by the benefits of athletic scholarships. "The University of Michigan played two convicted felons. A wide receiver at Auburn pleaded guilty to sexual relations with an underage girl. A Florida player, recruited for his speed, was convicted of driving the getaway car in a jewel heist. A player at Cincinnati was convicted of rape. The co-captain at Washington State was sentenced to a year in prison for punching out a girl. A Wisconsin player was convicted of assault on a young woman in a dormitory. A Notre Dame booster went to prison for embezzling $35,000, which he paid as "bonuses" to 12 players."
But when coaches and administration rake it in, all can be forgotten. CBS paid $6 billion to televise the NCAA college basketball tournament for a few years, that is billion.The million-dollar coach, once a rarity, is now the norm. From USA Today, "[h]ead coaches at the NCAA's top-level schools are making an average of $950,000 this year, not counting benefits, incentives, subsidized housing or any of the perks they routinely receive. At least 42 of the 119 Division I-A coaches are earning $1 million or more this year, up from five in 1999.
If we want a race-neutral society, we need to start acting like we do. You can't support both affirmative action and the NCAA system -- they are at odds with each other. Lots of Republicans hate affirmative action, but are ardent fans of college sports. Reconcile that one. No wonder nothing has been achieved in the last 40 years.
You can't give a slap on the hand to a criminal because they are an athlete -- or pound them for the same reason (think about the Duke Lacrosse team). We need to foster a society where anyone who wants an education can get one -- and if they do not want one, then they should not be looking for the benefits of one; the pay, the housing, the prestige, anything. Michael Vick is an accused felon, an athlete from the ghetto, and the beneficiary of an enormous string of winks and nods in his direction. Yet, might there not have been someone from his neighborhood that wanted to become an eye surgeon who simply couldn't get past the hurdles of securing the education? All I read about are excuses of how Vick was deprived -- how dog fighting is OK culturally from where he comes from, how it is OK in many other parts of the world. Great, but it is against the law in the United States.
Let's get the politics out of it and start looking at the truth.
Fact: African Americans comprise 12% of the population of the United States. African Americans comprise 45% of all murder victims, of whom 91% were killed by African Americans. The leading cause of death for African American men is homicide. For African American women is the second leading cause. Annually, the United States spends over $5 billion on emergency and physical or occupational therapy associated with crime-related injuries and deaths. (Women's Council on African American Affairs, Inc.). It is simply dangerous to be black -- and that is wrong, wrong, wrong.
While we are about it, let's get this "African American" crap out of the way. If you are an United States citizen, then you are an American -- full stop. Your ethnicity or race is related to a population whose members identify with each other on the basis of common ancestry or geneology, cultural, linguistic, religious or physical traits. Africa is not comprised of peoples of one ethnicity -- there are many races in Africa, from Bantu to Coptic Egyptians, to Berbers to Tuareg tribesmen. The Tutsi are tall peoples with very black skin. The Tuareg are shorter with thin aquiline noses and lighter skin. Coptic Egyptians are separated by religion and physical characteristics from the Islamic Egyptians. They are all African Americans in the way that I am European American. But what would that say about me? I could be of Sicilian origin -- typically dark skinned, black hair and shorter. Or Norwegian, tall and blond. Catholic or Lutheran. From dirt-poor, starving Irish stock or aristocratic French heritage. But generally, I would be "White." As people from West African (or tropical African) descent are "Black." Those from the Far East, "Asian." If the general description does not fit, then don't use it. Though "Hispanic" is less a skin-based collective description and more a cultural assessment of ethnicity ... one based on the fact that the Spanish were aggressive imperialists, and thought that all conquered people should speak Spanish and worship the Pope. So you have people as different as Mexicans of Mayan ancestry and Cubans of Castillian Spanish descent being described as "Hispanic." Weird.
Both the quote of statistics and my rant about race/ethnicity would earn me a front row seat on the downtown express to damnation if up to the liberal left. But that would not necessarily make the comments incorrect or risible.
Let's get this straight, I AM NOT RACIST. Two of my mentors growing up are black men. My mentor with the Federal Government is hands down the one of the most decent and intelligent men I have ever known -- and black. I would vote for Condi for President -- seriously -- not because she is black, but because she is incredibly smart and has real integrity. Get in her way and she will squash you like a bug. I actually support Obama -- certainly in preference to ANY other Democrat and most Republicans. I abhor the fiasco of the Jena 6 -- a crime by one person on another must be met with equal force of the law, irrespective of race, ethnicity or gender. And the bullshit about asking for permission to sit under the White Tree ... the administration of that school should be in jail for permitting de facto segregation to exist in this day and age.
But the point of this is to talk about sports. Huh? Yes, sports. You see, universities and colleges across this fair nation of ours recruit athletes for scholarships so that the business machine of NCAA sports has its cannon fodder. The supporters of this system loudly claim that this is the "ticket out of the ghettos" for the lucky few. The trouble with this is that it is based on a few lies: (a) scholarship implies a basic ability to read and write, perhaps even to perform elementary math; (b) the recipients of the largess will actually learn something in college; (c) it is right and worthy to spend the funds available on athletes as opposed to poor but intelligent (or at least partly educated) persons looking to better their lots in life; (d) each of the recipients will stay out of the ghetto thereafter -- itself implying that they will all proceed to good jobs or professional sports after they leave; (e) they will actually be spend any time on academic pursuits. I could go on.
College sports is big business. Huge sums of money are generated from media rights and advertising -- not to mention the Vegas aspect of gambling. Much of it is plowed right back into the machine, but little makes it way back for the purposes universities are established: to promote learning. The kids that get recruited for college are recruited for their athletic ability -- solely -- and not because they are good students that happen to be proficient at some sport. The community from which the students are culled does not benefit from educated persons that may re-enter that community with knowledge and a desire to raise the standard of people living in it benefit it. Instead, it receives back people whose bodies have been damaged and can no longer participate in NCAA sports, or those that "did not make it to the pros." They are also often functionally illiterate. Their whole college career a sham in which "Art Appreciation 101" features as core courses designed to maintain a minimum grade point average required by the NCAA. Puh-leeze.
A certain William Dowling from Rutgers University has a history of taking flak for his brave stance on the subject (2003):
"One Nate Robinson, a lineman highly ranked in SuperPrep, had earlier signed to play for the University of Miami. It turned out that he was unable to make even the dismally low 820 SAT score Miami requires for football players. So he came to Rutgers instead.
The boosters went into a frenzy of rejoicing. And so, presumably, did the members of the "Academic Oversight Committee": Robert Boikess, Roger Cohen, Emmet Dennis, Gus Friedrich, Jim Hughes, Arnold Hyndman, Harry Janes, Robert Jenkins, Pat Mayer, Jeff Rubin, Tom Stephens, John Worobey, and Kathryn Uhrich, and Carl Kirschner.*
Could we be serious for a second? Nate Robinson's combined SAT score was 800. A student with an 800 SAT might be able to do the work at Rutgers if he spent every available moment of his time on his course work. It would be hard. Even putting in 60 hours a week studying, it would be a tremendous struggle for such an individual to keep up with his better-prepared classmates.
Maybe, just maybe, it could be done. But it's brutally dishonest to pretend it can be done by an 800-SAT freshman who's made to put in 40-50 hours a week on developing his physical skills, and then go on frequent weekend trips away from campus. Even a top student who'd entered Rutgers with a 1400 SAT would have a hard enough time keeping up a decent GPA under that regimen.
Nate Robinson is not the miscreant here. He's just a pawn in the sleazy game of commercialized college athletics, viz.
- the coaches who will tell any lie to get a recruit;
- the administrators who are happy to perform as lackeys of the Athletics Department;
- the campus newspaper sportswriters and local sports columnists who serve as its PR shills;
- the boosters who supply slush fund money to attract any "blue chip" prospect who might make them feel more important by "getting us a winner" (see the recent Fab Five case, in which basketball players were paid nearly a million dollars to play for Michigan); and
- the TV networks who rake in billions of dollars by getting institutions of higher learning to prostitute themselves to commercialized athletics."
The NJ Star-Ledger writes: "He makes no mention of the athletes who enter Rutgers with below average SAT scores, apply themselves in the classroom and end up the pride of their families. Rutgers is seventh out of the 119 Division 1 football programs according to the NCAA's Academic Progress Rate, and first among all state universities. The cumulative GPA is 2.7, with more than 30 percent achieving a grade-point average about 3.0."
Which students might they be referring to? Just because Rutgers is first among the ignorant does not necessarily mean that they are attending to the academic needs of its students. They might simply be better at stuffing the ballot box of basket-weaving courses. Let's be clear: only 30% of scholarship students achieve a grade average of "B." We know nothing of the courses studied or the graduate rates. Nothing. If there was anything positive to say about that, you can be sure that the President of Rutgers would have trotted that out for display.
The Editor in Chief of the Washington Times (liberal-weenie newspaper) Wes Pruden, has this to say on the subject: " Fewer than half of the scholarship athletes at major schools graduate; not a single player on one recent national championship basketball team bothered to finish school." That was the NCAA Div. 1 Cinncinatti. And it is not like good schools are immune from this virus: Duke is reported as awarding $4 million in scholarships to 550 student athletes in a recent year when 5,900 other undergraduates received scholarships worth only $400,000. Duke, as you may know is a perennial powerhouse in basketball.
We supposedly stopped selling humans for profit in this country at the end of the Civil War. But the trade goes on under the guise of athletics: "[t]wo high-school football coaches who prosecutors say schemed to sell a high-school athlete to the University of Alabama have been indicted by a federal grand jury in Memphis for extortion, promotion of bribery and conspiracy. One of the coaches testified that he collected $200,000 from a 'Bama booster to deliver the player to Tuscaloosa. No one can say that Milton Kirk and Lynn Lang didn't work for the money. Before delivering the boy to the Crimson Tide, they shopped him to boosters or coaches (or both) at Arkansas, Tennessee, Ole Miss, Florida State and Michigan State. The player, who was apparently unaware that his coaches were getting paid to "guide" him, finally wound up at the University of Memphis as a kind of consolation prize." (JWReview).
The character of the recruits is an open sore for anyone that cares to look at it. Hardly a day goes by in which we don't read of some crime committed by the benefits of athletic scholarships. "The University of Michigan played two convicted felons. A wide receiver at Auburn pleaded guilty to sexual relations with an underage girl. A Florida player, recruited for his speed, was convicted of driving the getaway car in a jewel heist. A player at Cincinnati was convicted of rape. The co-captain at Washington State was sentenced to a year in prison for punching out a girl. A Wisconsin player was convicted of assault on a young woman in a dormitory. A Notre Dame booster went to prison for embezzling $35,000, which he paid as "bonuses" to 12 players."
But when coaches and administration rake it in, all can be forgotten. CBS paid $6 billion to televise the NCAA college basketball tournament for a few years, that is billion.The million-dollar coach, once a rarity, is now the norm. From USA Today, "[h]ead coaches at the NCAA's top-level schools are making an average of $950,000 this year, not counting benefits, incentives, subsidized housing or any of the perks they routinely receive. At least 42 of the 119 Division I-A coaches are earning $1 million or more this year, up from five in 1999.
Jim Tressel, coach of No. 1-ranked Ohio State, and Mack Brown, who steered Texas to the national championship a year ago, are among the nine coaches making more than $2 million. Iowa's Kirk Ferentz will pocket a guaranteed $4.6 million in an atypical 13-month period ending next June, including $1.8 million in one-time payments. With the incentive bonuses he still can earn, he could push his take to more than $4.7 million. That's the most among the 107 coaches for whom USA TODAY could obtain a contract or other official document showing compensation.
Oklahoma's Bob Stoops is the only coach in that group who has cleared the $3 million-a-year bar in guaranteed pay, although Ferentz likely will join him in 2007." And that is just the surface pay. Then there are the benefits such as country club memberships, the use of booster's private planes and vacation homes, slush fees paid for outfitting athletes in certain clothing.
If we want a race-neutral society, we need to start acting like we do. You can't support both affirmative action and the NCAA system -- they are at odds with each other. Lots of Republicans hate affirmative action, but are ardent fans of college sports. Reconcile that one. No wonder nothing has been achieved in the last 40 years.
You can't give a slap on the hand to a criminal because they are an athlete -- or pound them for the same reason (think about the Duke Lacrosse team). We need to foster a society where anyone who wants an education can get one -- and if they do not want one, then they should not be looking for the benefits of one; the pay, the housing, the prestige, anything. Michael Vick is an accused felon, an athlete from the ghetto, and the beneficiary of an enormous string of winks and nods in his direction. Yet, might there not have been someone from his neighborhood that wanted to become an eye surgeon who simply couldn't get past the hurdles of securing the education? All I read about are excuses of how Vick was deprived -- how dog fighting is OK culturally from where he comes from, how it is OK in many other parts of the world. Great, but it is against the law in the United States.
Let's get the politics out of it and start looking at the truth.
posted by Zaphod at Friday, September 28, 2007
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