Mr. Clean

When i go to work, on my forty minute commute, I listen to sports radio. Once upon a time, I was good. I'd listen to NPR and fill my head with the wondrous goodness that is national public radio. NPR still gives the best five minute summary of news around. Those five minutes are better than the half hour dreck that national news provides. Why people listen to national news, I'll never know. Read an online paper.

Then, I started slipping to the dark side. I began listening to Howard Stern in the mornings. We all remember that fateful day, Tuesday, September 11, 2001. I was heading to the university to attend a class, shortly after leaving the gym. It was probably just around 9 AM that morning, and I was tuned to Howard Stern. His faithful assistant Robin began talking about a plane that had crashed into the World Trade Center. I thought it was some small little plane that got majorly lost, and wham. I wasn't even sure it was real, though it would be an odd thing for Stern to joke about, seeing as he prefers to talk about lesbians and such.

Then, at some fateful moment, I discovered sports radio, and I was hooked. This ended my journey to the dark side. Sports radio is, for lack of a better word, inane. Most of sports radio goes like "Should Ron Artest be banned from the game for fighting a fan? Call in. Give us your opinion". Day after day, sports radio is really sports commentary, and the closest analogy is political radio where opinions are spewed all the time.

However, sports radio is far more listenable, at least, if you listen to the right guy. Most of the times, the guy doing it (and it's almost always a guy_ is just as likely to be critical of the local sports team. Political radio, on the other hand, is always about spewing venom at the opposite side. Conservative radio is especially this way. Rather than talk intelligently about the topics, it's always criticizing Democrats (and to be fair, Al Franken does the same, but he sounds at least moderately reasonable).

In sports radio, people can often respect another person's opinion. One person may love the Redskins while the next person hates them or at the very least, is indifferent. This is why it's much easier to listen to sports radio.

My real topic is something I heard on the radio today. Roy Williams was the long suffering coach at Kansas. Two years ago, he left the Kansas faithful to go back to the University of North Carolina, where he server as assistant to the god of Carolina coaching, Dean Smith. Do I have to mention that Williams coaches college basketball? Two years at UNC, and Roy Williams finally wins the national championship beating an Illinois team that was lucky to be there. Three minutes and more than 15 points down, and Illinois claws its way back to victory over Arizona and Salim Stoudamire, one of the more accurate three point shooter in the country.

Kansas fan must have hated Williams when he left, and even more so, when he won the championship for UNC, while the replacement Bill Self, himself formerly the coach of Illinois (a bit incestuous these coaching moves), and his team lost in the second round.

Turns out that Kansas is guilty of giving money to some players, and one of the violation was under Williams' watch. Accusations were being made about how "clean" a program Williams did or did not run. His reputation is that of a fairly squeaky clean coach.

Now, what does it mean to be clean? Does it mean that you avoid providing drugs or steroids for your players? No. It's all about money. The NCAA has very strict rules on what money you can give to a player. Basically, the rule is, you can't give a player anything. Nor $100, not even $10. One kid was planning to come to the University of Maryland to play. He was considered a good player. His brothers played at Maryland. He was from Maryland.

One day, an assistant coach that was trying to recruit the kid hears the kid complain about wanting an Xbox. Parents say no. Assistant coach, wanting an in, gives the kid some money to buy the game. Now how was he going to explain that one to his parents. Well, the NCAA catches wind of this, and may slap sanctions on Maryland. Friedgen, the head coach, has to stop recruiting the kid, and basically fire the assistant coach, to prevent the NCAA from investigations from going onward.

Why must colleges be clean? If colleges were ever allowed to give money to entice players, then it would become one huge bidding war. Faculty would surely mutiny as they wonder where the priorities of the university are that would pay these student athletes so much money. Instead, this money goes primarily to the coach. Often, the highest paid state employee of many states is the head coach. A good head coach can command two million dollars in salary a year, much like Bob Stoops or Nick Saban does.

To me, it's funny when programs are considered dirty because of the miniscule amount of money that's often involved. Occasionally, you have a whopper of a sum, like in the Michigan scandal with the Fab Five, including future NBA players, Juwan Howard, Chris Webber, and Jalen Rose, where players, especially Webber, were accused of taking upwards of several hundred thousand dollars from a Michigan booster, all the while claiming how little money they had to feed themselves, presumably to throw off the scent. All this money didn't help Webber count how many timeouts his team had (ah, and that relates to Dean Smith's last national championship win as UNC coach).

I don't have a particular strong opinion about players being paid. I believe they shouldn't be paid, but mostly because I don't like seeinng the university waste its resources in such a non-academic way. I do believe players should be given scholarships for at least 6 years, so that they have a chance of completing their degree after their college career is over. I understand many don't even care about education, nor are they qualified to be students, but for the few who aren't good enough to graduate in four years, nor good enough to become pro or semi-pro, the university owes them some attempt at an education.

Frankly, I'd just as soon see college sports splinter away from universities, and run much like baseball. Basketball and football should have minor leagues of sorts. I'd even like to see the minor league teams separate from the major league, so that there isn't necessarily a farm system. I understand this may not produce well-educated people, being devoted completely to sports, but this is the sad reality of big time college sports. They want players to win, not necessarily to learn. It's not that they don't want smart, good players, it's just that way too many athletes give up their studies (not that they cared for them that much) to play sports full time (whiich they love).

The purity of college sports is pretty much a sham, and yet, so many college students love college sports. I like watching them too, even as I don't particularly care for them in principle. The networks are good at portraying the myth of college athletes. It's not exactly a myth. Division 3 players, and players from leagues like the Patriot League (Feinstein's favorite) and the Ivy League rarely have players that turn pro. Even so, there's some allure to going Ivy League sports, so that the Ivy League can get some talent that might not head to, say, the Patriot League.

Even more pure are intramural sports, played by your average college student who isn't that good. I don't mind sports at that level. The point, in any case, is to criticize what is called "dirty" in college recruiting, even if I believe the principle of why colleges ought to strive for being "clean". Consider it a necessary evil that prevents, IMO, worse evils from occurring.