Q:What’s the difference between organized crime and big time college athletics?
A: Organized crime has rules.
Q: How do you make level playing fields?
A: Make them all crooked.
I don’t know why or how — heck, I just learned how to use our toaster — but about twice a day CBS Sports dings my cell phone to provide me a laugh:
An “expert analyst’s” view on the coming college football season, replete with rankings, transfer portal signings, grad-school loophole additions and big signings — “big” now often meaning in exchange for expensive new sports cars dangled as NIL bribes for society’s long-term benefits, even if none can exist.
It’s impossible to take any of this news seriously beyond the fact that it’s in CBS’s best interests to bang the drums for what “college” sports have become as CBS remains heavily invested in them even as they mimic organized crime legalized by a court system unwilling or unable to serve humanity’s best interests beyond quick, fleeting cash and garish goods.
In the NCAA’s $2.8 billion settlement to pay college athletes above and far beyond full-ride scholarships and previous cash perks, reality is underscored by the absence of any documented language that includes academics — useful, life-enriching learning.
Thus, the ostensible, charter-prescribed reasons American colleges exist and have for decades and even centuries have been sacrificed to the legal system’s short-sighted decision to grant total anarchy even to preexisting crooked athletic programs.
And so the academic and financial fraud on behalf of colleges winning football and basketball games, selling tickets — including the mandatory purchase of designed-for-bowl-bids mismatches — and sustaining or improving the value to networks is now a given, mandatory in order to fairly compete against the other frauds.
There’s no need for the sanctioned fraud to appear in legal documents as it would have been a waste of ink and paper and violated Go Green restrictions in order to keep the campus free from grime as opposed to crime.
It’s a crime known to mob bosses and district attorneys as racketeering — for using their “primary business” to serve as a false front, same as Div. I universities.
That CBS Sports app last week flashed the news that Georgia’s football team is ranked No. 1 despite the “distractions” suffered by head coach Kirby Smart. Smart, paid $13 million a year plus perks, has, over the last two seasons, been responsible for the presence of full-ride players who have totaled 24 reckless driving charges, including a fatality, but have suffered nothing more than a hot new NIL or NFL-signing car.
Kirby and Georgia last week finally jettisoned WR Rara Thomas after his second felony arrest for domestic abuse, the second including a charge of “cruelty to a child.”
In Colorado, head coach Deion Sanders confirmed what most everyone knew — or didn’t want to know — except the bright, hard-hitting journalists from CBS’s “60 Minutes,” who twice last year presented full-length fawning profiles of Sanders as he declared himself in direct touch with God and a man of only the most altruistic actions, including endless boasting within semi-literate speeches.
Did “60 Minutes” look into Coach Prime’s recent past, including his founding of a scam charter school for promising young black athletes that he modestly named Prime Academy, before leaving the kids, their guardians, faculty and creditors to contact God for a refund?
Most everyone who knew anything about Sanders knew he was a magic elixir peddler. How did “60 Minutes” miss it unless it took a dive, choosing to ignore it?
The two “60 Minutes” pieces were pure, ignore-the-truth pandering, the latest in a series from selectively gutless mass media in boosting Sanders for no legitimate reason.
Now an investigative report from Athlon Sports has revealed more of the unsurprising:
Under Sanders, Colorado’s football team reportedly is thick in internecine violence, large and contested gambling debts, wads of cash and guns. The scene, according to a former player, is “Like real-life Grand Theft Auto.”
No doubt a renowned national prime-time news program that twice enabled and boosted Coach Prime with bogus profiles would be eager to make good on that, to express its regret for being an eager party to flim-flammer.
No doubt, but no chance.
No equality when it comes to punishment for racism
Justice now always seems a matter of depends, as in “depends on who, why, when and where.”
WFAN overnight man Keith McPherson recently mocked a caller for his Spanish accent. The episode was not the least bit amusing or clever as McPherson, a black man, engaged in loud, cheap and unfiltered bigotry.
The next caller dropped what he was calling about to chide McPherson for his unwarranted disrespect for that previous caller’s heritage, to which McPherson, in so many similar words, defiantly responded: “Tough! It’s my show; I’ll say what I want!”
What has WFAN done about this? So far, nothing. McPherson, unlike ESPN’s Doug Adler and longtime NBA Kings broadcast voice Grant Napear, who were fired for imaginary on-air racism, carries on.
You see, as a matter of equality, it all depends.
Ahh, modern media. Charles Barkley’s retirement Farewell Tour was even shorter than Mike Francesa’s soulful first departure as he’ll now be back on TNT. They are similar phonies.
Barkley, you’ll recall, is an admitted compulsive gambler/loser who ran up a huge Vegas casino debt from which he needed a bailout as the law was closing in. He soon appeared as himself, a famous paid spokesperson, in TV ads to encourage young men to gamble on sports. What a champ.
Then there was his arrest for falling in sudden love with a hooker in the back of a van.
How many common folk could survive even one of the two episodes yet remain in high public esteem and demand?
But the media choose to not report such truths, only that everyone loves and admires Sir Charles.
Pop quiz: Which team can actually play ball?
Name one MLB team this season that is smartly managed, well-prepared and fundamentally proficient. Take your time.
I came up with none. You?
Now, how many MLB teams do you regard as inferior — highly beatable — for how they’re managed, how they play and are prepared to play?
I came up with 14. You?
The defending world champion Rangers are 54-61.
These days, if you face eight or more pitches before you fly out, TV and radio voices qualify it as “a good at-bat,” as if you’ve helped exhaust the starter or tire a “high-leverage or low-leverage” (ugh!) reliever. (“Hey, what do you expect? I’m just a low-leverage guy!”)
But the starter’s going to be pulled after six, anyway, and most relievers are going to be allowed to pitch only one inning. Thus it’s not a good at-bat, it’s just an out.
Don’t know why so many have mocked NBC’s decision to assign rap sheet rapper Snoop Dogg as a host of its Olympics. The ratings at Rikers Island are through the roof of the tallest guard tower!
