Hello Jason, Scoop (this email is being sent to both),
Thank you for your take on the recent O’Neal comments. Both of you make very good points. I think at the heart of both of your articles (and at the heart of most everything these days it seems) it does come down to money.
The simple fact is that colleges need to start compensating or doing something more for their players. Scholarships and gear and and and is nice, but it just is not money- like the schools are making a ton of on the backs of these young athletes.
David Stern is in the unfortunate position of having to be pushing what is, right now, a type of slave labor situation for those students who never plan on going to class, let alone graduating (it makes their scholarship as useful and as worthwhile as the toilet paper I used this morning).
The simple reality is the economics and the marketing angles and the shitload of cash involved could have never been foreseen in Wilt’s day or even in Bird’s day for that matter. They need to acknowledge this fact publicly and re-examine the whole fucking thing because, like Jason hints at, the system is cracking (the product is suffering generally- though that shit from TMac this year where he put in 14 in 40seconds was one of the craziest things I have ever seen and, oh yea, DWade’s block of Amare and subsequent 60 foot shot wasn’t too shabby either) but forced labor is not the solution by any means. That is the lazy way out of this very complex, very expensive problem.
Thanks again for your great contributions on this topic- fascinating.
Regards,
George
Thank you for your take on the recent O’Neal comments. Both of you make very good points. I think at the heart of both of your articles (and at the heart of most everything these days it seems) it does come down to money.
The simple fact is that colleges need to start compensating or doing something more for their players. Scholarships and gear and and and is nice, but it just is not money- like the schools are making a ton of on the backs of these young athletes.
David Stern is in the unfortunate position of having to be pushing what is, right now, a type of slave labor situation for those students who never plan on going to class, let alone graduating (it makes their scholarship as useful and as worthwhile as the toilet paper I used this morning).
The simple reality is the economics and the marketing angles and the shitload of cash involved could have never been foreseen in Wilt’s day or even in Bird’s day for that matter. They need to acknowledge this fact publicly and re-examine the whole fucking thing because, like Jason hints at, the system is cracking (the product is suffering generally- though that shit from TMac this year where he put in 14 in 40seconds was one of the craziest things I have ever seen and, oh yea, DWade’s block of Amare and subsequent 60 foot shot wasn’t too shabby either) but forced labor is not the solution by any means. That is the lazy way out of this very complex, very expensive problem.
Thanks again for your great contributions on this topic- fascinating.
Regards,
George
