El Poyo Loco
Akrassikauda = Black Scorpion
Now, this is Walter Byers. Walter was the first executive director of the NCAA. In 1951, he laid out the plan which helped the NCAA rise to prominence.
Walters Byers
What does the NCAA have to do with this?
The NCAA is where the NFL gets its players, fittingly, known as a farm system, but it appears startlingly similar to an auction. In his 1995 memoir, Walter looked back on his creation, lamenting that the NCAA was:
Firmly committed to the neo-plantation belief that the enormous proceeds from games belong to the overseers (the administrators) and supervisors (coaches). The plantation workers performing in the arena may receive only those benefits authorized by the overseers.
As Byers himself recognizes, the NCAA essentially replaced the term “Jim Crow” with “student-athlete,” traded in the hoods for business suits and pom-poms, and continued to exploit black bodies for elite (.01%) gain.
To further support this assertion, in 2014, journalist Brando Stakey concluded that:
The Fifteenth Amendment prevented Southern states from passing laws explicitly disenfranchising blacks. Unencumbered by such restraints — the Constitution affords no special protection to “student athletes” — the NCAA implemented a far cleaner solution to the same problem. The NCAA simply denies college athletes a voice in rule-making, thereby leaving them, like blacks, without a role in the making and enforcement of rules. Voiceless, both groups had the value of their labor fleeced.
Not only does the NCAA prevent student-athletes from making money from their likenesses during their tenure at the schools, but they also own the rights in perpetuity and continue to profit from the players long after they leave.
This is not some ancient history either. The NCAA is actively fighting lawsuits that would compel schools to pay their football players, and recently argued in court that they cannot pay athletes because the schools do not make any money from the sports programs.
Well, of course, they don’t. The schools are not-for-profits — they are supposed to have a zero balance. The NCAA also argued that paying athletes would mean fewer scholarships as if scholarships are tied to economic income from schools. Never have scholarships been linked to the revenue generated by sports teams. We thought the schools were there to teach, not make money, seems the NCAA feels otherwise.
Just recently, the NCAA boasted about a program called the College Football Playoff fund, where they finally began helping the players’ parents get to playoff games to support their kids. Yes, seriously, they just now thought of helping poor parents be able to help their students.
This stuff all sounds crazy to us, too. We grew up in the same America you did. But the bottom line is that the American values we were taught in the Marine Corps were to fight for the exercising of Constitutional Rights, even if that means to be willing to die so those in the land of the free can stand up by kneeling down.
And our government, and any other institution that owes its existence to we, the people, should be held accountable for its actions, especially when those actions end up negatively impacting our communities and lives.
Which brings us back to Kaepernick and our call for our fellow veterans, friends, and supporters to join us in a Veterans Stand with the NFL Ban. It does not have to be some big attention getting fanfare, just an ethical one. It has long been said that the NFL, and its shameless exploitation of people that hints at servitude or really, slavery, will have its day of reckoning.
Maybe that day has come. You know, we would rather spend the day with our daughters anyway. We’ll never get that day back, and time with our loved ones is much more important.
Whether it is marginalizing Colin Kaepernick, offensive theme song performers, masking the harm inflicted on players, the gross faux patriotism, tax evasion, or an overtly corrupt recruitment system, we just…. We just can’t support this…
The NFL is unpatriotic and racist after all. Take a stand and ban the NFL until its values align with what we serve for….
By: Michael Wood Jr.; Anthony Diggs
Walters Byers
What does the NCAA have to do with this?
The NCAA is where the NFL gets its players, fittingly, known as a farm system, but it appears startlingly similar to an auction. In his 1995 memoir, Walter looked back on his creation, lamenting that the NCAA was:
Firmly committed to the neo-plantation belief that the enormous proceeds from games belong to the overseers (the administrators) and supervisors (coaches). The plantation workers performing in the arena may receive only those benefits authorized by the overseers.
As Byers himself recognizes, the NCAA essentially replaced the term “Jim Crow” with “student-athlete,” traded in the hoods for business suits and pom-poms, and continued to exploit black bodies for elite (.01%) gain.
To further support this assertion, in 2014, journalist Brando Stakey concluded that:
The Fifteenth Amendment prevented Southern states from passing laws explicitly disenfranchising blacks. Unencumbered by such restraints — the Constitution affords no special protection to “student athletes” — the NCAA implemented a far cleaner solution to the same problem. The NCAA simply denies college athletes a voice in rule-making, thereby leaving them, like blacks, without a role in the making and enforcement of rules. Voiceless, both groups had the value of their labor fleeced.
Not only does the NCAA prevent student-athletes from making money from their likenesses during their tenure at the schools, but they also own the rights in perpetuity and continue to profit from the players long after they leave.
This is not some ancient history either. The NCAA is actively fighting lawsuits that would compel schools to pay their football players, and recently argued in court that they cannot pay athletes because the schools do not make any money from the sports programs.
Well, of course, they don’t. The schools are not-for-profits — they are supposed to have a zero balance. The NCAA also argued that paying athletes would mean fewer scholarships as if scholarships are tied to economic income from schools. Never have scholarships been linked to the revenue generated by sports teams. We thought the schools were there to teach, not make money, seems the NCAA feels otherwise.
Just recently, the NCAA boasted about a program called the College Football Playoff fund, where they finally began helping the players’ parents get to playoff games to support their kids. Yes, seriously, they just now thought of helping poor parents be able to help their students.
This stuff all sounds crazy to us, too. We grew up in the same America you did. But the bottom line is that the American values we were taught in the Marine Corps were to fight for the exercising of Constitutional Rights, even if that means to be willing to die so those in the land of the free can stand up by kneeling down.
And our government, and any other institution that owes its existence to we, the people, should be held accountable for its actions, especially when those actions end up negatively impacting our communities and lives.
Which brings us back to Kaepernick and our call for our fellow veterans, friends, and supporters to join us in a Veterans Stand with the NFL Ban. It does not have to be some big attention getting fanfare, just an ethical one. It has long been said that the NFL, and its shameless exploitation of people that hints at servitude or really, slavery, will have its day of reckoning.
Maybe that day has come. You know, we would rather spend the day with our daughters anyway. We’ll never get that day back, and time with our loved ones is much more important.
Whether it is marginalizing Colin Kaepernick, offensive theme song performers, masking the harm inflicted on players, the gross faux patriotism, tax evasion, or an overtly corrupt recruitment system, we just…. We just can’t support this…
The NFL is unpatriotic and racist after all. Take a stand and ban the NFL until its values align with what we serve for….
By: Michael Wood Jr.; Anthony Diggs
