The Blue Ho Group
A friend and I once found a dude we knew passed out drunk on a sidewalk at 3 in the morning. We didn't particularly like or dislike him, he wasn't a friend of ours, he was just someone who sometimes ran in circles we did. If he had been spotted by the police, he would've been arrested and his name would've shown up in the local paper's police blotter for public intox; if the wrong person or people found him, he could've had his very expensive watch lifted from his wrist. We didn't have to think about it - we did what was right. We picked him up, called him a cab, and paid the cabdriver in advance.
Not only did he never thank us, but months later I found out from a mutual acquaintance that he had told several people that he was not in fact all that drunk, that we mocked him and insulted him, that we accused him of having a serious drinking problem, and that we forced him to take a cab when he was perfectly fine to walk.
I share that story to make these points: I. People really ain't shyt; II. People often reinterpret facts and events so that the narrative reinforces their own delusions; III. People hate to feel shamed in front of others, and will often attack or smear those who have witnessed them in a low moment; IV: A lot of people cling to whatever version of the truth allows them to maintain a feeling of self-respect and superiority. All 4 of those notions about people are relevant to the next handful of episodes.
While remembering this story, I couldn't help but think about some of my favorite college sports stories of recent past. At Joe Paterno's memorial, Phil Knight delivered a eulogy that turned into an aggressive editorial: "If there's a villain in this tragedy. It lies in that investigation, not in Joe Paterno's response to it." He was referring to an investigation conducted by the Board of Trustees, and a decision made based in part on grand jury testimony. No matter - the crowd erupted in applause; they were there to celebrate the myth of a man who had long ago been transformed into a sort of pagan idol. The lunacy of a disgraced football coach being celebrated as a martyr, by a crowd of loyalists, exhorted by a gazillionaire shoe maven seemed lost on many.
A week before Paterno's memorial, BCS Director Bill Hancock went on radio to downplay the business side of college football, and to reiterate the tired mantra that even big time college athletes are students first. Having intimate knowledge of college admissions and having been closely associated with Division 1 athletics, I know there only two types of people who repeat this mantra: those who don't know any better, and those who don't want people to know any better. Around the same time, Charlie Weis blasted departing player Brock Berglund in a press release, citing the monetary worth of his scholarship to suggest he hadn't earned it; the player responded that he'd missed an important team meeting because his lawyer advised him to do so, as setting foot on campus might've compromised his future eligibility at another school. The entire episode was precipitated by one of Weis' former recruits following him to Kansas, to supplant Berglund. It sounded an awful lot like NFL free agency dressed up as amateur student athletics.
The coaches and administrators at universities that have big time D-1 teams understand the bulk of society is so far removed from reality we prefer fantastic storylines to truth, crude caricatures of good and bad in place of complexity, and magical thinking rather than a rational approach to interpreting what's happening on and off the field.
I remember chillin' with a female I was knocking down and watching a movie that was "inspired by true events." It was a film about the supernatural, a film about demons and haunting and death. It was a film that couldn't possibly have any basis in true events. We researched it and found that "inspired by true events" is a new Hollywood gimmick, a tag-line meant to lend an air of authenticity to a movie, to reel in unsuspecting viewers. What "inspired by true events" means to those who attach the phrase to recent films is that the story has some abstract basis in reality, but it's a complete work of fiction.
Our politics, our television shows, and our sports coverage have all veered sharply into the "inspired by true events realm." There's a dearth of meaning in the words we employ. Politicians, coaches, athletes, and reality tv stars speak openly and similarly about their personal brands. Media demagogues like Bob Costas say nothing about the hypocrisy of the NCAA, the outright criminal behavior of sports franchise owners, or the complicity of television networks in the collapse of journalistic ethics. Instead they sermonize about touchdown celebrations, as if the fate of human decency rests on the next goofy dance routine a wide receiver performs in the end zone. We see one thing during the game, and ESPN reports another thing, something more in line with whatever soap opera narrative it favors at the moment.
Two Novembers ago I.V., NYC_Rebel, Rick, and I spent part of a podcast debating Yale's quarterback's decision to skip his Rhodes Scholarship finalist interview to play in the completely irrelevant to just about every college football fan esteemed Harvard-Yale game. In January we found out Patrick Witt faced no such grand ethical quandary, but the Rhodes Committee had dropped its consideration of his application when they learned he'd been accused of sexual assault.
That means either Witt or Yale (likely both) purposely misled the media and fans about circumstances in order to craft a favorable and outrageously indecent narrative. We were played for fools by those playing in and promoting the game. It also means Yale started a quarterback who was facing a sexual assault charge. If you're surprised this sort of thing could happen at an Ivy where - wink, wink - no athletic scholarships are offered - you've been made a fool of again.
Militant ignorance allows corruption within college sports to thrive. It's not just that fanbases and general observers have been tricked, it's that many of us want to be tricked. We enjoy the sleight of hand, the rabbit out the hat, the playing card plucked from behind the ear. We want a magic show. And as with magic, the covering up of fraudulent and criminal activities in college sports depends on the indulgence and complicity of the audience. We want our coaches to be heroes, our unpaid semi-pro players to be students, our universities to represent values that the institution itself doesn't adhere to.
I don't have a particularly fascinating or funny story for this episode. It's pretty cut-and-dry: the university I've been talking about ran what was essentially an escort service. I'm being as truthful as I can in these stories, so I'll be up front in saying I can't quite remember if this was a service for football and basketball players or exclusively for one of those groups. I do remember one basketball player (who ended up in the NBA and is quite famous) jokingly referring to it as "The Blue Ho Group." The official name had something to do with a color, like Ladies of Red or some shyt. It was a group of pretty chicks who would tour big time recruits around campus in business suits; later they'd fukk them. This is not all that uncommon, it turns out. Other people involved in D-1 sports I've spoken to since claim there are services like this on plenty of campuses. I think Colorado got exposed for one of their recruiters being tied to an escort service. I remember chuckling and telling someone I knew that I'd known about a similar service at this school I'd been at, and they were shocked. For some reason people don't grasp that big time programs have covered up sex scandals for years - that the number of women who have been sexually assaulted and then bullied into silence is astronomical. That those in charge foster a culture of general entitlement and sexual assault by letting players get away with criminal behavior, by feeding them whores before they officially commit, by setting up a system of tutors, professors, and classes that allow players to graduate often without doing a lick of schoolwork. That institutions commit fraud, cover up major crimes, facilitate sex for the players, and make millions upon millions of dollars in the process.
my roommate played free safety, nikka was a lone dog, pledged by himself. I KNOW they broke the stick over that nikka's head. Between all them ass whoppins and concussions on the field he would pause n stutter in between sentences, even reciting rap lyrics. Crazy thing is that fool wanted to be a police officer if he didn't go pro, one of the grimiest cats I done ever met 
? I'm just having fun with y'all.
