Y'all really need to stop expending energy against brick walls.
People always tell on themselves in this discussion by the basic arguments they
don't pursue, and where their indignation
isn't directed. One student in my class was apoplectic because she heard from someone else the football players were getting meals from a steak house once a week for "free." Add that onto the scooters they get to ride around campus, and
not only should they not be paid, maybe they owe the school some money back! Another student who had done better at researching the issue, and was generally more thoughtful, pointed out the football coach - who makes 5 million a year - had just hired his son-in-law to work for the football program, at a six figure salary, although the guy had no previous football experience whatsoever. He wondered what was the more egregious expense: meals to feed the talent, or over $100 thousand a year for multiple years paid to a man with no worth to the University? She simply doubled down on her argument, which basically boiled down to "people in authority shouldn't be scrutinized." It's a common line of thought among lemmings and dummies.
The logic behind all of the contempt for players and the indifference to the people actually running the grift has plenty to do with race and conditioned bias, and some to do with proximity and visibility. Reminds me of a time I had to check my lady, actually. I helped a local politician some with his campaign, and with raising money for a charity for which he was a board member. He's a real estate agent, and his office upgrades his iphone on their dime, so when he got his 7, he offered me his barely used 6+ as a token of his appreciation for my friendship and assistance. When my lady found out, instead of being happy for me (she hated my android phone and was harassing me to get an iphone) or seeing why he gave me this phone, she immediately got sour that she was stuck with an iphone4. "I wish
I had a friend who would just give
me a phone."
So I politely cursed her the fukk out, and broke down the self-serving, emotional rationalizing she was trapped in.
I. She never had a chance at getting that phone because she hadn't helped a friend with his political campaign, nor had she been the feature speaker at an event that raised $10,000 for a homeless shelter. I was a direct contributor to his personal advancements; she was just another person, like every other person in town.
II. That phone illustrates the difference between cost and value. In a vacuum, the phone is worth plenty. To a man who doesn't pay for his phone, and gets automatic upgrades without cost, the phone has a different value entirely. It was sitting in his desk, gathering dust. Its real value was in serving as a very convenient though inadequate payment for services rendered. If he wasn't a friend, and if I didn't want to write and deliver a talk to raise money for the homeless shelter, I would've laughed in his face if he tried to compensate me via his old company-purchased cell phone.
III. Her proximity to me made her reaction more emotional. Much like a child who sees her cousin has 3 new toys when she is stuck playing with 1 toy, all she can see it what she doesn't have and how it's just not fair. Context ceases to matter. It's the lowest form of pocket-watching. You're my age, in similar circumstance... you shouldn't have anything I don't get to have. It's a simpleton's mindset, an envy driven by a warped and ever-changing personal view of what other people and ourselves "deserve."
Similarly, the fan and the student feel on equal footing with the player. In fact, most feel a sense of superiority to the brute who they see as intellectually deficient (
they don't deserve money because they would spend it on stupid things,
they don't take education seriously, etc), lazy, and spoiled. To see them get money for their contributions to the University would throw off that feeling of equal footing and superiority. So even a weekly steak - and best believe the meals are a pittance in the context of the team's budget, and meant to help not just with team morale but also to make weight goals - or a goofy little scooter seem a bigger waste of money than the coach having access to a private helicopter and private car paid for with University money when he doesn't need the one and can easily afford the other on his own. Because these lemmings are conditioned to believe the authority figure has
earned all his spoils - otherwise, he wouldn't be an authority figure.
Their thinking is so pre-conditioned that the most practical notions are alien to them. It's the kind of thinking vultures and grifters thrive on. It's the kind of thinking that accepts the grifter's perspective at face value. The kind of thinking that made the late night infomercial lucrative.
Normally this advanced microfiber brow-cooler is worth $325; for the next hour we'll be selling it for 3 payments of $19.99! Next thing you know, a bunch of simpletons have paid $60 for a headband it cost .79 to manufacture in a foreign country, because they couldn't figure out the most basic tenet of capitalism: if someone is consistently selling a product at 400% loss, that person would not be able to afford a commercial, nor would that person have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of.
So the dummies keep believing
Universities are losing money because of football! That's so weird, man! They keep
losing all this money but they keep running these programs and expanding these stadiums.
They are going fukking bankrupt but they keep paying coaches multi-million, long term guaranteed contracts.
The school is in financial peril, but the strength coach makes $500,000 a year. Can you even believe it?!
Forget having direct, inside knowledge on how this all works, which I do. Detailed explanations of the imaginary worth of a football scholarship are readily available. Detailed explanations of how these institutions hide profits, and create positions and benefits to enrich their own so it looks like all the money is "spent" are easy enough to find if you put the effort in. Reports of middling teams paying tens of millions to their conference so they can jump ship to another conference where the revenue sharing will be more lucrative are out there is you want to use your brain and understand what's actually happening.
But the lemming leans on simple, nonsensical explanations that cater to his feelings of resentment and entitlement, as well as the laziness and disposability of the people who serve as fuel for the economic engine of these institutions, and oftentimes the entire local region, from restaurants and bars to hotels and can services, to the real estate market, where people purchase condos and apartments specifically for football weekends. Business is booming, staffs and facilities are expanding, salaries are increasing at an obscene rate relative to other university employees who actually do things for... you know... students. But the only people receiving scrutiny and scorn are the ones seeing no taste of the bounty. Because the schools are losing money, you see. They just keep doing this crazy thing that's losing them money, because they're so crazy. The state pays them exorbitant salaries to lose and lose and lose money, but we can't possibly eliminate the cause of this loss, because what would we do without the thing that loses all the money?
The lemming also believes with all his heart that paying players a meager stipend (and if they ever do pay these athletes, believe me, it'll still be a joke of a fraction of what they generate) would
ruin this amateur sport! The entire system would crumble! How would all these people collectively making billions figure out to keep producing the product??? All of the good players would go to one school and only 3 schools would ever win and the fans would be oh so sad about it all and then the whole sport might just go away and what would we do then? Because there's no way that television execs, school administrators, corporate sponsors, and the assortment of movers and shakers who fatten their pockets every year would figure out a way to keep themselves in the money.
No, of course not. They'd just throw up their hands and say "this shyt got too complex, man. I quit!"
anybody who says that should be smacked
