NCAA slaves revolt

St. Bonaventure U. has a Division 1 basketball team and they are part of the Atlantic 10 Conference. Turns out they had been using an academically ineligible player for a number of games so they were forced to forfeit some wins. The A-10 also punished them by excluding them from the post season tournaments. Effectively ending their season. Problem was they had two regular season games left. What did the players do? They decided to not play the two games and head off to an early spring break. This angered the A-10 because of the contractual obligations and the effect on the 2 teams who will miss that game. How dare they screw with he basketball gravy train!

I think quitting was lame but I cant help but laugh at how the players stuck it to the schools. After all they are “amateurs”, they are not under contract so you cant make them play. Sucks for the school cause now they have to make up for TV and other contract obligations. (Ex. gate receipts for the missed Umass game.)

No, no, no, no, no, these guys are not slaves. These guys have it _better_ than the average student. The average student has one choice...be an average student. A scholarship athlete has two choices...forego athletics and be an average student or accept an athletic scholarship. I hate it when people act as though these guys have it so bad.

Now as far as whether they should get paid or not...well that is a whole other topic for discussion. But my point is that if the current system is unfair to the players it is unfair for them _only_ relative to the school, not to the other students. For the other students, the current system is unfair relative to both the players and the school.

I call them slaves cause the NCAA puts restrictions on what they can do and prevent them from making money (scholarship or not). At the same time the schools can rake in the cash based on there play. They pretend to care about the student athlete, and education but really they just care about winning. If you get hurt or are no longer useful, they cast you aside like a Hans Blix report.