March 25, 2016
Source: Bigstock
It’s time we departed from this pious narrative about teaching, college, education, or whatever other “higher learning.” Let’s stop fanning palm fronds at teachers and just acknowledge that public school and college are basically scams. As a survivor of the public school system, I can remember realizing at a very early age that most of my teachers didn”t seem particularly passionate about their jobs. My college professors were mostly dullard faux intellectuals. And my law professors were so unbelievably incompetent at conveying information that they should actually be allowed to keep their jobs, if only out of pity. Academia is the smart-person version of shopping-cart-pusher jobs”let’s let them keep writing their little scholarly journals that nobody reads anyway.
When I say that NCAA athletes should make more than teachers, all I”m saying is that when it’s national news that you missed football practice, you should be doing okay financially”you should at least drive a nicer car than I do. New York Times business columnist Joe Nocera and a few others have outlined elaborate schemes for how we should pay players, which involve rules and salary caps and other nonsense. I say we just start paying players, whether they like it or not. We could set up black-market bounties, which could enable boosters and fans to put up cash, which would then be given to the athlete upon graduation”after all, they wouldn”t be receiving any compensation while in school. People throw major dough at these college sports programs, and my guess is that boosters would opt into some more nefarious donation methods if it got their favorite team better high school recruits. This sort of thing is probably already going on, and I”m sure athletes are finding creative ways to get theirs, but let’s stop feigning outrage when we find out that USC gave Reggie Bush a nice free apartment or something.
So when you”re filling out your March Madness bracket this year, think of the careers most of these players will move on to. And ask yourself who worked harder to get where they are, the math teacher who gets summers off and shows kids how to do subtraction with jelly beans, or the ex”college shooting guard with the blown-out ACL who’s now pushing a broom for a living. But hey, he always has that free sociology degree to fall back on.
