by Greg Edwards
If any of you out there are attending college with aspirations of becoming a Sports Agent, you might want to take a long hard look at your career choice considering the last few days developments. Nick Saban has started a ball rolling that others have been playing with recently as well. Nick has had it up to his crimson tied neck with runners, agents, and their entire ilk. And he is willing to alienate the NFL from NCAA football to get rid of them. Ken Howlett over at A Sea Of Blue, wrote a couple of days ago that Saban was preaching to the choir. Well, the choir is listening, along with a whole group of people that want this gray area removed from college athletics once and for all. The only problem with Saban’s ideas is that there is this huge group of people out there that do not want the problem to go away.
The NCAA makes bold statements and starts inquiries into activities at schools because someone is doing their best “Deep Throat” impersonation. The problem with that lies in the flawed reasoning that one person can make a difference in this situation. I am as big an idealist as anyone else, and I believe that in this world, there are situations where one man can make a difference. But there is no one man powerful enough to take on the kinds of dollars we are talking about here. You take a kid, ANY kid, who has never had a dime in his life ( or hers) and someone starts flashing a few thousand, or even a few hundred dollars their way and they are going to look at it. And make no mistake, this is not a race issue, or even a urban vs. rural issue.
I am reminded of the scene in “Blue Chips” where Ricky Roe’s father makes it clear to the recruiting coach that he needs a new tractor to run his farm. He then makes it very clear that he controls where his son is going to attend college. Don’t think this is all that far fetched folks. The parents and “uncles” of these kids are very real threats to the idea of having amateur collegiate athletics in this country. Someone has to “Show The Money” to these people and they want it to flow freely in their direction. It sickens me to know that there are parents out there like Patrick Patterson’s who want nothing as much as they want their son to get a college education and be successful in life, and are willing to make him do things the right way, and then we have others out there who are looking for jobs, houses, bank accounts, and anything else they can get their hands on. Until we address the greed that is at the heart of this matter, the NCAA can stomp, scream, punish, admonish, or do anything else it likes, but they will not stop the problem. In this situation, greed is not good.
I normally have a list of answers for these kinds of problems, I show how the problem can be resolved through a series of changes to the existing by-laws, or through a change in the recruiting process, etc. and voila’ we have things under control. But this situation is going to require a lot more than that. And the reforms are going to have to happen from top to bottom and they will involve the NCAA, parents, the kids, the Pros, the entire shooting match. And that my friends, is never going to happen.
Short of a nuclear meltdown, the system has too much cash flowing to too many people who don’t want to see it fixed. There are others out there who are calling for reform, coaches, sportswriters, even a few players and parents. But make no mistake, for every one who wants to see the problem fixed, there are 10 out there with their hand out. It is a sad commentary on the world of college athletics that the stench reaches as high as it does.
I love my Cats, and I hope and pray that they are doing things right in Lexington. God knows that I have loved everything that Coach Calipari has accomplished so far. But we have to have a complete and thorough overhaul of the entire system, and get the people that do not need to be in it out. Get rid of the NBA’s rules that prevent kids from going right out of high school. It is only a small part of the problem, but it does give us a start. And in this case one step in that direction is all we can hope for, and pray that it leads to others. If we are going to clean house in college athletics, let’s start it somewhere that the “experts” would never suspect it.
Let’s work to make UK an “agent free” zone. If we find “runners” we nail them. We find athletes participating in this kind of behavior, we toss them. We can have clean programs in college, if everyone wants it. Unfortunately, David Stern and the NBAPA wants no part of helping out, and neither does the NFL or it’s players assoc. either. We cannot fight everyone everywhere, but we can fight the problem here at home. And then maybe, just maybe someone will try somewhere else.
I know the chances of Joker or Cal reading this are somewhere between slim and none, but maybe they have an epiphany of their own. Let’s have another first here at UK. Let’s become the first school that stops this behavior, and let’s send a message to the rest of the schools and administrators out there that we don’t want it to happen at UK now or ever again. Sound like something from Fantasy Island? Probably. But we specialize in doing things that other schools can’t here at UK.
Let’s try for one more.
Greg Edwards is the latest member of the WBN staff and offers his insight as a life long Wildcats fan. Greg is also familiar to readers of A Sea of Blue as ALLBLUCAT.
Keep following www.http://wildcatbluenation.com for the best in Kentucky basketball and football news, rumors, and opinions. By Kentucky fans for Kentucky fans