Kansas Crimson

PhDhawk wrote: ↑Tue Jun 09, 2020 2:34 pm

pdub wrote: ↑Tue Jun 09, 2020 2:21 pm I've never heard of Madison Kocain.

She don't lie, she don't lie, she don't lie.

Most of the people who currently run college athletics would disagree [that college athletics is racially unjust]. Vehemently. The entire enterprise can't possibly be unjust, let alone racially unjust. Not when athletes—including African-American athletes—are given so much. Small cash stipends. Four-year scholarships. Unlimited snacks. Access to world-class coaching and palatial training facilities. Athletes get to play exciting games before large crowds of adoring fans; they get academic tutors to help them learn, and to literally walk them to and from class. Exploited? If anything, they should feel grateful—and not like the former players suing the NCAA in federal antitrust court, whom Texas women's athletic director Chris Plonsky, a white woman who makes roughly $500,000 a year, says are entitled malcontents who "sucked a whole lot off the college athletics pipe."

Except: the injustice in college sports isn't just about the terms of the deal. It's about the terms of the dealing. Amateurism deprives athletes—again, predominantly black athletes—of freedoms and rights the rest of us take for granted. The same antitrust laws that prevent schools from colluding to limit assistant basketball coach salaries don't protect campus athletes, even when federal courts rule that the NCAA and its member schools are violating those laws. Sports labor lawyer Jeffrey Kessler, who is currently leading a bellwether case against the association, says athletes "don't have any rights under federal labor laws. They don't get to form a union, strike, collectively bargain, or file unfair labor practice complaints. That's not available to college athletes." Instead, they exist as second-class citizens, separate and unequal, just as the NCAA intended—according to former association director Byers, the term "student-athlete" was a legalistic ruse specifically created in the 1950s to prevent injured football players from collecting workers' compensation.

Throughout American history, exploitation has flowed from inequality. It flowed after blacks were deemed three-fifths of a person at the original Constitutional Convention, and when they were later denied due process under Jim Crow; it flowed when women were denied the right to vote. Under Apartheid, the McCormicks write, South African laws prevented black workers from striking—sapping whatever bargaining power they otherwise might have flexed—and also mandated specific wages and hours for many blacks. Meanwhile, whites were allowed unfettered access to a free market. Sound familiar?

"I've used the term 'racial injustice' [to describe college sports], but I try to avoid using the term 'racism,'" says Yee, the sports agent. "I can't look into someone's heart and know their intentions. But the facts are in plain view."

"You have two sets of legal rules that treat two different classifications of people differently, and it's unjustified," [MSU professor] Amy McCormick says. "I would never say college sports are as bad as a system where people are jailed and killed, but it's an Apartheid system."

[...]

"One group is predominantly white, the other is predominantly black, and only one has the power and writes the rules for its benefit," [MSU professor and husband of Amy] Robert [McCormick] says. "I was a big Michigan State fan for a long time before we wrote our first article, and it's kind of embarrassing it came so late in my life. But once you see it, you can't unsee it."

[...]

Understand this: there's nothing inherently racist about amateurism itself. And there's no reason to believe that its defenders and proponents—including current NCAA president Mark Emmert—are motivated by racial animus.

[...]

And yet, while the NCAA's intent is color-blind, the impact of amateurism is anything but. In American law, there is a concept called adverse impact, in which, essentially, some facially neutral rules that have an unjustified adverse impact on a particular group can be challenged as discriminatory.

[...]

Big-time college sports fall under the same conceptual umbrella. Amateurism rules restrain campus athletes—and only campus athletes, not campus musicians or campus writers—from earning a free-market income, accepting whatever money, goods, or services someone else wants to give them. And guess what? In the revenue sports of Division I football and men's basketball, where most of the fan interest and television dollars are, the athletes are disproportionately black.

[...]

"I've used the term 'racial injustice' [to describe college sports], but I try to avoid using the term 'racism,'" says Yee, the sports agent. "I can't look into someone's heart and know their intentions. But the facts are in plain view."

ousdahl wrote: ↑Wed Jun 10, 2020 6:48 pm Is this argument actually getting stronger?

At the very least, shouldn’t the burden be on Zion to prove how he paid for such a dope ass crib?

Sparko wrote: ↑Thu Jun 11, 2020 10:04 am Kansas is in a pretty strong position considering the current legal action. Duke is exposed and has already exonerated itself. Oops. How could that not be relevant in the accusations against KU.
Note: KU seems to have been caught in a no-win situation in a system of “suffer and permit” shoe company endorsement wars.

PhDhawk wrote: ↑Thu Jun 11, 2020 12:02 pm I don't see how it helps us. I see how it hurts dook, but other than our position relative to them, how does it help us.

I mean we're being accused of wanting to or at least of considering using Adidas to pay Zion. Doesn't the fact that Zion did get paid by another school confirm that he was asking for money and make our sinful attempt to pay him more likely?

MICHHAWK wrote: ↑Thu Jun 11, 2020 8:43 am This upcoming season might be a weird one. Who knows what the fans in the stands situation might be. There might be an outbreak in the student population on any campus. Might be an outbreak on any one or multiple teams. Who knows. Might be a funky fractured season.

Might be the perfect season to sit out with a post season ban. If you have to.