orangenirvana
Hall of Fame
- Joined
- Aug 20, 2011
- Messages
- 8,133
- Like
- 12,448
Washington Post (Sally Jenkins) - NCAA created culture that drove Laremy Tunsil toward low-lifes
Excerpts...
The initial fallout from Tunsil’s tumble in the NFL draft involved a lot of lectures about the perils of social media and moral posturing by the NFL on the harms of marijuana — most of which is nonsense and none of which is the real evil. The real evil is the underground economy on which college football has long rested, which has grown to include a seriously mean criminal element.
The worst part of this subterranean economy is the way it criminalizes the wrong people for perfectly trivial behavior. Text messages from Tunsil’s hacked Instagram account, another little bit of vengeance, show that in February and April 2015, Tunsil texted Ole Miss assistant athletic director John Miller asking for financial help that amounted to less than $500. It also shows Miller quibbling with him.
Tunsil: “Coach, Mom’s light bill is due. It’s $305. What should I do about it?”
Miller: “Wow — for one month??”
That a player with a million-dollar future had to scratch around for a couple hundred dollars so that his mother’s lights wouldn’t get shut off is the situation that presumably motivated him to accept help from someone a lot worse than an assistant coach.
Opponents of a free market in college sports say this is a doomsday scenario. But the scenario of doom already exists. Coaches and alumni have created independent funds for supplementing scholarships with cash. There are bidding wars for players and an ever-widening gap between rich schools and poorer ones. All of this already is happening.
Excerpts...
The initial fallout from Tunsil’s tumble in the NFL draft involved a lot of lectures about the perils of social media and moral posturing by the NFL on the harms of marijuana — most of which is nonsense and none of which is the real evil. The real evil is the underground economy on which college football has long rested, which has grown to include a seriously mean criminal element.
The worst part of this subterranean economy is the way it criminalizes the wrong people for perfectly trivial behavior. Text messages from Tunsil’s hacked Instagram account, another little bit of vengeance, show that in February and April 2015, Tunsil texted Ole Miss assistant athletic director John Miller asking for financial help that amounted to less than $500. It also shows Miller quibbling with him.
Tunsil: “Coach, Mom’s light bill is due. It’s $305. What should I do about it?”
Miller: “Wow — for one month??”
That a player with a million-dollar future had to scratch around for a couple hundred dollars so that his mother’s lights wouldn’t get shut off is the situation that presumably motivated him to accept help from someone a lot worse than an assistant coach.
Opponents of a free market in college sports say this is a doomsday scenario. But the scenario of doom already exists. Coaches and alumni have created independent funds for supplementing scholarships with cash. There are bidding wars for players and an ever-widening gap between rich schools and poorer ones. All of this already is happening.
