You Gotta Read This One! Football player behaving badly...

Do other students get paid? My dad had to fight tooth and nail just to make enough to pull together my tuition. Know why? I did not play college sports with a scholarship. I had to go to school and pay my way through wondering if I was going to have enough money at the end of the week to have enough gas to get to my last class and home again. This is not an article of pity for myself or the hundreds of other people that had to live the way I did. But to say that because you are selling jersey after jersey at the team store on Saturday and you should get a cut of it is completely absurd.

College plays for the band to travel to competitions, do they ask to be paid? True they don't sell a mesh jersey that says #2 Violin on the back. People wonder why tuition rates are so high at these schools and don't see the forest for the trees. When you tune into USC and Ohio State this weekend I bet you will not be thinking about the countless people who have applied to go to those schools but could not get in because, like UCLA, they did not have a 4.3 GPA but a defensive lineman that can barely say his own name for the reporters gets a free ride. Do you want to know why? Because he can play. Simple as that. He is a marketing tool. Schools spend so much on their programs and take the hit sometimes for it when they bring on these punk thugs that are always in trouble with authorities that they cannot get ahead because of the court costs. Can't think of anyone that may remind you of this? Maurice Clarrett of Ohio State? Marcus Vick, brother of the infamous dog-slayer Michael Vick, of Virginia Tech? How about Penn State's recent problems? The school takes care of those players like they were already in the NFL.

Another reason that you cannot sell to me that college players should be paid is because they already are! How does a free education sound? Probably not that great in a country that no longer embraces this concept. But still the facts add up. University of Virginia website, www.virginia.edu, has a section that shows what two semesters with everything included would cost. By everything I mean tuition, books, room and board, personal expenses, travel, etc. First year of in-state costs are $20,173 plus travel expenses. Out-of-state first year is $40,473 plus travel expenses. So say you are from Virginia. You pay those costs for four years to get your degree. Guess what the total is? $80692! Athletes on scholarship get that for free! But some people just think that this should be given to them. Take for example their current starting quarterback over the past two games of this season, Peter Lalich. Al Groh, coach of the Cavs, told him to stay home to deal with his legal matters and not be a distraction to the team so Lalich could he could get ready to appear in court on September 26 for underage drinking. Granted he was from Fairfax, Virginia so in-state tuition is applying but look at how much he would have to pay if he was an average person. But because he can throw a football he does not have to worry about getting a court appointed attorney for his defense because the school will pay for a good one. Plus welcome him back to the team once the court date is over with and he has paid whatever minor fine he may receive. Thanks to the article in ESPN College Football sub screen for the info on that one.

Time has come for colleges to wake up and smell the roses. Sure some of the players you recruit end up turning out to be great, never get into trouble and are well worth the risk. But what about the Clarrett's, Vick's and Lalich's. One thing I have to say about NFL players from smaller colleges that make it to the big time is that they are very well spoken. Jerry Rice went to a small school and is a very well spoken individual. Aaron Rodgers only went to Cal for two years after attending Butte Community, very clear speaker. Art Monk is a very classy individual whom I have met personally. Great guy. LaDainian Tomlinson went to TCU and is probably one of the best spoken individuals I have heard interviewed this year. But listening the other night to Monday Night Football and hearing how some of the players were introducing their teammates on national television just made me sick. If you have a studder or speech impediment then that is one thing and completely understandable that you would have a hard time talking but these gangsters who get on the TV screen in front of thousands of children at home that are getting paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to have everything handed to them so they can catch a ball and not even know how to talk is ridiculous. One of my favorite movies is Con-Air with Nicholas Cage. Steve Buscemi has one line in the movie that is greatly describes this today and I will twist it after I quote him. He says in the movie as they are listening to Sweet Home Alabama by Lynyrd Skynyrd, "Define irony. Bunch of idiots dancing on a plane to a song made famous by a band who died in a plane crash." Well said. Here is mine. "Define irony. Bunch of idiots playing a sport that takes nothing short of a mental genius to figure out and communicate but cannot even say their own name." All I'm saying is for the love of God please learn how to talk above a small jumbled up mumbling of words. Learn to articulate. Say words completely. Ball is actually ball, not baw. There are other words in the English language than "you know" and "I mean what I'm saying." For all those athletes out there that are articulate and take their profession seriously BRAVO to you. Thank you for bringing some hope to sports in America today. For the rest of you, in the words of Merle Haggard, "if you don't love it, leave it." You'd do us all a favor.