"These people have lost touch with reality"

"These people" would be the rule-makers at the NCAA who have found a way to thwart charitable efforts to bring a man working in Baghdad home to watch his son play football. Dan Miller is a retired police lieutenant now doing a stint training Iraqi police officers. His son, Tad, plays for the Boise State Broncos. It would cost $2,700 to fly Dan from Iraq to see Boise St. start the season against Georgia. Fans heard about the situation and started an online pledge drive to make it happen.

Not just fans, Georgia fans. The game is in Athens and they want to help Dan get there to cheer for his son and against their beloved Dawgs. Obviously, the NCAA concludes, by raising money to benefit a Boise St. Bronco player, these UGa fans morph into Boise St. boosters, and hence, are banned from making any kind of special contribution to an athlete.

The Miller family thinks Dan's company will cover his travel costs to the game regardless and suggests that Dawg fans take any money they collect and use it to send underprivileged kids to the game. As for what to do with, or to, the NCAA, the floor is open.

Comments

[Hakluyt]

As for what to do with, or to, the NCAA, the floor is open.

Have the federal government name them as a terrorist organization. 🙂

[Ugh]

Antitrust lawsuit?

[Timothy]

Infect them all with syphillis?

[Chief Talking Bull]

Give them a Native American mascot.

[ralphus]

Maybe the NCAA can donate some of the profits they make from TV rights and memorabilia sales. You know, the stuff that the "amateur" athletes they market can't make a dime from.

[matt]

We Dawgs are good and generous people. 🙂

Meanwhile, the NCAA consists mostly of a bunch of corrupt assholes.

-matt (class of '04)

[Herman]

I think the NCAA is distributing meth. I mean Overland Park, KS is in the middle of meth country or something, right?

[Rhywun]

I'd be embarassed like the mother was, too - I mean, c'mon, it's just a football game.

[Herman]

Won't someone think of the student-atheletes? Do it for the student atheletes!

[saw-whet]

There may be two ounces of marijuana, a scale and some baggies in the head office. May be, just saying you know.

[matt]

"...it's just a football game."

Haha....You've never lived in the south have you?

[drf]

Way to go Myles Brand
Way to go! *boomp boomp*
Way to go Myles Brand
Way to go! *boomp boomp*

Herman - you're forgetting about the alternative unshorn macrobiotic performance art club - THEY wouldn't get such privlege. Until THEY have to fly back someone from Iraq, nobody can.

[Rhywun]

You've never lived in the south have you?

Nope 🙂
I could sort of understand spending thousands of dollars to see my son play in some game - if he were like 5 years old! Oh well, I guess I just don't "get" sports. If I had received a fraction of the adulation for *my* accomplishments in school as did the football and basketball "stars" - well... I'd probably be a (more) arrogant prick 🙂

[mk]

I smell a plotline for Gil Thorp

[Jimbo]

Why didn't dad pay for it himself? These contractors make $80k in 3 months!

[B.P.]

Picking nits: The NCAA moved from Overland Park to Indianapolis about 10 years ago. Despite the move, they're still assholes.

[Portlander]

The NCAA is a lot like any other government in that the benefits of its original purpose are being destroyed by the accumulation of crap that makes little sense. I often wonder why schools (esp. the schools in the Division I-A power conferences) don't just secede. But then I remember that Americans as a whole aren't given to sticking their collective boots up the collective butts of government and those sins are much more egregious than anything the NCAA has done.

As long as the crap that the NCAA legislates compares favorably to the crap that Congress and the States legislate, I'm guessing the NCAA is safe.

[Ammonium]

The NCAA is too busy changing the rules so that a school can fire its entire basketball team without justification, while making sure that students who want to transfer schools can't unless they get permission from their employer, while keeping athletes out of competition who decide to attend school rather than go professional. They're also busy determining why Illinois and Utah are offensive school names, while Aztecs, Red Warriors, and Rainbow Wahine aren't. Plus they are from Indiana.

[Danimal]

The NCAA is certainly a convienent whipping boy (often for the wrong reasons), but getting on them for not granting exceptions to a rule that most people agree with (that fans are not allowed to pay money to players) is a little harsh.

[Herman]

Picking nits: The NCAA moved from Overland Park to Indianapolis about 10 years ago.

Really? I just thought that was their museum.

The NCAA is certainly a convienent whipping boy (often for the wrong reasons
I can see an argument that the different schools, TV networks and sports are pulling them in conflicting directions. You mean something like that?

[Danimal]

I guess what I mean is that college sports - where "amateurs" play in front of paying crowds, earning billions for others but aren't allowed to be paid themselves - is about as corrupt and dishonest business as there is out there.

Few people are willing to point that out, but if the NCAA messes with nicknames or refuses to bend the rules for the son of a solider, watch out!!!

[Ammonium]

Colleges already give fairly generous compensation to athletes by way of an education. Of course, education is worthless to players who get kicked off the team for not performing well enough, or players who can't perform well enough academically to have a prayer of getting anything out of the education or graduating.

Very few universities make any money off of athletics. Most of the universities losing money are losing because they don't have much in revenues. For those schools that have megarevenues, a lot of it is spent on paying coaches millions and building luxury facilities (although universities have fun ways of putting those facilities in the student activities budget, off the athletics budget).

If universities were able to pay their players by joining some rival organization, I think there would be only a handful of schools who could do it. They would increase revenues, but also shell out a lot more for money for the players. Those schools would essentially be the minor leagues for professional sports, while the vast majority of players who won't go professional will be compensated with an education. (Potential professionals might continue to play for free. College baseball and hockey have many players who go on to professional careers even though they have to pass up minor league contracts.)