So here’s the quick back-story.\u00a0 Glens Falls phenom Jimmer Fredette was on a march to glory, leading Brigham Young University to its best back-to-back seasons ever.<\/p>\n
With the March Madness tournament looming, the senior guard is one step away from an NBA career.<\/p>\n
Then something unthinkable happened.\u00a0 One of his teammates, fellow college senior Brandon Davies, admitted to having consensual sex with his girlfriend.<\/p>\n
Davies has been dismissed from the team, gutting the BYU’ Cougar’s starting line-up.<\/p>\n
If you’re not a sports fan, your first instinctive response might be a shrug.\u00a0 Who cares about BYU’s chances in this year’s March tournament?<\/p>\n
Who cares about the dreams and careers of these young athletes?\u00a0 Who cares about another sports scandal?<\/p>\n
Here’s why you should care:\u00a0 Modern college sports are literally the last vestige of a system of exploitation and degradation that stretches back into the Jim Crow era and beyond.<\/p>\n
In order to advance their careers, athletes are required to play for free — usually for half a decade, when you include their redshirt season — in contests that often leave their bodies wrecked.<\/p>\n
Their chances of advancing to a professional career are slim, and their chances of receiving a quality education from the schools are often even slimmer.<\/p>\n
But for many of these athletes, there are simply no other options.\u00a0 If they want to pursue their dreams, college athletic departments hold a monopoly.\u00a0 They are the gatekeepers.\u00a0 It is, literally, their field and their rules.<\/p>\n
And the current system earns those universities billions of dollars.<\/p>\n
You think it’s an outrage that professional football players and the team owners are nearing a lock-out because they can’t agree on a profit sharing plan for next year?<\/p>\n
The real outrage is that in college ball, the NCAA shares nothing with its athletes.\u00a0 Zero, nada, zip.<\/p>\n
In fact, these supposedly liberal, enlightened institutions have a laundry list of self-righteous rules that destroy young men and women — many from impoverished backgrounds — if they or their families earn a single dime from their athletic talents.<\/p>\n
In the case of Brigham Young and Brandon Davies, some pundits are pointing out that Davies voluntarily signed a contract with the school, agreeing to its morality standards.<\/p>\n
Those standards include a requirement that adult, grown-up players remain chaste, that they go to church, and that they not drink tea or coffee.<\/p>\n
But are these athletes really entering “voluntarily” into these contracts?\u00a0 Is it really a legitimate contract when one side holds all the power, all the opportunity, all the money?<\/p>\n
If your son had a chance to advance his career — to escape poverty — and all he had to do was sign a ridiculous, insulting “honor code,” would you really have a choice?\u00a0 Of course not.<\/p>\n
Billy Hawkins wrote a controversial book called “The New Plantation,” which pointed out that the vast majority of NCAA officials are white and wealthy, while many money-sport athletes in the\u00a0 college system are black and low-income.<\/p>\n
That’s certainly the case with Brandon Davies and the decision-makers at Brigham Young.<\/p>\n