It’s hard for an average high school student who lives in the state of Ohio to get into Ohio State University. Heck, it’s tough for an above-average kid to get in. But if you’re from California, or Texas, or Delaware, or any other state, and you can throw/catch/run with a pigskin, not only will they roll out the red scarlet carpet for you and offer you a full ride, but you’ll also get paid six, maybe even seven figures, every year, to be there. What a country!
It’s not just Ohio State. Every “power conference” school across the nation is shelling out big bucks for big ballers, in hoops as well as football, thanks to the NIL (name, image, and likeness) ruling and the transfer portal that’s busier than the Atlanta airport on Thanksgiving Eve.
If you can’t make ends meet as a teenage millionaire at one school, or you don’t like the new coach, or the cafeteria food, you can leave at the end of the school year season for greener pastures. Four (or five) schools in as many years is becoming commonplace. A degree? Who needs that? It’s all about grabbing that cash.
It’s not just the players… er, excuse me “student athletes” either. Lane Kiffin just left Ole Miss to become the head football coach at LSU. He owes Ole Miss $4 million for breaking his contract. That’s chump change – his new LSU deal pays him $13 million a year for seven years. (LSU fired their former coach, Brian Kelly, midway through his fourth season, sending him on his merry way with a parting gift of $53 million.) Kiffin’s $13 mill a year makes him only the second highest paid coach in that conference.
At Indiana, where our youngest goes to school, three sports coaches and one former coach make more than the Dean of the med school and the school president.
The full list is here. IU head football coach Curt Cignetti makes $6.5 million and typically looks like he’s having about as much fun as a guy who has been stuck in a dentist’s lobby for two hours while awaiting his root canal. Having to coddle 18-year-olds who can jilt you at the end of the year will do that to you.
Indiana and Ohio State play each other this Saturday in the Big 10 conference championship. The game means nothing. Both teams are a lock to make the 12-team tourney in the College Football Playoff. There’s a chance the national champ will wind up playing 16 games. For Ohio State and Indiana, these playoff games come at the end of a 12-game regular season that involved at least one road trip to a West Coast campus.
(The Big 10 has 18 schools… maybe they need to spend more on their math departments.)
How much studying do you think these student-athletes manage to squeeze into their busy spring practice/regular season/postseason schedule? They’re not getting paid for their grades – their YAC (yards after catch) matters a lot more than their GPA.
Yes, it’s capitalism. Get while the getting is good. But maybe it’s time to unmoor the sports teams from the universities. Because the players are pros, pure and simple. And perennial free agent pros at that. They have about as much in common with the regular students as Jeff Bezos has with the average Amazon shopper.
I hope they DO get while the getting is good – and save their NIL windfall. Because when their eligibility is up (or when they blow out their knee), so is the gravy train for 99% of them. If they can’t go pro (and statistically, they’re more likely to get hit by lightning), where can they get paid $1 million to be an offensive lineman? I don’t see too many of those roles listed on LinkedIn.
What Nevada head basketball coach Steve Alford said nearly a year ago still holds true. “The NCAA and college athletics should be about teaching life lessons. Period.”
Here’s the “Godmother of Punk” Patti Smith in an interview with Ezra Klein of the NYT:
Despite everything that’s happening in the world and everything around us and any frustration or helplessness we feel or betrayal we feel, we have to remember it’s also all right to feel the joy of being alive and feel the joy of your own possibilities. Even in the face of the suffering of so many people around us. I have to hold on to the fact that I have my own life, and I have duties that I have to perform. I have a family to take care of. But I also have the same calling I did when I was young: to nourish and to do the work that I believe I was given the possibility to do.
I’m not going to let anything shake that faith, no matter what kind of rubble or debris of our time I have to walk through. I believe in my rebel hump. So I’m not going to let anyone destroy it. I’m just going to keep doing my work.
Beautiful. Just beautiful!
Yes, the United States can seem like it’s turned into the Upside Down, or a Bizarro World. And there are daily if not hourly opportunities to get frustrated, or feel helpless or betrayed, or be depressed by the suffering around us. But we still have to keep on doing the work that we’re called to do.
We have to remember it’s also all right to feel the joy of being alive and feel the joy of your own possibilities
Patti Smith
You’ll have to read the full transcript or listen to the entire podcast episode (posted below) to learn about Patti’s “rebel hump.”
Here’s to joy! Here’s to possibilities! Here’s to being a punk!
I spend an inordinate amount of time digging through crates of old albums at thrift stores. I’m like the old joke about the kid who wakes up on Christmas morning and finds a pile of horse manure under the tree instead of gifts, and dives right in because “there must be a pony in here somewhere.”
In my case, the pile of horse manure is albums from Andy Williams, the Ray Conniff singers, and The First Family album that was a spoof of the Kennedys.
Fun fact sidebar: The First Family album was released in November of 1962 and sold seven million copies by January of 1963. The follow up album (the not-so-imaginatively-titled Volume Two) hit #4 in June of 1963… both albums were pulled from sales after JFK’s assassination in November.
But if you find a prize hidden among all that audio detritus – “there must be a pony in here somewhere” – it’s worth the dig.
This weekend I got a Los Lobos album, still in its shrink-wrap, for a dollar.
I’m not looking to cash in and flip these platters — other than flipping them from Side 1 to Side 2. I’m no Discogs dude. I just like the joy of discovering something that means a lot to me, at a bargain basement price.
To be honest, I don’t really spend much time listening to vinyl albums. (I have to keep up with the new music releases, which I compile into a weekly Spotify playlist.) But albums as an artistic artifact are a lot cooler than CDs. I grew up devouring liner notes, and still do. With albums, I can actually read the fine print. And someday, I will give all of my albums (my wife claims I have too many – not humanly possible) a spin or three.
Until then, I’ll keep digging for that pony. Or “The Wolves” en Español.
Side 1, Track 1 of the album above – one of my favorite songs from one of my favorite bands:
Take a gander at this group of old guys (and one younger lady):
You might think there’s nothing remarkable about them. But you’d be wrong. I met all the guys in the picture when they were young dudes, back in 1982. It was our freshman year of college at Xavier University. (I know that’s hard to believe, as we all look so young… there’s no way we’re in our 60s!)
And here we are, 43 years later. A band of brothers with a bond of friendship that’ll never be broken. That’s truly remarkable.
It stinks that it’s usually sad occasions that bring us together. The first photo above was after yesterday’s funeral for our friend LJ – that’s his wife Patty in the middle. She went to XU too – she and LJ started dating in college, so she’s been part of the gang for nearly as long as we’ve been a gang.
Our friend Ned isn’t in the top photo either – he passed away two years ago, sadly. And a few fellas couldn’t make it in for the services. But they were there in spirit.
In S.E. Hinton’s novel That Was Then, This Is Now, narrator Bryon Douglas said:
If you have two friends in your lifetime, you’re lucky. If you have one good friend, you’re more than lucky.
If that’s the case, then we all won the friendship Powerball lottery. When I showed up at XU back in August of 1982, I had no idea that I was about to hit the jackpot. Such rewarding relationships, with friends that are good as gold.
My buddy Rick (yep, he’s in the photo from yesterday) sent me a text today and summed it up beautifully:
I’ve been thinking this morning that of all the non-XU friends I have, there is not a single one who can claim a cohesive group of 30-40 people who are always there for each other no matter the distance, the financial status, or the time between interactions, the way our crew is. It is honestly a really great feeling, even in times of sadness that will inevitably draw us together again and again, but knowing that even in the sad times, there will always be great stories, great memories, and uncontrollable laughter as the by-product. I thank God for you and our whole group of misfits that somehow all fit together!
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