Mo Diplomas, No Problems.

It is all too infrequent that an author's hypocrisy is a matter of public record, so this was an opportunity I had to seize.

"College athletes shouldn't be paid" by Douglas M. Gottlieb.

At first blush, this doesn't seem to be all that ridiculous. A man with an insider's perspective can give us some great insider knowledge about what's going on in the inner-workings of the NCAA, where record profits just seem to disappear. So this post on ESPN's Insider page might be worth reading. (If you can't tell, I despise the over-use of the term insider at ESPN).

While there is a sudden clamoring for universities to pay their players, I feel otherwise based on my time as a student athlete and even after I left campus.

Hold up there, sparky! Which campus are you talking about? I thought I remembered that you went to a few different schools.

Oklahoma State welcomed me after my issues at Notre Dame. I don't think OSU would have accepted me from junior college, if not for my athletic prowess.

OK, so that's Notre Dame, then JuCo, then OK State? Man Notre Dame is kind of a storied program, you were starting as a freshman, and your team showed some promise. Why did you leave?

Oh! Now I remember! You were accused of stealing your roommate's credit cards and charging $900 to them! And then you were expelled.

Why would you do such a thing? Was money hard to come by while you were a student athlete? Why would you play if you weren't getting any benefits?

While college players are not paid directly, they receive a tremendous amount of benefits that aid them during, and after, their time on campus.

Oh.

It starts with "comped" campus visits in high school and continues with tutoring, preferred class registration, choice housing arrangements and, of course, the ability to walk away with a degree and without an ounce of debt to your name.

Sure, that's a lot of benefits. I guess that paid for food and clothes, too? No? How about trips to the movies or drinks or Tamagachis or bandaids or a mattress pad or ANYTHING YOU NEED TO BUY WITH ANY FORM OF CURRENCY?!

Oh, you get none of that? Makes sense that somebody (anybody) might steal credit cards or sell jerseys and memorabilia to get a tradeable commodity for the purchase of other goods. In fact, that could probably be easily predicted by the entire compendium of human existence.

I am not claiming that athletes don't get a bunch of benefits, but when the March Madness alone brings in $613 million in revenue, you could give a kid some gas money (for the car that a booster bought him, of course).

While we're on the topic, what other sorts of benefits do college athletes get?

When you play big-time basketball or football, people want to hire you. You are a known commodity and, like the colleges, businesses too would like to profit from your presence -- and compensate you in kind.

Sure. If you can read and write. Say, you know where gobs of college athletes come from? Areas of destitution where roughly 50% of students graduate from high school and those who do graduate will, on average, perform at an 8th grade level.

But let's say you come from the inner city, you get into college on the back of astounding athletic ability and you stick it out for four years. Gottlieb is right that you'll have a degree that you more than likely wouldn't have attained otherwise (assuming of course that your ticket to college didn't itself pull you out of all those valuable classes and the degree you're now holding wasn't actually just a token of time served but an actual, meaningful symbol of your earned academic prowess over your time at the university).

But then he keeps going...

We so massively undervalue a college degree -- which can lead to increased earning potential in the professional world -- and overestimate the value of a couple of hundred dollars per month while in college, which may end up getting taxed anyway.

First, college degrees are dropping in value, because, compared to 50 years ago, a much much higher percentage of Americans are graduating from college. Many think that we may be at the peak of a higher education bubble.

And again, the same fatal flaw as before: Your degree, regardless of its value, is a deferred benefit. That doesn't get you shit in the here and now. And, though there are plenty of loans available, that means you're not leaving debt free as Gottlieb and others so often claim.

But it all comes to a head for me with this point:

The payoff is in the end, after school, much like the future doctors, scientists and businessmen and women with whom you attend school. College is about sacrificing, learning and growing as a person. The reward for all students is the memories and experiences gained in the short term and benefiting from them in the long run.

Yeah, college seems like a real sacrifice for most students. What with the partying and the indiscriminate sex and the long hours of sleeping and the nothing-that-resembles-the-working-world. I would HATE to do college for the rest of my life. Talk about a drag!

And in what fucking way is the (imagined) illiterate-but-monstrous back-up defensive tackle from rural Mississippi on a Big XII football team the same as an aspiring brain surgeon from Westchester, NY?! Are you out of your goddamned mind, Gottlieb?!

Sure, there will be a payoff if you're one of the elite athletes in college athletics. But if you're not - - or worse, if you were an elite athlete who rode that into college and you get injured - - you better unlace your cleats and grab hold of your ankles, because when the NCAA is done milking you for every penny, the rest of your Eat Shit And Choke Life is going to make you remember where you came from.

Unless of course you take the easy way out and steal credit cards.