Uncle Luke, the man whose booty-shaking madness made the U.S. Supreme Court stand up for free speech, gets as nasty as he wants to be for Miami New Times. This week, Luke goes in on the NCAA's plantation blueprint.
The scandal at Rutgers University, where basketball coach Mike Rice was fired after video showed him physically abusing players, once again shows that the NCAA lacks institutional control. Just like the child-abuse cover-up involving former Penn State assistant coach Jerry Sandusky, the NCAA was nowhere to be found as Rice wreaked havoc on these young men.
The only allegations the NCAA investigates are those involving improper payments or benefits for student athletes. That's because NCAA President Mark Emmert and his cronies want to make sure the slave mentality in college sports remains intact while they ignore real crimes being committed on campuses.
It shouldn't take a whistleblower giving ESPN videos of Rice abusing his players to make things right. Between 2010 and 2012, Rice was caught on camera cussing and hurling homophobic slurs at his players, as well as throwing basketballs at their heads, arms, and feet from close range. He was assaulting these kids.
The NCAA should have been all over Rutgers University when three players left the team in the past two years. In fact, the NCAA should investigate the circumstances of every student athlete requesting a transfer to find out if he or she was being mistreated by coaches. But the NCAA tilts everything against the student athlete.
If a player requests a transfer, he or she has to sit out a season or move to a school in a lower division if the student athlete wants to play right away. The NCAA also allows universities to dictate which schools these athletes can transfer to. Essentially, the NCAA punishes student athletes, but the organization rarely punishes the adults who are responsible for the violations.
Emmert would rather waste time going after the University of Miami with tainted evidence and chastising Ohio State University because some players got tattoos in exchange for sports memorabilia. The NCAA doesn't even investigate coaches' agents who end up representing the star players on their team when they jump to the NFL or the NBA.
Every top-dog hypocrite in the NCAA needs to be fired.
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