Latest BIGSPORTSWRITER rant: SATs, racism and Derrick Rose

As I said in the Twitter thread, I rather enjoyed that today. Mr. Sports Journo went off for a good 40 minutes. Very entertaining set of Tweets.

And really, based on the limitations of the medium, that's all I ask from people I follow who tweet with any regularity. Entertain me with your words and your ability to express yourself within the limitations of the medium. Anything you link to, that I also find interesting, is gravy.

Highly recommend this gentleman's feed.

 

Devil just watched a mixtape of Mateen Cleaves, Tim Duncan, Grant Hill and Juan Dixon and does know why.

 

I'll take the dissent here just for the rhetorical exercise.


- Since the ostensible purpose of college is education, it's not unfair to discuss a player's standing in those terms.

- That the system itself is corrupt is still no excuse for cheating. Don't like the rules? Change the rules.

- Why? Because the rhetorical endgame here is a kind of perfect ethical relativism in which nothing ever changes for the athletes - Nothing can be done! It's a whorehouse! - but sportswriters get to wink at one another at how smart they are for knowing it.

- Twitter is a great medium for unchallenged pronouncements - because it's a terrible medium for debate.

- I'd be more inclined to lavish praise if all the same brave thoughts about college athletics appeared beneath a byline.

 

One add.

- That the SAT is racially biased has been well and widely known for decades.

 

Az, when a system is totally corrupt, IMO the people it's exploiting have every moral right to exploit it right back. I repeat myself, but Twitter is great for wisecracks and breaking news, and has no other sportswriting function of merit. Issues, even sports issues, require more space.

 

I was thinking as much of sports writers as participants when it comes to the corruptions of the system.

The trouble with exploiting it right back is that the system remains in place and punishes the next kid or the next generation of kids.

Want to change it? Sue it.

 

As is so often the case, the system, while immoral, is all legal. Supreme Court has ruled that athletes basically lose all civil rights when they accept a scholarship (Stanford drug testing case). Rose had to go to college for a year because of the NBA collective bargaining agreement.

 

Agreed.

But I think the Taylor Branch NCAA piece from last fall has in it some notions as to how the system might be attacked, and overhauled.

That said, there need to be advocates for an overturn of the status quo not just in sports or on the sports page, but in the administration buildings and in Congress, too.

 

- The point we're trying to make is that Derrick Rose didn't require a traditional college education.

- Those preserving the system are more corrupt than the system, but many efforts have been made in the past two years alone.

- Again, many have made efforts, well beyond the pages of sports publications and the scope of the media, to enact change. Ultimately, it's a matter for the courts, one that will be decided upon soon in the Ed O'Bannon case.

- Oh, I don't know. It provides a back and forth — often a fruitless one, sure — that wouldn't exist otherwise.

- You say this from an anonymous handle on a message board. It's the point, not the pointer, that matters.

 

I'll quibble with one point in this kid's quote: if he was a one and done straight to the NBA, then I can assure you plenty of schools were willing to "give him a chance," indeed a great many would've crawled on their knees begging for his services. All of Calipari's one and dones, including the ones with the worst off court reputations, chose him over plenty of other suitors. So let's not get carried away depicting him as some sort of father Father Flanigan providing last chance salvation to lost souls, that ain't what's happening.

That said, I basically agree with much of the sentiment expressed by you and others in this thread. I've come to think the primary difference between guys like Calipari (or Tarkanian in a prior era) and other coaches with cleaner public images may simply be that the Caliparis are blatantly honest and up front that they're playing a corrupt system for all it's worth, whereas other coaches put on a phony act pretending they're something else.

A good example of the latter is Roy Williams. The more I learn about the crap that's gone on at North Carolina, the more I've become convinced it's been as dirty and corrupt as any program out there the last decade. Yet, ole Roy launches into his "aww shucks, I'm just trying to guide young men" routine, the media buys the act, and he undeservedly gets a different public image (and, btw, appears the NCAA also buys the act, given the way it strains to look the other way whenever allegations regarding UNC basketball arise). Is Roy really any different than Cal? I doubt it. He just pretends he is.

 

Versatile -

- If Rose doesn't need a college education, why is he in college?

- My point about his byline wasn't anonymity, it's about circulation. How many people see his anonymous Twitter feed vs how many see his bylined publication? How many of those followers are other sports writers? Is he just preaching to the choir? (If he is indeed a 'big' sports writer, I'll assume he has an audience larger than the number of his Twitter followers.) The question of his identity becomes interesting if you ask this: Is he writing one thing on Twitter and another under his byline?

 

- Oh, Az. You're just messing with me on this one, right? He's in college because he's more or less forced to go to college. He could play in the D-League and make $25K or go to Europe and sit on the bench halfway across the globe while learning a system he'd only play in for one year, sure. But even in doing those things, he'd risk his draft stock plummeting. He's in college because the system is twisted.

- Who's to say he has more than 6,000 followers on his real handle? I don't buy that he's necessarily all that much of a "big sports writer" as much as a sports writer who created the Twitter handle to mock the Jay Mariottis and Woody Paiges and Mitch Alboms, et al.