In columbus on saturday (noon, ABC), the buckeyes will honor their World War II-bound 1942 national championship team with uniforms that include a replica U.S. flag on the jersey sleeve, a camouflage-print base layer and scarlet helmet.
let's take a few minutes to think about what this means.
let's talk about the concept of the student-athlete, title 9, and athletic department budget stress.
let's start with the concept of student-athlete. the term was coined, according to walter byers, long-time director of the ncaa, in the 1950s.
it came on the heels of a lawsuit (university of denver vs. nemeth) where a walk-on football player who had been earning side money working on the maintainence staff for the athletic department was injured.
he WON a workman's comp case.
he won it, based on his status as an employee. the ncaa didnt like where that ruling was leading.
if they would have to treat these athletes as employees, they would be subject to labor law, discrimination suits, collective bargaining, ohsa---all of those things.
that's why they came up with the term student-athlete.
this is why they tell us that these are just 85 guys who happen to get scholarships for participating in an extra-curricular activity. it's just like being on the debating team.
.....
only 14 athletic programs in division 1A claim to have made money last year, down from 25 in 2006.
no division 1 program made money that didn't play major college football.
the top revenue generator last year was texas, generating $120 million. if you drop down to $25 million, you are at $66 million.
you can imagine where positions 50 and 75 are.
go sometime into somebody's athletic department website and pull up the athletic department listing.
it's always there.
if you look at the management structure of it, these are some of the most over-managed outfits---if these structure were part of businesses, you would say that these were very sick businesses.
everybody's a chief. at ohio state, everybody is a senior manager, or higher.
if you look at ohio state's, they publish an organization chart that looks like a map of the internet. it's crazy.
you know that the system is rampant with inefficiency.
everybody gets their pockets lined but the athletes.
back to this uniform thing, it's all a nike marketting brainchild.
phil knight, the head of nike, gives an unbelievable amount of money to the university of oregon.
the football team is the apple of phil's eye.
the university pays the oregon football coach a couple of dollars, and knight pays the balance, through a straight check, i think.
he wont be outbid by anybody for this coach's services.
knight just gave $60 million to the athletic department for a new 6 story football TEACHING facility with separate rooms for each position and state of the art electronic gadgets.
the locker rooms are as if they were from another planet.
they can make 30+ different football uniform combinations, between pants, jersies, and helmets.
the track coach many years ago at oregon came up with the idea of using a waffle iron to create unique running shoes.
every football locker has a plasma tv and an x-box.
this revelation in footwear and uniforms is fairly recent. it only developed within the last 35 years.
how long will it be before ohio state wont want the swooshes on their uniforms, because they cant compete against a school's athletic department (oregon), pretty much totally funded by nike.
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