It’s kind of hard to believe that there was a time when college ball was not too different from high school, save for the fact that it was a lot harder and much more competitive. The margin for mistakes and errors became almost non-existent. The coaching staff was still supportive but would bench a player in a heartbeat if they weren’t producing. And more importantly than anything, the players would not be getting a single dime from anyone other than their employer if they had a job outside of school. That’s right the issues that are going on in the NCAA right now have reached the level of ridiculousness that has managed to make the NCAA, normally one of the most respected organizations in the country, into a massive joke. Blue Chips, the basketball film starring Nick Nolte and Shaquille O’Neal among other stars was one of the few movies that had the guts to say anything about this process and what kind of havoc it would wreak.
Nolte plays Coach Pete Bell and is modeled after famed tantrum-thrower Bobby Knight. His basketball team isn’t doing as well as it once did and in order to keep the right people happy he discovers that certain interested parties want to start looking into paying young players to come and play for the school. Not only is this highly illegal but it undermines the entire foundation of what college ball is supposed to be about. Bell reluctantly gives the go ahead to start recruiting certain individuals he believes can help the program, and eventually once they come on more and more young stars start to see dollar signs and get greedy enough to expect a payday.
That’s when the stuff tends to hit the fan since people tend to notice when college students that have no connections to rich families or any independent cash flow of their own start riding around in tricked out cars and spending money as though there’s no tomorrow. College students are in many cases some of the poorest people in the world no matter that a lot of them are in school on financial aid and scholarships. Those that aren’t broke usually have jobs, and a top level athlete isn’t always expected to hold down a job because as the rumors go they’re generally taken care of in one way or another.
For a long time a lot of people passed this off as fantasy since no one wanted to believe that college ball was this corrupt. It turns out however that movies like Blue Chips and He Got Game and a few other movies that dared to depict the life were actually getting it right. Perhaps the one thing that burns people the most is that with the talent that some young players have they could easily step into the NBA Draft expecting to get picked. Then they’d earn a payday, not walk into school with their hands out.
It’d be nice to think that things are really going to change after the latest scandal, but that feels like a very naive thought to be having just now.
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