Keith Olbermann ripped apart NCAA President Mark Emmert’s comments about NCAA players never being paid…or their sports ever being considered professional…or players getting even dollar one for signing autographs. Emmert has become the perfect villain for the indentured servitude model in which the NCAA operates.
Other Dan Dakich, I can’t really think of anyone with a very high profile other than Emmert who thinks college basketball and college football players shouldn’t be paid. Emmert is the villain figurehead in the fight for rights for players of the revenue producing sports. And it was great to see Keith Olbermann take him on directly here.
Walter Byers, first executive director of the NCAA, serving from 1951 to 1988, invented the term student-athlete simply to keep Universities protected from paying workman’s compensation benefits, or wrongful death benefits. That’s all the phrase student-athletes means.
It’s just a legal definition protecting schools from being liable, and potentially sued by players.
In one of his final public appearances, Byers had a sort of Dr. Frankenstein level remorse for what he created, referring to the system which he had so much influence in building, as having a “neo-plantation mentality.” This is why we in the media need to abolish the phrase student-athletes. Keith Olbermann doesn’t use it here and neither have I. Ever. Never have and never will.
“The day will come when our silence is more powerful than the voices you are throttling today.”
Luckily Milwaukee Bucks big man and former UNC Tar Heel John Henson and his tee-shirt were there to put a nice bow on the whole thing.
Watch Keith Olbermann weeknights on ESPN2 at 10pm CST.
Paul M. Banks is the owner of The Sports Bank.net, an affiliate of Fox Sports. He’s also an analyst for multiple news talk radio stations across the country; with regular weekly segments on NBC and Fox Sports Radio. Follow him on Twitter (@paulmbanks) and RSS Catch him Tuesdays talking Illini and Northwestern for KOZN 1620 The Zone, Fridays talking Chicago Bears for WAOR 95.7 The Fan