WOW!! John Oliver LIT UP Mark Emmert. Oliver did to the NCAA what he did to FIFA. It’s not hard, given that FIFA and the NCAA are such easy targets, and Emmert has the worst media skills possible. Still this is a must see – hilarious. Stick with it until the end to see the new real life version of the NCAA video game.
All 20 minutes of this is brilliant and hysterical, but the spoof of Electronic Arts is the best part by far.
The NCAA is full of total b.s. in numerous ways on numerous levels (thank you John Oliver for expressing that again in a hilariously detailed manner).
The NCAA is a broken, fatally-flawed system of exploitation.
It’s days are numbered.
Even the architect of that system, former NCAA Legal Chief Walter Byers, referred to it as a “neo-plantation mentality” in one of his final public appearances. When you have an $11 billion dollar television contract for the NCAA Tournament, and the players don’t see even a tiny slice of that pie…well, defending that system is an intellectually bankrupt position to hold.
When the biggest rock star in college athletics history, Johnny Manziel, can’t make a dime off his likeness and his personal brand, while Texas A&M rakes in hundreds of millions of revenue off his likeness and builds a new Aggies Mahal…well, defending that status quo is a morally bankrupt position to hold. The debate about whether or not athletes in the revenue producing sports are being exploited is long over.
Now we can debate what to do about it.
Here’s the John Oliver video:
Paul M. Banks owns, operates and writes The Sports Bank.net, which is partnered with Fox Sports Digital. You can read Banks’ feature stories and op-eds in the Chicago Tribune RedEye newspaper and hear his regular guest spots on numerous sports talk radio stations all across the country.
Follow him on Twitter (@paulmbanks)