Deadspin was unimpressed but made mention of the fact that one-time Fox Sports contributor (now back with ESPN) Jason Whitlock was less than impressed with one of the authors of the investigation, Thayer Evans. ESPN mentioned it but seemed to stick with just a straight journalistic take on it (and even the comments weren't all that interesting like they usually are. The comments on Part I of the SI piece, however were the usual 'frothing at the mouth, tin-foil hat wearing' type of stuff you usually expect.)
I can't say I'm all that surprised. At the very least, this is only going to add to the debate over whether or not college payers should be paid. (Time recently did this big, splashy piece on the topic and promptly stuck it behind a paywall, the bastards.) I tend to lean towards no- though I'm in favor of some form of increased stipend (I saw a Daily Show piece on this story which emphasizes the bullshit rules that penalize players unfairly), there's no way they should be penalized for pursuing interests other than sports and making money off of it. These players- all of them, should control their names, images and likenesses and should be given a cut of any profits their schools and/or the NCAA makes off of them- but after they graduate. I divvied up my reaction by parts:
PART 1: The sham jobs bug me. The actual jobs don't. I mean, if some rich old lady wants to pay you $700 bucks to take a Christmas tree out of your attic, then that's on her. As long as some actually labor is done then the compensation, especially for things like yard work and odd jobs around the house (which, traditionally, you don't hire out for- you usally pay a neighbor kid for) are usually decided by mutual agreement between the people that want the job done and the person doing the job. The sham jobs however, seem shady as hell.
The $500 dollar handshakes in the locker room after games? Again- are we really surprised? Meh... if true, that's bad. Not surprising and probably more endemic than we'd like to admit.
P.S. If you were wondering, T. Boone Pickens seems to be leaning towards the 'hoppin' mad' end of the things.
PART 2: I don't think it's much of a secret that football players have access to all the resources in the world to help them make the grades to play football and maintain their scholarships. That some programs have higher standards than others is also no secret. But whether this is a symptom of something sinister or just a reflection the declining academic standards in higher education as a whole remains unclear. I'm also getting a little dubious about this. The authors of this thing keep naming names and those names they keep naming keep denying everything. To their credit, they've got other former players that speak up and claims that some players were 'functionally illiterate' are disturbing.
But let's say this is on the level, though: how much revenue does a successful football program bring to a University as a whole? If the answer to that question is 'a lot' then there's your answer about faculty looking the other way for football players. Money pays their bills too. So thus far: Oklahoma State could probably raise their academic standards a bit and rich boosters paid players to re-arrange paper clips, fish in their ponds and other frivolous things. I'm sort of unimpressed.
P.S. (Former OSU QB Josh Fields went on The Dan Patrick Show and denied everything. Patrick did a pretty good job of interviewing him as well and he seemed totally believable and on the level.)
PART 3: Ah, so now Sports Illustrated is clutching their pearls in horror at the allegations that college students smoked weed. (Gasp! Shock! Horror! Not... the reefer!) The general thesis of this now exhausting series of article seems to be that Oklahoma State went from cellar dweller to conference power through shady means of some kind. If Sports Illustrated had evidence of OSU say, juicing their players or using other performance enhancing drugs to get ahead that would be an actual story. Bunch of players smoking weed? Meh. Again, it's not something we should be surprised about. And if anyone has any evidence that smoking a blunt somehow increases athletic stamina and performance, please, let me know.
The vast majority of the alleged drug use seems to involve weed. There was some cocaine, some codeine/xanax/hydracodone but nothing that would seem to give OSU players an advantage during their meteoric rise to the cream of the Big 12 Conference. The reader is left with the impression that maybe OSU could be a bit more thorough in their drug screening and penalities but little more than that. I'm still waiting to hear how this is an actual scandal and remain, unimpressed.
P.S. The plot thickens! ESPN actually did some good old fashioned journalism and found some documents that indicated inconsistencies with statements given to SI and nearly all the players quoted in the article are pissed off and walking their quotes back. And it turns out that in Part 2 'THE ACADEMICS' they never actually bothered to talk to any actual academics. Oops. The countdown until SI is forced to eat a shit sandwich over this story begins... now.
PART 4: College kids have sex! Again, the quality of 'alert the media' and 'no shit, Sherlock' seem to hang over this expose and they can't quite shake them loose. Do I think 'hostess' programs are anachronistic throwbacks tot he 1950s? Yes. But what bothered me most about this part was this quote:
"I was a student manager for the [wrestling] team in high school, and I remember how cool that felt to be part of a program. A lot of women's self-esteem is tied to the attention they receive from the opposite sex. If you are putting women in a position like that [with Orange Pride], even if the sex is voluntary, those women are still being taken advantage of."There's something about this that bothered me but being a man, I wasn't quite sure if I had good reason to be bothered, so I read the Missus this quote and she agreed with me Obviously, she doesn't speak for all woman-kind but this notion, to me, degrades women to little more than victims. Can't a woman choose to have sex? Nowhere in this article does it say that they were forced to or paid to have sex with recruits- they allegedly just did. They did campus tours, went to parties, did what college kids do and BAM. Sex. It's not exactly unusual... Again, I'm left wondering what the problem is. This thunderous, game-changing expose shouldn't be eye-opening to anyone.
P.S. Another day, another piece of evidence added to the growing pile of 'this is a crock of badly written horseshit' that seems to be stacking up.
PART 5: Redemption at last... what happens to players that get cut from a football program? Do they succeed, do they fail? Oklahoma State has had players get cut that end up in some very bad places indeed- which, if this was expanded out to ask the question of football programs across the country instead of focusing just on one could be an amazing, compelling story indeed. This one hit home- because a lot of these guys just didn't cut the mustard and got put on a bus back to where they came from. Football was all they had- their shot for a better life and when it was taken away the results were devastating in many cases.
I'm still left wondering what the point of this was though. It feels like the accusations on the Interwebs about Thayer Evans being a Sooner with an axe to grind have a point- why focus just on Oklahoma State so much? If you're using them as an example for how broken the system really is, then fine- but it really does come across the reader like this is about taking them down more than fixing the obvious problems out there. There's nothing particularly new or shocking here- at least to me but what I'm left with is the feeling that this was a hugely blown opportunity. They could have done good, good work here reporting on the myriad of problems that people just shrug away in the name of football if they had just expanded their focus just a tiny bit.
Instead, it feels like they were picking on Oklahoma State, while the program may not be perfect, let's not act like they're any different from a lot of other programs out there. Everyone can do better by student athletes and everyone should do better- but nowhere in this expose did that point get made. What's the remedy? What reforms are necessary going forward? It would have been nice to know.
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