Given Sally Jenkins’ theory of the crime…
The NCAA has become a black market. At some point, Laremy Tunsil’s petty, common, under-the-table transactions as a college football player at Mississippi metastasized into something else, something that looks suspiciously like a smear campaign and a blackmail attempt. This is the ultimate ill of an old-world system that earns millions for everyone but the players: It left a 21-year-old vulnerable to a vengeful shyster operating in an underworld…
The worst part of this subterranean economy is the way it criminalizes the wrong people for perfectly trivial behavior…
There’s not a person in the pro or college football worlds who doesn’t have a pretty good idea of what happened: how Tunsil probably grew sick of having to grovel to the assistant, who made him feel like a thief for even asking; the growing awareness of the future awaiting him in the NFL coupled with the need-it-now frustration; the peekaboo teasers of wealth to come and overtures from the “runners” for agents trolling for clients, offering to front him what he needed in exchange for the ability to steer him come draft time; followed by the rage and the threats of exposure when the mutual use fell apart with the arrival of Sexton in Tunsil’s life.
… would it be much of a stretch for some prosecutor to go after the NCAA under Todd’s Law the next a Georgia player runs afoul of the unlawful benefits rule?
Before you laugh, let’s not forget the passionate rationale behind the bill, folks.
“That’s what really got most peoples’ dander up,” said Fleming, a rabid Bulldogs fan with undergraduate and law degrees from UGA. “I was disappointed when it happened. But I understand the young man comes from a very humble background. His mother didn’t have funds to properly repair the roof on the trailer she raised him in.”
The law has two possible penalties, one criminal, one civil, Fleming said.
“We plugged it into a law about alumni being overzealous,” he said. “Now it’s a misdemeanor of a high and aggravated nature. It can be up to a year in jail and a $5,000 fine.
“On the civil side, the university can sue the person who does this for any damages sustained, like losing a TV contract, not going to bowl games.”
Or being shut out of a national playoff game because of a star player’s sudden suspension or ineligibility, maybe?
Like I said, yeah, I think I’m kidding. But I can’t quite bring myself to say it would totally surprise me, either. If enough people were pissed off… er, uh, got their dander up about that, it would be good politics, if nothing else – and it’s not like our fair state doesn’t have a track record of going after the NCAA when there’s enough money involved.
Pretty funny, hunh?
Get The Picture 
We used to be cautioned when I was an IRS agent that if you took a bribe then the briber had you for life. What better example was there than TGII. He didn’t even have to piss the guy off, the market did it. The terrible truth is a fix is easy. The NCAA just has to let the kids make money on their own likeness. The schools don’t have to pay them, the boosters and the advertisers will pay them. This is the dumbest thing the NCAA does not understand. No one gives a flying wazoo how much a kid can get on his own. All the NCAA should worry about is that the gamblers are not taking part in the payment. Las Vegas will be more than happy to point out problems in that area. I know this will be a competitive advantage for the Power 5 or even the big market Power 5 teams but hell the playing field is not exactly level now is it.
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This is complete and utter garbage. “This is the ultimate ill of an old-world system that earns millions for everyone but the players…”. Why is it that everyone ignores the fact that the kids receive a significant payment already. To act as if these players are receiving absolutely zero for their efforts is silly. As for the plight of a family struggling financially with a kid in college, well, that’s just tough cookies. How about not sending your child to college if you can not support them? College sports are not a welfare system, nor is attending college a right.
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Whether the player is already receiving a significant payment already is, in my opinion, irrelevant. When Apple or Rolls Royce or Rolex charge a much higher price than their competitors for a similar product, it’s because there are people who are willing to pay that price. If somebody wants to pay Todd Gurley $400 for a couple of autographs or a couple of million to put his face on a box of cereal because he’s famous and popular, then it doesn’t matter that he’s already getting a scholarship. Nobody says Tom Brady can’t get paid for doing a commercial because he’s already receiving a significant payment for playing football for the Patriots. This is no different. Having a scholarship should not prevent a player from getting paid for something else.
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“Significant” is in the eye of the beholder, Skep.
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Yeah. I can pay them about $10-15/hr for their labor if their mammys would just keep them home. And that’s top dollar for hourlies around these parts. ‘Course it’s his business having to try to undercut the local Mexicans if he really needs to work.
Can’t you even put yourself in their place, Skep? I’m sure you can and would soon realize that their family misfortune could be rectified by a future employable person in the house as like what happened to Gurly selling his signature. You would have his Mom deny him going to college? How would that be accomplished? AJ would have never caught a pass at UGA and Todd would still be trying to maintain a repaired trailer instead of both becoming millionaires and hiring you to repair their mansion(s). But you wouldn’t be able to do the job because you are neither black nor do you have a language barrier that would influence your hiring for peanuts.
They have a talent that we want and that’s why they became college students here. I have advocated the Student-Athlete Emergency Fund for solving these problems, but more problems would be created with each specific case; much like letting a union worker receive special dispensation of a special problem, it breaks the written or social contract. Equality of treatment is free (as long as you don’t break the rules that society has already placed in your path). I think that COA will tear down the NCAA amateur rule and have always advocated another way to prevent that, but it all winds up hypocritical where it concerns controlling people’s lives in a free society.
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