Figured I'd weigh in on this national disgrace that is the "college admissions cheating scandal" by stating that this is the very reason why we never cover sports and hopefully never will.
We all pay for colleges. They get their hands on all our tax dollars, from local, state and federal taxes. Most colleges and universities are public and supported with public funds. Even private schools occasionally obtain grants, which also come from YTD (your tax dollars). So there's reason for everyone who sees deductions on their paychecks to be understandably ticked off about this.
But the outrage that's being promoted by mainstream media over this federal filing against these folks (yes, I know...it's People magazine, which is about as lame as they come, but this is the only place I found so far that has ALL of the names of ALL of those charged, and I refuse to even visit any pages owned by any newspaper in New York or Los Angeles; they're not getting my clicks) is of course born of the (very accurate) perception that the two-tier level of "justice" in this country was actually breached with these charges.
All of that being said, this shows exactly why we don't have anything to do with sports, especially school sports.
How's that, Jack?? you ask.
Lemme tell ya.
I've been doing this newspaper thing for over 25 years now; 10 years at other papers and 15 at my own. While working at other papers, of course we had sections or at least pages absolutely full of sports; in fact, there was sometimes more sports than there was real news that actually mattered, like what the local city council or county board was doing with your tax dollars (and god forbid we ever touch upon those "little" boards and councils, like the ambulance service, water provider, local health department and the plan-to-plan-to-plan commissions). You know, stuff that impacts your life daily.
But god forbid even MORE if I didn't put a kid's name in a headline after a big sports event.
I have been verbally assailed more times than I can count by parents who wanted to know why their kid wasn't named in a headline after a big win. At first when these assault occurred, I was scratching my head. The kid, if he or she had a particularly spectacular display during said sports event, was mentioned in the article. The team won. Why would that kid need to be "mentioned" in a headline?
And then I had it explained to me: Those parents were working hard (yes, occasionally manipulating things, as they could) to ensure that when those kids were being recruited for colleges to play their transitory sports there, they NEEDED those names in headlines. It added validity to their kids' sports prowess (as if displaying a name made the kid better able to sink a ball through a hoop) and highlighted that kid's NAME. This gave THEIR kid an edge over someone else's kid. You know, kinda like the people involved in this recent scandal were trying to give their kid an edge over other people's kids. Only with money, not with harassing the local newspaper editor.
I thought it was lame back then and it's even more lame now.
Back in the day, people I know who were smart beyond reason were passed over for scholarships at colleges for the least little thing. And yet I watched people who were dumber than a box of rocks and didn't even have common sense to fall back on getting full ride scholarships to major universities where they were still dumber than a box of rocks, but benefited from the "curve" system to retain their scholarships so they could play their sport. Interestingly, a huge number of these dweebs washed out: They'd get three months into the college thing, then get busted with dope or DUI or something of the sort and get kicked out. Where did their scholarship go? who knows. But no one came back and notified the smart kid who got booted out of scholarship prospects in favor of a sports player that there was a spot open at the school and now that money was freed up, oh nononono. That kid was getting by at a junior college somewhere, where the degree - such as it were - wouldn't make as much difference as a major college or university degree would.
That lends to the term I use for sports, "transitory." Let's look at it like this: A person goes to a college on a vocal music scholarship. One thinks, "What does she do with such a degree? That seems kinda useless. ERRBODY thinks they can sing! What's gunna happen when she gits outta skewl?" But, this individual does well, takes all kinds of related classes (music appreciation, music history, along with academics like composition, sciences, instruction) and when she gets out, she has practical application. If she doesn't specialize (in fields such as, say, music therapy, which is crucial for some children who have challenges or handicaps), she can go to work for studios making commercials; she can get on with an orchestra (conducting is good work, actually); she can teach music (an instrument, or history, or appreciation). It's a lifelong thing; it's something that musician carries with her all her life. When her "ability" starts to fade in later years (like senior citizen years, although our fave singer, Maureen McGovern, is nearing 70 and is still performing), she can teach others (we've known music teachers still going strong in their 80s and even 90s with very active studios). It's a win.
With sports, however, that doesn't quite go that way. A kid is told in grade school or high school that he has ability; he's pushedpushedpushed and someone calls it "talent" when it's little but skill. He gets into college and if he doesn't drink it or dope it away, he MIGHT go on to professional sports. But do you know how microscopic the chances of that are? Very microscopic. And after all those years of pushpushpush, what happens when the "ability" is gone, due to injury, repetitive stress, some other condition inherent in the field that ends a career in a guy's mid-30s? That guy can go on to coach, sure for another decade or two. Annnnnnnnnd....that's about it. There's just not a lot of avenues for someone who relies, not on talent or intellect, but on something solely physical that gives out long before others' 'endowments' do.
So...transitory. That's the reason we call it that. A lifetime of talent, or a couple of years of skill that literally amount to "glory days." Because "days" are all they are. The kids who realize this get to be despondent, depressed, and because they have no other marketable skills, they grow up to be despondent, depressed, gloomy adults...if they grow up at all. There's a lot of arrested development in that sports bunch, too. Don't get me started on how many articles we've produced on a music teacher having inappropriate relations with a student (three) versus how many coaches have done same (lost count, frankly).
And yes, all this does tie in to the big scandal that took over the news cycle this week...until the Christchurch shooter, anyway (we'll get to that in a bit).
That's because our colleges and universities have all become big sports venues when they should be teaching the young mushminded kids some sort of viable skill set that they can put to use in the real world. But that's not what colleges and universities do anymore. They have a handful of the 'usefuls' (doctors, lawyers, various subsets of "business" oriented fields of study) and then the rest are either a bunch of useless perpetual students majoring in garbage like "liberal arts" or worse, or athletes. They're all brainwashed into the libtard mentality that they're somehow better than everyone else with their useless degrees/skills, and they all come out tell the rest of us self-made folks what to do and how to think.
And that's why it's such a shock that there were actually indictments handed down regarding this college admissions cheating scandal. Because pretty much all of the people who were involved in readying the indictments were college grads themselves (lawyers, remember) and, miraculously, they upheld the law and turned on their own.
If only that could be done on a local level...or even on a national level in at least one set of "untouchable" powerful elites (you know to whom I'm referring), we might actually be convinced that there IS some justice to be had in this country.
But that's not the case, and we suspect that the only reason these rich folks were gone after for allegedly buying their kids' way into these prestigious schools is the thing that makes the courts (and the world) go round, fines and fees. Granted, there are a couple of celebs whose careers (such as they were) are probably ruined, but hey...they have money. Offer them a plea deal in exchange for a lot of cash, and the courts rake it in and the celeb goes off with his or her tail between his or her legs, hopefully making an example for others.
But it won't.
Time is short, folks. Did I just tick off a vast reading audience by griping about the bread-and-circuses of sports and entertainment? Sure. Do I care? No. The fact is, if even ONE person sees the sense in this, and that person influences another one or two, and those folks influence yet more...it's worth it. The two-tiered justice system in this country is untenable. It's got to stop. And the only ones who can make it stop are we the people. And the people can't do it if they don't wake up to reality: Life is wasted on sports and entertainment. We'd better start getting it right, acting like responsible adults, or here very soon, we won't be allowed to. It'll be Orwell's 1984, where people are distracted by every little thing and can't deal with reality and the wealthy try to buy their happiness and the uber-wealthy are thrilled to sell it to them with their circuses, while us little people scramble for the crumbs the big people are dropping as they eat their bread.
Come to think of it, that's probably where we already are.
