Writing at NYT about the sanctions against UCLA’s blue-chip basketball recruit, Shabazz Muhammad, whose family was given $1,600 by a financial adviser to pay for a scouting trip when Muhammad was in the 7th grade, Joe Nocera claims:
There is something else. Three of the most high-profile eligibility cases this basketball season — Muhammad, Nerlens Noel at Kentucky and Rodney Purvis at North Carolina State — are African-American. Five Ohio State football players who were suspended for trading some of their Ohio State gear for tattoos in 2010 were African-American. Ditto the 14 North Carolina football players who got embroiled in a scandal two years ago.
When I asked Stacey Osburn at the N.C.A.A. whether white players ever had such problems with the N.C.A.A., she insisted they did. Yet somehow, the high-profile cases almost always seem to involve blacks.
Could it be that the N.C.A.A. rules are inherently discriminatory, or that its investigators are primed to think the worst of talented black football and basketball players, even before an inquiry?
Nah. Must just be a coincidence.
So then it must be inherently discriminatory that whites are underrepresented in college athletics.
Most college athletes are black. And among the most heavily-recruited college athletes, an even higher percentage would be expected to be so. Eight of the 32 first round selections from the 2012 NFL Draft were white. Three of 30 NBA first-rounders in this year’s draft were white. Eleven percent of first-round picks in these two sports are white – 89% are black. The bluest of chips are black, and it stands to reason that they attend the highest-profile schools which are competing most doggedly for top-notch recruits. This would translate into more violations. I’m not sure how Nocera misses this connection.
There are other factors at play. Whites are also more likely to be financially secure and thus not need the kind of financial help that ends up causing problems down the road. Another reasonable argument here is that the parents of white athletes are more likely to have gone to college. Either their fathers navigated the recruiting process if and when they were athletes, or they are more cognizant of the rules and regulations regarding recruiting violations.
If Nocera wants to call this “inherently discriminatory” he can. That term has been maligned plenty enough that another such misuse won’t make it any worse. But it’s a function of a lot of factors with one of those factors *not* being the purposeful discrimination against black athletes. Regardless of who is being raked over the coals for these violations, the system is flawed.
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He misses it because he wants to.
The inner cities have a whole class of guys who make their living as substitute fathers for adolescent athletes of promise, inducing loyalty in the lads for which the quasi-agents get paid off in murky ways by the colleges they funnels the boys to.
I left a comment over there making your point. Let’s see how fast it gets rejected . . .
One of the big benefits to being a college athlete is that people who are fans of that college team are more likely to hire you for any job. Most former college athletes end up working regular jobs.
“Could it be……. *racism?!!*”
Nocera illustrates the fundamental Stalinism of liberalism. There can’t just be a situation, or a poorly handled situation, there has to be some deep, lurking evil that needs to be exposed, with terrible consequences for the wreckers and saboteurs.
Chuck, you offer the typical moderate defense of blacks- they are poorer and thus likely to commit more economic indiscretions. But the vast body of empirical evidence says blacks just don’t comply with rules the way whites do.
We have an enire edifice of law and culture to make sure blacks get the best possible treatment and yet blacks and their supporters are not happy if they *ever* get punished for *anything*.
No one mentions the ridiculousness of a 7th grade boy, likely no academic superstar, going to visit a college. The college athletics complex exists mainly to give people some stupid thing to talk about and get excited about, but also largely to elevate blacks. Who are victimized by it if they don’t get white-glove treatment the whole way.
Two observations.
1. Showing more than one bumper sticker on the same theme marks the car’s owner a very uninteresting person.
2. May I ask our model minority East Asian immigrants to please acculturate to the Western custom of eating soup without slurping it loudly?
@Thrasymachus
“Nocera illustrates the fundamental Stalinism of liberalism. There can’t just be a situation, or a poorly handled situation, there has to be some deep, lurking evil that needs to be exposed, with terrible consequences for the wreckers and saboteurs.”
True. This has an air of “conspiracy theory”to it. But that can’t be, only the people liberals don;t like are “paranoid” and “conspiracy theorists.”
I think the issue here is inherent dopeness not inherent discrimination.
@Thrasymachus
“Nocera illustrates the fundamental Stalinism of liberalism. There can’t just be a situation, or a poorly handled situation, there has to be some deep, lurking evil that needs to be exposed, with terrible consequences for the wreckers and saboteurs.”
True. This has an air of “conspiracy theory”to it. But that can’t be, only the people liberals don;t like are “paranoid” and “conspiracy theorists.”
Everything they say is a lie, they project all of their own hatred and weakness onto their enemies
The NCAA goes after poor kids and leaves rich kids alone. Most of their investigations are about players “taking” money and these offers are almost always more attractive to poor kids than to rich kids.
I’m glad Nocera is not connecting a trend of corruption in NCAA athletetic recruiting or treatment by colleges to the trend of corruption investigations and convictions of black politicians. Might just be a coincidence that one group seems to be easier to bribe.
3 comments in . . . still he hasn’t posted them. i wonder how Steve’s comment slipped through.
I wish they would just end the farce of NCAA football and basketball being this “pure” thing where the delicate little ghetto snowflakes have to be protected from dirty money. Just admit the NCAA is what it is: the minor leagues of the NFL and NBA. Pay the players on a minor league level. Professional teams could each adopt a university as, in effect, a farm team. Let the cash flow legally. Since nobody really gives a damn about the thousands of these kids that get discarded along the way, let them at least make a few bucks in the “college minor leagues” before they fail to make the cut and get thrown away with nothing.
On the whole, I agree with you. Plus, the black athletes are more likely to take benefits because they are conditioned to feel they are owed something – it’s especially true of some of their parents (i.e., Cam Newton’s father blatantly shopping him around on the belief that he was owed).
However, the Muhammed situation seemed to be oddly handled by the NCAA in a way that seemed contemptuous. It’s not like the family was on the take – they were just having expenses paid to visit a couple schools that they were looking at for him to attend. Granted, there are rules on that, and only 5 official paid visits (paid by the schools themselves) are allowed and only within specified times, but they obviously had advice and interpretations as to why this person could provide expenses for an unofficial visit, and THEY SUBMITTED IT TO THE NCAA IN ADVANCE with their explanation of why it was legal. Now, it’s fine if the NCAA later disagrees with that rules interpretation, but they could have just said said so quickly and given him the small penalty (3 games) and been done with it. Instead, they left him out there to twist in the wind forever with the implication that there was something deeper and more nefarious.
They really seemed to go out of their way to take as long as possible on the assumption that he was otherwise on the take somehow, and they were bound and determined to find it, even if they had no evidence or reason to suspect it beyond him being a really high profile black athlete named Muhammed.
That said, as to why you would never see this particular situation with a white kid, it’s because white kids (other than Kevin Love and his weird father) virtually never plan or expect to be “one and done” players, so they don’t shop around endlessly trying to find the absolute perfect situation for maximum exposure in the first year. They just pick 3 or 4 or 5 schools that seem solid and where they like the coach, and then visit those schools officially (i.e., visits paid by the school). In those cases where they go unofficially or where the parent wants to be there too, they generally have the funds to pay for it themselves.
There is a simple solution to this “problem”, STOP THE F’IN SPORTS SCHOLARSHIPS!
If these campuses of higher learning actually concentrated on that, LEARNING, this ludicrous practice of wasting huge sums of money and scholastic opportunity on someone who can barely read. This will never happen of course, but there it is right there in front of anyone who wants to look. The solution to the problem is as obvious as not giving candy-bars to a 300 lb 10 year old diabetic. Stop feeding the beast.
talk about not being able to read!… sorry, had more than a few phone calls while i wrote my rant. but you get the gist.
In the post, Chuck wrote: “Eight of the 32 first round selections from the 2012 NFL Draft were black. Three of 30 NBA first-rounders in this year’s draft were white.” I dunno, but that may be a typo. Perhaps 8 of 32 were white?
Here’s a fun comment that “Silver” posted last night at iSteve:
I think Silver’s wrong about “white people screwing themselves.” As Sailer has pointed out many times, it makes more sense to view this as part of an ongoing status competition — a natural activity for social primates like us. By slamming the evil and low-class Other, anti-racist SWPLs are touting their rather exclusive membership in the Club of Compassionate and Honorable Whites.
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