Kick Out the Sports, Motherfucker!!!
by Bob Cook

Bob Cook's weekly ruminations on sports will appear Mondays in Flak.

Pity the oppressed college booster. With a heart as large as his bank account, his love for his alma mater — or wished-for alma mater — as big as the longhorn hood ornament on his El Dorado, he is willing and able to do anything for the poor charity cases known as college athletes.

And for what? In exchange for his devotion and his hundred-dollar handshakes, he gets a reputation as a sleaze merchant, an even lower form of a life than a shoe company representative. He gets blamed for putting college programs on NCAA probation. Current Sacramento King Chris Webber, according to a grand jury indictment, lied under oath rather than admit that while a Fab Five hype-o-matic basketball player for the University of Michigan, he took money from a caring, generous auto worker who wanted to share the wealth he gained running numbers. Hey, C-Webb, how about a "thank you" instead, and maybe a little help paying for your ex-sugar daddy‘s lawyer, huh, Mr. NBA Max Contract?

Webber, if he indeed is lying about how much money he got from booster Ed Martin, may well have been motivated by the fact that America and the NCAA still have a collective myocardial infarction about athletes getting a little cabbage in return for their sweat and ability to attract a lucrative TV contract. (The admissions by other players that they accepted money from Martin was the impetus for Michigan to put its own program on probation and for the school to strip the Fab Five era's records from its history — like the stock market in the 1990s, it's an event that now, statistically, creates the illusion the era didn‘t exist.) NCAA rules don't even allow athletes to work during the school year — doing anything! Sure, they get a scholarship, at least the football and basketball players do — and that's what we're discussing here, given that except for a few hockey boosters at some schools, other sports aren't exactly teeming with boosters willing to give players $2,000 a week for a summer job turning on and off the arena lights. But a scholarship doesn't buy pizza. "That'll be $20, sir." "Just put it on my scholarship."

College programs are never going to pay their athletes. Even the most elite programs have the financial sense and spending restraint of Elton John, so there's not a lot of money to spend. Plus the number of committees they'd appoint and length of their meetings would guarantee nothing gets done.

It is here we get back to the boosters. Why not tap into their largesse? Why not legitimize what they're already doing? Why not free boosters from drinking the bathtub gin of secret negotiation in the speakeasies of athlete-payment Prohibition and let them sip the premium beer of open relationships in the sunlit taverns of athlete-payment legalization?

Look at how the case of Albert Means might have changed if boosters could just ante up without fear. Means was a hotshot defensive lineman playing high-school ball in Memphis, Tenn., in Southeastern Conference territory, where you can't enter a bank boardroom without tripping over a booster. His high school coach put Means' services up for bid, and a University of Alabama booster named Logan Young won the bidding at $200,000. Of course, Means wasn't aware this was going on, much less that someone was willing to pay 200 grand to watch him go beat the shit out people for a particular college. The coach and an assistant — who ratted out the plan when he didn't get his cut of the money — already have been sentenced for conspiracy. Means went to Alabama, transferred back home to the University of Memphis and became academically ineligible. The FBI is still investigating the case.

Now let's get out of bizarro world. Under the boosters-run-free scenario, the cash flow is diverted past Means' opportunist coach, flowing right to the source. Means' family gets a nice bonus — something to build on in case the pro thing doesn't turn out — his high school coaches don't do the perp walk, Young is a hero instead of a scoundrel and the FBI gets more time to spend clumsily investigating terrorism. Everybody's a winner! And it even helps the Bush tax plan — another person added to the ranks of the wealthy who get a big tax break. Big-money transfers to athletes could be an effective strategy to expand the Republican base.

Of course, you say, won't athletes be exploited by scoundrels if boosters are giving free rein? Yeah, probably some will. But athletes are pretty much exploited anyway, if University of Cincinnati basketball players' graduation rate is any indication. At least the athletes themselves can get in on some of the action in the meantime. Free the boosters!

E-mail Bob Cook at bobc@flakmag.com.