August 20, 2004 4:22 AM

And you thought indentured servitude was dead

Skier feels he owes it to football teammates

There are a lot of people in the NCAA hierarchy who are still trying to sell snake oil. Sure, they'll tell you, it's about the student-athletes and the competition that prepares them for great things in life. Yeah, right. Ask Jeremy Bloom if he's buying that load of crap.

BOULDER, Colo. -- Colorado wide receiver Jeremy Bloom decided Wednesday to keep fighting the NCAA for the right to accept commercial ski endorsements while playing college football.

Bloom, a world-champion freestyle skier, asked the university to appeal the NCAA's latest ruling that he would be ineligible to play college football if he accepts endorsements.

Bloom has been fighting the NCAA for two years and initially told family members he did not want to go through another appeal after losing another round this week.

"I do plan on going through with the final appeal. I owe it to my teammates, my coaches, and myself, to fight this until the end," Bloom said in a statement from Santiago, Chile, where he is training with the U.S. Ski Team.

So what, exactly, is the problem here? Are the overfed white men who rule the NCAA upset that someone besides themselves is making money? There is an obscene amount of money to be made in NCAA Division I football- by the schools, the sponsors-everyone but the players, who, outside of their scholarships sometimes live in the sort of poverty normally ascribed to indentured servants.

The NCAA will argue that the players are compensated with the opportunity to get a free college education, but there is nothing free about that education. At a Division I football factory, the term "student-athlete" gets it 180 degrees backward. Football players make money for everyone but themselves- and frankly, the NCAA likes it that way- never mind the fact that education is a distant second priority.

Jeremy Bloom is blessed to be a multi-talented athlete- a defensive back at the University of Colorado and a world-class freestyle skier. Why should he not be allowed the opportunity to compete at both? The money he makes from skiing endorsement helps to finance his freestyle training, and it has nothing to do with playing college football. He is willing to make the sacrifices necessary to play Division I football and compete in international freestyle skiing. You'd think the NCAA would be first in line to celebrate that sort of diversity of pursuits. After all, isn't the college experience supposed to be about broadening one's horizons? Or, if you happen to sit on the NCAA's equivalent of Mt. Olympus, is it really all about power and control and- most of all- MONEY.

Memo to the NCAA and the officious, overfed white men who rule it: WAKE UP AND SMELL THE CAT LITTER, WILLYA?? How about y'all removing your anteriors from your posteriors and admitting that your standard of "amateurism" really means that everyone makes money except the athletes actually playing the games? Let Jeremy Bloom play; what do you have to lose but your cloying hypocrisy?

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This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on August 20, 2004 4:22 AM.

Things look different here was the previous entry in this blog.

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