Primetime Slavery

First the Colored Man must apologize to one and all for not keeping up with my posts during the past few months.  But things have really been hectic, with a new job and responsibilities and travel.  So please bear with me....I promise to improve over the upcoming months.  Now on to business......

It seems that everyone is enthralled with college basketball these past few weeks.  Many offices have betting pools, and even President Obama has gotten into the action with his own brackets of winners and losers.  Personally, the Colored Man is not really a fan of college sports.  If I watch a game, it's usually the last 5-10 minutes of the game, but I must admit, that some of the games can be extremely exciting towards the end.  The players are really pumped and the fans are excited beyond what you might experience at a professional basketball game.  But, the Colored Man will stick with his Boston Celtics!!!!!!and Washington Redskins!!!(by the way, I also have a problem with mascot names such as Redskins, Braves, Indians, etc.)

I have a problem with the atmosphere of football and basketball, whether they be collegiate or professional level games.  It seems to me that each has a plantation mentality to them.  You have a majority of players who are of color, but most of the coaches, at least the head coaches are not of color.  Then you have the bouncy cheerleaders, the Ms. Scarlet's of the plantation cheering the "bucks" from the sidelines.  In professional sports, the players are not allowed to fraternize with the cheerleaders.  But at least the professional athletes are being paid, and being paid well.  Collegiate athletes don't get paid, but they supposedly attain a college degree through their athleticism, which paves the road to middle-class success.

Many of the universities whose teams play at the level of NCAA championships are sitting on billion-dollar endowments, and pay their coaches millions of dollars in salaries and bonuses.  They are able to pay them that type of money due to television fees, merchandise sales, tickets prices, and a plethora of other financial schemes too many to mention.  On the other hand, college professors don't make a tenth of what the coaches make, and don't have the seemingly endless list of assistants to help them.  But college professors work to graduate students, while it would seem that sports coaches work to win games, not necessarily to produce college graduates.

If you visit http://www.ncaa.org/ you will find an interesting piece of research information that was released in 2010.  Based upon this research the Graduation Success Rate (GSR) for Division I students in the years 2000-2003 for Men's Basketball was 65%.  African-American males had a GSR of 60%.  Overall in 2003, only 64% of all men's basketball players graduated from their respective colleges.  From 1995 - 2003 the graduation for basketball improved by almost 11%.

As of this past Tuesday, everyone knew who would be in the round of Sweet Sixteen.  But the Colored Man is confident that not too many people paid any attention to their graduation rates.  If the basketball teams were seeded based on graduation rates, then the complete seeding would be (team's overall GSR is in parentheses after the school's name):

Men's
BYU (100%)
Marquette (91%)
North Carolina (88%)
(tie) Butler (83%)
(tie) Richmond (83%)
(tie) Duke (83%)
Kansas (80%)
Florida State (73%)
Wisconsin (70%)
Ohio State (64%)
San Diego State (58%)
VCU(56%)
(tie) Kentucky (44%)
(tie) Florida (44%)
UConn (31%)
Arizona (20%)

For rates on the women's teams, please visit http://www.tidesport.org/

As I am writing this post, UNC and Kentucky are playing.  Each team has 4 African-American players on the court playing.  Based on statistics, Kentucky will only graduate 2 players, while UNC will graduate about 4 players.  But remember, African-American players have a 60% graduation rate, so really the rate for them is less than their white teammates.  These numbers are dismal and pathetic, which is why the Colored Man is in favor of these college players being paid for their athletic prowess.

Universities are making too much damn money not to set up trust funds or retirement accounts for these players, so that when they are academically dismissed from these various universities after four years of player eligibility, they at least have something to show for all of their blood, sweat, and tears, besides memories and tee-shirts. As I stated earlier, this is a plantation system, based upon free labor put high output, which equals high financial gain for the plantation owner.  Many of these athletes would not even be at their respective universities were it not for their skill on the court, because academically they are not prepared to attend these institutions of higher learning, which leads to a discussion about unequal educational opportunities in America.  Add to that the pressure of sports at this level, and you have a match that is geared towards the student athlete losing.  Forget about the pros, because less than 5% will even get a tryout, let alone actually become a team member.

So, over the next few days as you yell and scream for your favorite team and check out your brackets and dream of how you are going to spend your pool winnings, think about the bigger situation of students earning money for colleges and not leaving the schools with degrees in hand, and no viable future career path.  Ask yourself what is more important; dribbling a basketball or having a college degree?  I am sure that you will agree with the Colored Man....it's better to have a college degree and be able to earn a good living and own a plantation, rather than to work for free on one.