You thought the old plantation system boasting enslaved African workers creating huge super-profits for the owners and overseers died at the end of the Civil War? Think again.
Regional newspapers and other various media aroused the local citizenry into righteous anger against several high profile community members who had illegally and inappropriately gone into many African American neighborhoods and convinced talented black youth, mainly males, to travel long distances from their homes and families in order to better their lives.
Newspapers claimed these few notables, true examples of scum of the earth it was said, allegedly promised the black youths rewards and riches beyond their wildest dreams-their lives forever altered-just given the chance to develop and showcase their skills and talents.
It was said some even provided the black youths food, shelter and money to help them on their journey. It was an outrageous form of moral corruption and bribery many charged.
Once it became known these “nefarious” activities were taking place governing bodies and associations stepped in and threatened, at a minimum, to prosecute the notables and at worst drive them from the region and deny them employment.
In some cases the local hysteria became so great citizens vowed even to take revenge against those who only knew of plans by some blacks to relocate, but that they had abandoned their moral and civic duties and had done nothing to inform authorities.
Of course the youth themselves, if caught, would suffer dire consequences and at the very least be held up to public ridicule.
But we’re not referring here to Ohio State football coach Jim Tressell, who recently was charged by college athletics governing body, the NCAA, with failing to inform them that high profile members of the football team had bartered personal possessions, notably football memorabilia, with a local merchant in exchange for tattoos.
Nor are we talking about former University of Tennessee basketball coach Bruce Pearl who was fired for numerous NCAA violations, nor Shann Hart, women’s basketball coach at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis (UIPUI) who was also fired for recruiting violations, nor are we talking about any of the other numerous coaches, colleges and athletes in some way sanctioned for violating the moral conscience of America’s collegiate athletic governing body.
Actually the above references are to Delia Webster, the proprietor of the formerly highly successful Lexington, Kentucky Female Missionary Society, a school for the education of young women.
In the Fall of 1844 she and a friend, Calvin Fairbank, rented a carriage to take Lewis Hyden and his family to nearby Maysville, and then across the Ohio River to Ripley, Ohio to dispatch them to the Underground Railroad. Webster and Fairbank were caught, tried and convicted.
Later, after serving her sentence Webster, with money primarily from abolitionists purchased a small farm in Trimble County, Kentucky. Soon, once again, the enslaved workers began to disappear from nearby plantations.
The Louisville Democrat, then the areas most prestigious newspaper, reported that strange night-time riverboat landings at Websters’ property had taken place and since she had arrived nearly $30,000 worth of blacks had vanished.
On February 6, 1853 several state legislators and leading members of the legal community convened a meeting to decide what to do about Webster and her “immoral” efforts to encourage and abet runaway slaves.
On March 7, they delivered their ultimatum: “Unless you consent forthwith to sell us your plantation, and speedily leave the State, no more to return, you will be mobbed at a dead hour of the night. And the threats of the masses executed.”
Ultimately, after another brief jail stint, Webster sold her property and left the state.
Do you suppose any of this sounds in anyway familiar to Tressel, Pearl and Hart?
But the Underground Railroad-college athletics analogy only goes so far. After all Hart received $300,000 after school officials changed the locks at the UIPIU field house-a far better deal than Delia Webster received (but just a pittance compared to what Pearl walked away with.)
And in the modern context, more often than not the coaches are in bed with the NCAA.
However, if you examine the economic and social relationships that exist today between college athletes, including women and ahtletes of all races, and the colleges for whom they play and the NCAA, it is quite clear a system of neo-plantationism is not only alive and well, but is assumed by most US citizens to be a perfectly normal and logical way of doing business; just as slavery once was considered a century and a half ago.
Possibly the most egregious action by the NCAA in recent memory was this years suspension from conference tournament play of Perry JonesIII, Baylor basketball standout. The reason for Jones suspension? Several years ago his mother received several loans, which she paid back in a timely manner, from Jones’s AAU coach. The issue had nothing top do with Baylor University but the NCAA suspended him anyway.
Another typical decision from the NCAA caused Dallas Cowboy wide receiver Dez Bryant to be suspended for most of his 2009 senior year at Oklahoma State because he lied to officials when he denied he had attended Deion Sanders Prime Time Training Camp.
If the NCAA were in charge of awarding the Nobel Prize they’d strip Einstein of his award for expounding the Theory of General Relativity because he consulted with his friend and former classmate Marcel Grossman and others during his research.
Furthermore if you extend the logic of the NCAA’s Dez Bryant decision every high school athlete in the nation who ever attended any of the hundreds of summer sports camps owned, operated or participated in by virtually hundreds, if not thousands of current and former professional athletes they would be declared ineligible for college athletics.
Nationally esteemed and former college basketball coach Bob Knight recently quipped during a March Madness telecast, ”If the NCAA had been in charge of the Normandy invasion, we’d have been fighting in Turkey.”
Surprisingly one of today’s biggest critics of the NCAA is its founder, Walter Byers.
In his 1997, Unsportsmanlike Conduct: Exploiting College Athletes, Byers writes:
The current… (NCAA) presidential reform movement, originally dedicated to change, now has endorsed the status quo. It started out with a show of force under the leadership of John Ryan, then the president of Indiana University, who successfully managed the NCAA’s special Integrity Commission of 1985. Today, the NCAA President’s Commission is preoccupied with tightening a few loose bolts in a worn machine, firmly committed to the neoplantation belief that the enormous proceeds from college games belong to the overseers (the administrators) and supervisors (coaches). The plantation workers performing in the arena may receive only those benefits authorized by the overseers. This system is so biased against human nature and simple fairness in light of today’s high dollar, commercialized marketplace that the ever increasing (NCAA violation ed.) cases…emerge in the current environment as mostly an indictment of the system itself.
Another words, Byers goes on to say, the only reason so many practices in regards to college athletics are illegal, “is because we say they are.”
But Byers protests are somewhat self-serving. Since the inception of the NCAA its apparent purpose was to keep athletes in penury.
Rene Matison, a former all American athlete at the University of New Mexico in track and field during the mid-1960’s remembered, “Well back then things were different. All we received was a $15 a month stipend out of which we were expected to do all the essentials including laundry. It was very difficult.”
Consider the Reggie Bush imbroglio. In June of 2010 the NCAA handed out a stiff penalty to USC, they’re denied post-season play for two years and loose ten scholarships because it was revealed that Bush’s mother and step-father were provided a house in San Diego in exchange for Bush signing with an agent.
In virtually every other US industry, even though they are actually bribes, it is regarded not only moral but a sign of compassion to provide housing and transportation subsidies to up and coming quality management employees.
But Bush, even though he simply availed himself of what management employees throughout America regularly receive, because he labored on an NCAA plantation was vilified in the press and ultimately forced to return his richly deserved Heisman Trophy.
By comparison what Division I football or basketball coach doesn’t receive substantial housing and transportation bonuses from the schools’ alumnae associations?
Over the years there have been numerous suggestions proposed for the revamping of college athletics.
Suggestions rang from making college athletes state employees or Ralph Nader’s proposal of doing away with athletic scholarships, while others propose eliminating the NCAA altogether.
Naturally the NCAA officials aren’t having it. They’re as happy as fat rats in a cheese factory.
But the writing’s on the wall. Too many people are complaining. At some point (and it’s likely congress will ultimately get involved) college athletes, at least at the highest levels, will have to be paid.
Posted by TheBlackList –
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