{"id":572818,"date":"2021-06-24T13:07:34","date_gmt":"2021-06-24T17:07:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=572818"},"modified":"2021-06-24T13:07:37","modified_gmt":"2021-06-24T17:07:37","slug":"opinion-opposition-to-the-ncaa-has-unified-the-country-like-few-things-could","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/opinion-opposition-to-the-ncaa-has-unified-the-country-like-few-things-could\/","title":{"rendered":"OPINION: Opposition To The NCAA Has Unified The Country Like Few Things Could"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">26<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fopinion-opposition-to-the-ncaa-has-unified-the-country-like-few-things-could%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=572818&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/GettyImages-466914234.jpg?w=1200&#038;h=800&#038;ixlib=react-9.0.3\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\"  style=\"display:none\"><\/div>\n<p><span>At the 1987 Orange Bowl, Oklahoma linebacker Brian Bosworth, who at the time was serving a suspension for a positive steroid test, stood on the OU sideline sporting a T-shirt that rendered the letters \u201cNCAA\u201d as an acronym for \u201cNational Communists Against Athletes.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Sure, the Boz was ultimately a cartoon character and failed NFLer who is best remembered for being trucked by Bo Jackson on Monday Night Football, but on that occasion, his T-shirt tapped into a larger zeitgeist. Nothing brings people together like contempt for the NCAA.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>In an era marked by division and discord, our nation briefly came together this week to dunk on an organization built on exploiting an entire underclass while producing nothing of value itself \u2014 and in this case, I don\u2019t mean the U.S. government.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>In a unanimous 9-0 ruling, the Supreme Court declared that the NCAA is running afoul of antitrust laws in restricting compensation for student-athletes. Neil Gorsuch wrote the opinion, stating that \u201cto the extent [the NCAA] <\/span><span>means to propose a sort of judicially ordained immunity from the terms of <\/span><span>the Sherman Act<\/span><span> for its restraints of trade\u2014that we should overlook its restrictions because they happen to fall at the intersection of higher education, sports, and money\u2014we cannot agree.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>But it was Brett Kavanaugh\u2019s fiery concurrence that has garnered the most attention. He wrote: \u201c<\/span><span>The bottom line is that the NCAA and its member colleges are suppressing the pay of student athletes who collectively generate billions of dollars in revenues for colleges every year. Those enormous sums of money flow to seemingly everyone except the student athletes. College presidents, athletic directors, coaches, conference commissioners, and NCAA executives take in six- and seven-figure salaries. Colleges build lavish new facilities. But the student athletes who generate the revenues, many of whom are African American and from lower-income backgrounds, end up with little or nothing.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>That\u2019ll leave a mark. And it should.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>The nation joined the court in a nearly unanimous rebuke of the NCAA. Twitter, usually a cesspit of division and hatred, rejoiced in unison (with the organization\u2019s representatives providing a lonely voice of dissent). Liberals who had condemned Kavanaugh a year and a half ago as a sexual assaulter hailed his opinion, even as they couched their praise in terms of a stopped clock, blind pig, etc.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Commentator Jay Bilas, a college athlete himself and a lawyer by training, has long been one of the NCAA\u2019s harshest and most eloquent critics. He tweeted: \u201c<\/span><span>Hey NCAA: If you\u2019re constantly in litigation over your restrictive policies on athlete compensation, perhaps the athletes are not the problem. Perhaps your policies are the problem. Perhaps you should change them to allow athletes the same economic rights as everyone else.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>And further: \u201cAthletes having economic rights isn\u2019t \u2018chaos.\u2019 It\u2019s just business. The NCAA\u2019s intentional inaction makes it seem chaotic. This is multi-billion dollar industry, and athletes deserve to participate in it. It\u2019s a civil rights issue.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>As is often the case, the South Park guys \u2014 modern-day prophets and heralds of societal decline \u2014 had long since nailed the ongoing absurdity of the NCAA business model with their 2011 episode \u201cCrack Baby Athletic Association\u201d in which Cartman dons the attire of an antebellum slave owner and seeks information from the University of Colorado president on how to exploit the image and likeness of unpaid labor. The episode also depicts the head of EA Sports, a co-conspirator in the NCAA\u2019s corrupt exploitation racket, as a cigar-chomping plantation owner.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>I had long maintained that a four-year scholarship accompanied by free room and board constituted significant payment to student-athletes, and that simply caving to the demands of a vocal minority and treating football players as employees violated the spirit of intercollegiate athletics. But that was na\u00efve thinking.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>I\u2019ve come to see the entire NCAA model as a metaphor for our corrupt age: A cabal of do-nothing oligarchs buoyed by a bloated bureaucracy prospers, while the producers are exploited.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>It may prove to be a mere speed bump on the highway to hell that the country is currently barreling down, but the fact that the court and the nation as a whole have come together to reject this line of thinking has filled me with that rarest of feelings: hope.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><i>The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author\u2019s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.<\/i><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><i>The Daily Wire is one of America\u2019s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a\u00a0<\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/subscribe\"><span class=\"s1\"><i>member<\/i><\/span><\/a><i>.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At the 1987 Orange Bowl, Oklahoma linebacker Brian Bosworth, who at the time was serving a suspension for a positive steroid test, stood on the OU sideline sporting a T-shirt &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2281222,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/GettyImages-466914234.jpg?w=1200&h=800&ixlib=react-9.0.3","fifu_image_alt":"OPINION: Opposition To The NCAA Has Unified The Country Like Few Things Could","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-572818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/GettyImages-466914234.jpg?w=1200&h=800&ixlib=react-9.0.3","fifu_image_alt":"OPINION: Opposition To The NCAA Has Unified The Country Like Few Things Could","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=572818"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572818\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2281222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=572818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=572818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=572818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}