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Good For The Bonnies

By Cyd Zeigler jr.
Outsports.com

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Since the St. Bonaventure men’s basketball team voted to not play their last two games this season, they have been attacked from all sides, by the press and from their own conference, the Atlantic 10.  They’re being called quitters.  The A-10 has called them an embarrassment and will consider dropping the school from the conference at their meeting in April.

Never have I seen the sports world, from top to bottom, get a story so wrong.

Mike Celzic of NBC Sports offered the perfect example:  “If I were an alumnus or contributor to St. Bonaventure, I'd cancel all checks immediately.  They'd never get another penny from me, not because they let an ineligible kid play, but because they let a dozen kids quit playing."

Wait, wait, wait.  Several adults – including the coach of the men’s basketball team and the president of the University – actively and knowingly recruited, signed, and played an illegible player.  They put the whole basketball team at risk of sanction.  They compromised the integrity of the entire athletic program at the school.  And people should be mad because the kids hit the adults where it hurts?

The athletes have, seemingly forever, been the punching bag of the NCAA.  When something goes wrong at a school, the kids get punished.  Academic fraud at Fresno State?  Ban the kids from playing in the postseason.  Violations at Auburn?  Ban the kids from playing on television OR playing in postseason.  No doubt the fate of the players on the Georgia Bulldogs basketball team will be the same once Jim Harrick is gone.

For too long we have all watched the NCAA, ESPN, Jim Rome, and the like make millions – no, billions – of dollars from, essentially, the exploitation of these kids.  They make the rules, bend them when it suits their own interests, refuse to give the kids an inch (or even a penny), then slap the kids when adults like coaches and University presidents screw up.

The St. Bonaventure basketball team had simply had enough.

These kids are being called quitters.  Mitch Albom, a columnist with the Detroit Free Press, launched into a tirade on ESPN about how disgraceful these kids are. 

Lost, it seems, is the whole reason the team voted to do this.  They had been playing with a player deemed ineligible by NCAA regulations.  That player was recruited and signed by coach Jan van Breda Kolff, Athletic Director Gothard Lane, and President Robert J. Wickenheiser.  Not a single player had anything to do with the infraction that drove the A-10 to strip the school of six of their victories and ban them from the conference tournament.

Over and over again, it’s the adults punishing the kids while the adults get to come and go as they please.  Coaches leave teams and schools all the time – witness Mike Price, Dennis Erickson and Dennis Franchione as the ultimate examples.  How many big, bad superstars presently playing in the NBA “quit” on their teams by leaving before they were done with their tenure in college?   

Have you ever heard someone on ESPN raking a player through the coals for leaving their team early for the NBA?  No.

Why?  It’s all about the Benjamins.

Michael Wilbon of the Washington Post and co-host of ESPN’s "Pardon The Interruption" said in his column Wednesday that the adults should have forced the kids to play the game by threatening them with their scholarships.  Typical of the mentality of the men in suits who lord over these kids from their perches on Sports Center:  Hit ‘em in the wallet, Wilbon says (not that the kids have anything in their wallets, given the ridiculously tight NCAA regulations on them making money).

What’s great, though, is that, this time, the kids turned that back at the adults.

The players are the ones having to pay the biggest price.  Now, the schools will have to share a bit of that price as well.  The games they are forfeiting – against Dayton and Massachusetts – would have brought thousands of dollars to those schools in ticket, concessions, memorabilia, etc….  It’s no wonder so many are so angry at these kids – they hit their conference exactly where they’d feel it:  lost revenue. 

Good for them.

If the adults who are pointing the fingers at these kids want to call them quitters, then let the man who has never quit cast the first stone.  How many of them have ended a relationship prematurely because they didn’t feel like going on with it?  Whether it was romantic or professional, we have all quit a job, quit a romance, or even quit on a marriage, because we were done with it.

Suddenly, twelve kids deciding not to play two basketball games seems to have shaken the fiber of college sports.

Yet, it really should be no wonder that, when the kids at St. Bonaventure were told their season was over, they decided to offer the ultimate “fuck you.”  What is truly amazing is that it took so long for a team to do it.

These kids did not quit, they made a statement.  They’re tired of being the punching bag of the NCAA.  They’re tired of being taken advantage of by media outlets like ESPN and CBS, who make many millions of dollars per year off of college basketball – not a cent of which goes back to the players.  It’s time the Atlantic 10, the NCAA, and the tons of media outlets raking these kids across the coals stopped pointing fingers at these dozen kids, and started looking at the real problems with how the NCAA is run that might drive another team to do this.

It’s doubtful, though.  The kids have always been the easy ones to dump on in the NCAA.  As long as ESPN takes the side of the adults, the players will continue to be the adults’ punching bag in the world of college sports.

These kids did not quit – the adults, from those at their own school to those with the Atlantic 10, failed them.

Finally though, for once, the kids got to have the last say.