SI: Oklahoma State football players got sex, drugs and money

Podunk or SI, doesn't make a damn bit of difference. Not every story has to be about everything. Maybe other SI reporters are at less advanced points on their exposes. So what if SI singled out one university in this case. If the information is solid, it sure in the fuck is a story. How can you be against journalism that uncovers things in widespread detail? Fuck, if it's happening in your coverage area too, why the hell aren't you hunkering down and breaking your own shit. Your whole point is bewildering to me. Should SI wait to do a story untill it details things that have gone on at 100 schools?

 

I would think the financial incentive was there back then, as well. There may be lots more zeroes these days, but that doesn't mean there wasn't money to be made.

Also, re: this "laundry money" loss ... I'm not sure when, but since that was taken away the NCAA began allowing scholarship athletes to receive, in addition to their school-provided package, the full Pell Grant (if they're eligible, which quite a few of them are). That can run upwards of $5,000+ per year. Athletes are also eligible to draw from the NCAA's Special Assistance Fund and the NCAA's Opportunity Fund. I know it's common practice to bemoan those poor student athletes and their poverty, but they're not destitute. Note that I am not saying I'm just fine and dandy with the NCAA cartel, I'm just pointing out that we should be accurate when discussing how impoverished (or not) these student-athletes are.

 

Conversely, it has become much more expensive to win.

But hire these players as university employees with a 4/5 year contract with free tuition as an option. Lower sports or 78th man on the roster might only get $2,000 a year. Clowney might be getting $150,000 a year.

Either use a stepped pay scale or just throw money at the players at will.

 

According to this story, athletes were allowed to receive Pell Grants starting in 2004.

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/sports/college/football/story/2011-08-28/College-football-players-collecting-millions-in-grants/50170388/1

The special assistance fund started in '91 and the opportunity fund started in '03.

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/sports/college/2003-12-23-ncaa-athlete-welfare_x.htm

So while they now have some assistance, the stories of Chris Webber not being able to afford a burger while seeing his jersey being sold are still relevant for the time period when it happened.

 

Players could get Pell Grants much earlier than that. The Miami Pell Grant scandal was in 1995.

And the Webber story resonates, unless you overlook the fact he was getting six figures from Ed Martin.

 

This blog post by former SI writer/reporter/fact checker John Walters is worth your time.

http://mediumhappy.com/?p=4010

 

An aside: the most dangerous writer to fact-check, in terms of his being loose with the facts? And all of the bold-faced names above know this: Rick Reilly. We all loved him. We all loathed fact-checking him.)

 

The sex story isn't up yet. SI is such a tease.

 

Got two words: Yahoo. Alabama.

Much more detail. Nobody's reading that saying "Oh, that happens everywhere, even at the D-II school I went to."

Again, if you have a five-part series and you read two whole stories in the series without finding anything you find blatantly out of the norm, then you have an issue. It's becoming quite clear that the facts of the stories were not vetted thoroughly enough. Was the story idea equally poorly vetted?

 

Now that would be one to fact-check!

 

Indeed. I was about to post this myself.

Good stuff there.

 

Baron, are you familiar with the difference between these things called "the present tense" and "the past tense"?