USC freshman (yes, freshman) Emilio Gomez dominated in his 6-2, 6-1 win.  Nice to see our tennis bums burning (west)wood again (and again and again and...)

 Link to story: No. 7 USC Men Victorious Over No. 6 Bruins

 Don't forget these guys are back to back National Champs (2009 and 2010) so let's not overlook them here! 

Let's push hard for a Three-Pete!  THE LA TENNIS MONOPOLY IS OVER HERE!

FIGHT ON!

I know I'm starting to sound like a broken record in my advocacy that collegiate athletics should drop the fiction of amateurism the same way that Olympic athletes have been allowed to...

...i.e. - what’s wrong with Michael Phelps doing Visa commercials? Nothing!  So why can’t Denard Robinson?

BUT, even though I’d been wondering whether the NCAA sanctions at SC would be “one bridge too far” that might  trigger reevaluating amateurism status, it turns out in this article that it might be Westwood High that does it instead!

O'Bannon was a basketball star at UCLA in the 1990s, but for the last few months he's been a lead plaintiff in a class-action antitrust lawsuit against the NCAA. The suit claims that the NCAA should have paid he [sic] and his fellow big-time athletes for the use of their likenesses in video games.

But as Jon King, the lead lawyer for the players, said "the case has much broader implications." That is to say, while the train is leaving the station on the side track of video games, the destination may well be the express end of amateurism -- that vestige from the nineteenth century, one almost unique to sport -- which postulates that athletes should happily perform for free, while everybody else in the game gets well compensated.

A really refreshing article about how the NCAA system makes Reggie Bush out to be the bad guy when the amateur athletic system of orcement is culpable and hypocritical.

But here’s what matters most: Bush has become the fall guy for a Division 1 football system that bankrupts its players while pouring money into the pockets of fat cats in executive suites. Rather than blame Bush, we should blame the system, which is in desperate need of an overhaul.

What I appreciate about the viewpoint is not saying that we're piling on too much, but instead saying that the system is rigged to begin with and those doing the rigging are at fault.

The line between amateur and professional football has never been so hazy, and the concept of the innocent “student athletes” playing for the pride of old Harvard was abandoned decades ago. The game is now a business, and the only people who don’t take a cut are the players. Instead, many of them are manipulated by greedy agents and corrupt coaches.

 

“Reggie Bush makes a little bit of money and somehow he’s made out to be the only bad guy in this, which seems ridiculous to me,” says Kevin Carey, policy director at Education Sector, a Washington think tank. “He was generating fantastic amounts of money for USC —both for the coaches and the university, in the form of alumni contributions—as well as for the people who run ESPN. And yet somehow he’s being shamed for getting a little value for what he’s contributing. The hypocrisy is mind-boggling.”

It supports my contention that collegiate athletics should go the same way "amatuerism" went in the Olympics.

Being in the legal profession myself, I have very mixed feelings about this article.

I think it states what's become obvious: That the NCAA has become such an overbearing governing body that avoiding litigiousness is now impossible.  Worse, different counsel (law firms) are now required for schools and coaches in order to protect both of them indpendently.

Attorneys are involved in nearly every aspect of NCAA inquiries. Many of the NCAA's investigators went to law school, as did many university compliance officers and athletic directors. Three attorneys, three law professors and four athletic administrators with juris doctorates sit on the 10-member Committee on Infractions.

A friend just sent me this shot today from campus.  take a look at what documentation the players must brieng to these orientations!

Football Compliance Schedule

This is nonsense.  It strikes me as a time when we should do to collegiate amateur athletics what we did to the Olympics...allow participants to receive financial benefits for their capabilities.  This may even keep kids in school longer too.  At any rate, we should burden our universities with the cost of policing this stuff and then endure rants about how much money is siphoned by athletics.

I'm just saying...