Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Pay college football players!

I love it when somebody proposes something I was writing columns about 20 years ago. Here's Michael Lewis, of "Moneyball" fame, in the NYT, no less -- a former political writer who figured out writing about sports was a better gig, a lesson I've learned only in an amateurish way, doing it for free for a blog -- arguing that since college football generates so much money, the players who are the absolutely essential key to the whole scam ought to get paid too. It would eliminate a great deal of hypocrisy that stems, as Michael neglected to mention, from an old European aristocratic dated ideal -- gentlemen do not take money to play games -- that has somehow become enshrined in modern collegiate sports. Back when the ideal was promulgated, however, most of those who went to college came from wealthy families and could afford to look down their noses at people who actually expected to do -- ugh! -- actual work or something productive in exchange for filthy lucre.