Sixers rookie and former LSU star Ben Simmons hasn’t held back in his criticism of the NCAA. A new documentary on Simmons features him laying into the NCAA, saying that the organization is “f*cked up.” He especially cited the fact that athletes don’t get paid, as he remarked “Don’t say I’m an amateur and make me take pictures and sign stuff and go make hundreds of thousands of millions of dollars off one person.”
Word of this must have gotten back to NCAA president Mark Emmert, who was understandably unhappy with Simmons’ comments. Emmert made it a point to fire back at one of the complaints that Simmons had: that athletes “go to school” under the guise of getting an education, when really, they’re just there to play basketball for a year before going to the NBA.
“I was reading today where someone who played basketball at LSU was very unhappy with the one-and-done rule,” Emmert said, according to The Advocate. “That’s not our rule. That’s the NBA’s rule. But (he says) it’s another stupid NCAA rule.
“If someone wants to be a pro basketball player and doesn’t want to go to college, don’t go to college,” Emmert continued. “We don’t put a gun to your head. First and foremost, it’s about being a student at a university. We’re in the human development business.”
Emmert is right in that blaming the NCAA for the one-and-done rule is wrong. It’s an NBA rule, so it’s not like the NCAA is making high school kids go through the facade of “getting an education” before they can go pro. He also pointed out that, if a basketball player wants, they can play at a prep school or play professionally in Europe during the year where they usually choose to go to college.
But Emmert is also cherrypicking the hell out of Simmons’ argument. The main point that Simmons wanted to make is that it’s asinine that athletes don’t get paid when they generate millions of dollars of revenue for schools. In fact, the excerpt from Simmons that gained so much attention began with…
“The NCAA is really f—ed up. Everybody’s making money except the players. We’re the ones waking up early as hell to be the best teams and do everything they want us to do and then the players get nothing.”
We can sit here and debate the validity of Simmons’ claim that athletes should get paid for hours – I think they should, you may disagree, whatever – but the point is that Emmert very conveniently decided to ignore the crux of Simmons’ argument (which, also, happens to be the thing that Emmert could potentially work to fix). Instead, he addressed something that he has no influence over, but essentially everyone thinks should be changed.
(Via The Advocate)
