We’ve all been flooded with rants and opinions in the past few weeks about the latest College Athletics scandal surrounding the University of Miami. But leave it to Orlando Magic Coach Stan Van Gundy to call it like he sees it. And in many ways ‘call it like it is’ in our opinion. Jalen Rose danced around the issue of schools profiting off of the players without the players getting a dime in the ESPN documentary about Michigan’s Fab Five, but Van Gundy just goes right for the jugular:
“The system is set up for everybody but the kids while pretending to be about the kids,” Van Gundy said. “Athletics and education should be separate. Colleges shouldn’t be farm systems. It doesn’t make any logical sense. But the schools don’t want to be blatantly in the situation of being professional sports even though they already are professional sports. They just want to disguise it, so they hide behind education. But, really, all you want is enough of your athletes to graduate so it looks like that’s what you care about. Anyone around sports knows it is all a bunch of bull [expletive].
“I am not calling college coaches or administrators hypocrites. I believe that, in general, they care about the kids and education. But the system is wrong. Being a farm system creates problems that are beyond the control of even the best and most well-meaning administrators of which [UM’s] Donna Shalala would be at the top of my list.”
[Via Miami Herald]
