Homeless and Not Important
When I say I’m bad at blogging I mean really bad. Clearly I’m
just not cut out for this sort of thing which is good I guess since the class
ends tomorrow. Anyway I’m going to continue on about the NCAA while I’ve got
the chance.
I guess the biggest issue at the moment that I want to
discuss is the whole homeless Baylor player thing. In case anyone didn’t know
there was a player at Baylor named Silas Nacita who apparently was homeless
when he walked on at Baylor. He accepted a place to live from someone and that
is not good with the NCAA as they ruled him ineligible despite his high grades,
and the fact that he made Academic All Big-12. I’m not really sure how to begin
here. Everyone knows that the NCAA is full of these little quips and stupid
rules that no one understands nor cares about. Why in the world is it right for
a player who wants to play the sport he loves at the school he loves to be told
he can’t because he doesn’t have a house to live in? How is that right? At
least that’s what people are asking and have been asking since this whole thing
came out. This whole situation also played out this time last year when JUCO
transfer Antoine Turner, who was headed to Boise State, was also homeless. He
had nothing. He began getting offers from strangers all over the Boise area
offering him money and a house and everything that you could imagine. The only problem
was that if he had accepted any of it, the NCAA could have declared him
ineligible. The same thing that they did with Silas Nacita.
The difference between the two is that Turner was already
going to be on scholarship at Boise State and Nacita wasn’t. Unfortunately that
means that the odds are in Turner’s favor. He was granted a waiver from the
NCAA and Boise State was able to help him. Also the NCAA employs a thing called
the “Student Assistance Fund” that the NCAA has. In essence it gives money to
the schools to help people like Turner who have no home, or no food, if the
situation calls for it.
But what about poor Silas Nacita? Well the difference is
that he was a walk on athlete. Which means he was not on scholarship so these
benefits do not extend to him. It’s a ridiculous scenario and one that really
needs to be looked at again. Even if we don’t know the whole story behind this
kid, why in the world should a homeless athlete be punished for being homeless?
He has nothing and no one and even the school that he plays football for can’t
help him because the big, bad NCAA has rules that prevent homeless athletes
from being taken care of? Wait, no, excuse me, just the ones who are on
scholarship. Those are the special ones.
“We’ll look after
those, but forget the ones that weren’t quite good enough to be offered a
scholarship.” –The NCAA Probably.
I know that in every story there are things that aren’t
reported on. We may not know the whole story behind Silas Nacita, but it’s
still unfair. Why aren’t all athletes taken care of if need be? Why does the
Student Assistance Fund only apply to scholarship students? And if the NCAA
doesn’t care enough to use the SAF to help non-scholarship athletes then why
should it matter if someone wants to offer him their couch for the week? Or
give him a gift card for food? He matters then. He is important enough to
violate their rules because he plays football for the university, but he’s
still not important enough for us to use the funds set up for this kind of
scenario to help him. Yeah real smart NCAA.
The NCAA has been called many things with “bully” being the
chief among them. It seems they like to flex their muscles and intimidate and
annoy. They’re like the bug flying around your head that you can’t get rid of,
but if you irritate it then it’ll sting you. I don’t like the NCAA. I think
there needs to be punishment for breaking rules, but the rules need to be
changed… or at the very least updated. So that every single thing that the NCAA
does isn’t a contradiction.
Anyway that’s that for now. Until next time college football
lovers.
