John Clay’s Sidelines

Steve Rosenbloom, who writes the Rosenblog for the Chicago Tribune, is a little agitated over this whole Derrick Rose SAT/grade change/etc. affair. And Rosenbloom doesn’t mind blasting with both barrels.

Excerpt:

I’m in favor of anything that makes the point that college is the biggest cesspool in sports. Colleges themselves, the actual ivory towers, are the most overpriced, overhyped institutions in America, extortion with elbow patches, but that’s a whole other rant. If college sports isn’t the biggest cesspool we cover, it’s at least tied with the Olympics, and how fitting that one scandal is rooted in the corrupt city of Chicago and some people want to bring the other slimy event here.

Good luck finding ethics in any of it — college sports (and by extension the stench of us media types glorifying snot-nosed, booger-eating teenaged athletes before they even get to high school sometimes), the Olympics, Chicago, the state of Illinois. There’s too much money and power to stop.

Colleges make billions, but the athletes that have made March Madness can’t get a Big Mac. Not legally anyway. The Olympics, jeez, where do you start? Payoffs are rampant, as in college recruiting. Academic cheating, such as someone taking a test for Rose and someone else supposedly changing his grade, is to college what anabolic steroids are to the Olympics. Higher, faster, juicer.

It gets better after that, though the squeamish might want to avoid the final couple of graphs. Spoiler alert.