Poole: Money trumps all in big-time college sports

Alabama football coach Nick Saban whining about unscrupulous agents in big-time athletics is no different from a college administrator expressing grave concern about graduation rates or, for that matter, a ruthless oil baron claiming to be a lifelong environmentalist.

Such notions are disingenuous, if not indicative of moral bankruptcy.
In all cases, it's a hollow protest against the very system that keeps their hands a gorgeous shade of green.
Yet recent days and weeks have delivered new rounds of hand-wringing, head-scratching and solemn ignorance, along with a dash of fiery indignation. The NCAA nailed USC with severe penalties for cheating, and the school responded with promises to sanitize itself. Accusations are flying all over the SEC about benefits provided by agents, with the general response being that they are a particularly filthy and rabid species of rodent.

 
All of which lays bare the folly of big-time amateur athletics. There is no such thing.
The money in big-time college sports has become so great that it no longer merely influences. It dictates. And that leads to corruption.
The bigger the money in college sports, the sillier it is to try to describe it as amateur. Football and basketball, in particular, are about pros that don't get paid. Billions are passed about and, by design, not a cent is supposed to go to the athlete. It's an NCAA scam. It puts coaches, who run in the same circles as agents, on a multimillion-dollar career path and leaves the players scuffling for pennies.Reggie Bush and O. J. Mayo, the newest poster children for corruption in college sports, surely benefited from their time as Trojans. And we don't mean the "free education" they received. They became stars, which opened the doors to the NFL and NBA. They eventually got theirs.
Yet it was during their unpaid auditions that USC benefited more directly, more immediately and to a much greater degree. Pete Carroll would not have become the highest paid coach in college football without Bush and others like him. Tim Floyd was among the highest-paid coaches in college basketball in part because Mayo enrolled in his school. Both have since departed. Both remain obscenely wealthy.
Moreover, the campus profited mightily from retail items related to Bush and Mayo and the exposure generated by Carroll and, to a lesser extent, Floyd. USC football during the Bush years was a cash cow.
USC athletic director Mike Garrett, along with his superiors in administration, milked it and milked it and milked it. Thanks to football, they birthed a calf for basketball.
USC folks talked for nearly a century of building a new basketball facility. It went nowhere, partly because, with UCLA dominating the sport in Southern California and beyond, Trojans hoops lacked the appeal of Trojans football.
Yet the football program led to the creation of the basketball arena. In the early stages of USC's return to glory under Carroll, quarterback Carson Palmer won the Heisman Trophy. Trojans fans once again were giddy. Practically hours after Palmer was honored, a wealthy booster named Louis Galen committed the first $10 million toward the arena.
It's called the Galen Center. It's a marvelous facility that opened before Mayo's only year as a Trojan.
That's an example of how this game works. Money drives the decisions and gets things done. Always has, always will.
One of the things we relearned with the Wall Street abuses that blew a hole through our economy is that the scent of money can bring out the worst in people. Greed is an urge too powerful to be effectively contained, much less prevented. The natural corollary to greed is corruption.
The concept of paying college athletes, particularly in revenue-generating sports, would be an attempt to curb their vulnerability to agents and boosters shameless enough to wave a wad of bills under the nose of a 19-year-old who grew up in a simple apartment, sharing his bedroom with two or three siblings. It's incredibly hard for the athlete to decline.
Too many recruits and parents can't decline. They feel they deserve it. Our economic model is bound to leave some more willing to seek "easy money."
And easy money, whether it's colleges jacking up ticket prices as programs become more popular or a coach who bounces to an institution willing to double his salary, is what this heated dialogue is about.
Isn't it sad how in sports — and in life — everything usually comes back to money?
What's sadder still is that no matter what, if any, corrective action is taken, it will have no more than token effect. When you're dealing with basic human frailties, it's far too complicated to be fixed by a rule book.