This isn’t a tough case to crack.
Last week, multiple college athletes spoke out about the NCAA’s bogus NIL rules under the hashtag #NotNCAAProperty. The movement officially called for four things — one of those things being a meeting with NCAA President Mark Emmert.
The college basketball players were reportedly targeting today for a time to talk with the prez. Unfortunately, yet unsurprisingly, Emmert would like to put the Zoom call on hold. Not for a day or a week. ArE yOu cRaZy? He would like to put it off until… after the tournament.
Like, the whole thing. The thing that brought all this up in the first place.
Schedule’s full, sorry!
Look, I don’t doubt that Emmert is busy. Especially now. But I’d have to imagine that the college athletes who are working while going to a school they’ll make gobs of money for have some time constraints too… So you really wanna pull the card that you can’t squeeze in a 30-minute Zoom call with student leaders who inspired a national movement that makes you and your organization look terrible for exactly things like this?
Of course he should make time.
What Emmert is doing is just kicking the can down the road until you — yes YOU, dear reader — stop caring about the tournament and therefore college basketball and therefore the plight of its athletes. And he knows you will. April 4tand 5 are the dates for the women’s and men’s basketball championships, respectively. For most casual sports fans, the NCAA won’t reënter the mainstream until the fall (football) season.
Think about it: In April, the sports media will also go on NCAA hiatus. We’ll cover MLB opening day, The Masters, and the playoff push for the NBA and NHL. That, my friends, is the ideal time for this meeting to happen for someone sitting on Emmert’s lofty perch — when your (yep, YOU again) bracket is busted, your attention is elsewhere, and the cameras aren’t on.
But we know full well what you’re doing, Mark. It’s pretty obvious and, as usual, infuriating,