Exploiting

AFTER A CENTURY of exploitation, college athletes are finally realizing their true value, and doing something about it. Since the nineteen twenties, when college football games began attracting tens of thousands of spectators, universities have fully realized the economic potential of intercollegiate athletics. they joined forces with corporate America, to the vast profit of both.With each passing decade, more of that potential has been actualized, especially with television. the attraction is the athletes themselves, young talented people whose best chance for a successful future is education, and for an education, sports. the athletes are the indentured servants, the universities are their plantation masters and owners. the owners make billions of dollars off the workers, and are most reluctant to surrender or share their wealth with the workers, and are especially unwilling to be sidetracked by an epidemic. thus the fall footballs season is scheduled to proceed, somewhat truncated, and only the Ivy League and the U of Connecticut have had the good sense to cancel the entire football season. Only when it becomes apparent that it will be impossible to play football without spreading death and disease, as is soon will, will the money mongers surrender to the inevitable, as they ultimately will. it is often pointed out that college athletes benefit from this arrangement, and indeed they do. They receive room and board, social status, and, to some degree, education. But a college education does not guarantee professional success, and is only a foundation for what is required to be truly well educated; a life time of study. The cash cow is Division I football,which brings in billions, millions per Division I school. Most of the players are black, Most of the coaches and administrators are white. Our modern collegiate plantation system generates huge revenues for for universities, and exorbitant salaries for coaches and administrators, but give no guarantees to the athletes, without whom all this would not be possible. College athletes spend four years with little or no  money in their pockets, usually depending on parents for discretionary spending money. now it is obvious that the wealthy masters are willing and eager to put the health and safety of their indentured servants at risk to preserve their own personal wealth, and the workers are becoming restless, starting to question their treatment and financial arrangements and protections being provided them against the virus. They understand that they have the inherent right to exploit their own talent, rather than leaving the overwhelming share of the benefits to go to others.