Thursday, December 01, 2005

University of Colorado, part 3

Everybody will vaguely remember that there was this big investigation, complete with people losing their jobs, over a recruiting "scandal" involving the football program. Here is what happened.

During recruiting visits to the school some of the recruits would spend an afternoon and evening hanging out with current players and other students. This is not at all uncommon. It makes perfect sense to me to have these perspective students get a little glimpse of the campus from a student's perspective and to see what kind of guys he would be spending hours a week with on the grid iron.

The scandal started with some of the evening activities.

1. They went to unchaparoned student parties - astonishing

2. There was alcohol served - this is illegal but give me a break, did you go to college?

3. There were instances where the recruits had sex. This was the straw that broke the camel's back and raised the ire of the feminazi university president. But let's face it. 18 year olds have sex. Further, one of the advantages of being a jock is that getting sex gets a lot easier. And we are surprised that the college football jocks invited some of their free-love female friends to their parties?

4. Eventually there were allegations of prostitutes being involved. I find this stupid. I never had trouble getting laid in college and I wasn't a jock. Why pay? I am not sure this was ever proven or disproven, but this is a scandal?

5. At one point there was an allegation of rape at one of the parties. This was, as much as such allegations can be, disproven. And most importantly, these allegations did not come up until well into all of the investigations and posturing for the media. I think rape is a serious crime and universities should be dillegent in working with the proper authorities in investigating and prosecuting it. In this case, it appears it was a vendetta charge without merit. And again, it wasn't part of the initial outcry that there was a scandal.

This story was daily news for months. The university president held hearings and demanded resignations. Over what? Perspective students were participating in something that many, many students participate in regularly. The football jocks having parties involving sex and alcohol wasn't the scandal. The scandal was that there was a recruit in the room. So? "The boys" invited "Joey" to a party in March that looked just like all the parties they were going to start having regularly with him in August.

You may agree or disagree with this behaviour. You may have participated in such things in college or not. If you went to college you know that it happened at least every weekend. If you went to a large university you know it happens every night in several locations on campus. If you think this isn't happening at every major university campus every spring you are naive.

This never struck me as a scandal. Further, it doesn't strike me that it should be a violation of recruiting rules. I don't know if it is or isn't. There was no money being paid to the guy or any promise of anything as far as I can tell. He was invited to a party. He had a couple beers. He got laid. Period.

This "scandal" was really a great example of truth in advertising.

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