5781...Hey, Chris Rock, It Is Worse In Canada

From his Facebook presence here is what Chris Rock had to say about March Madness.  For those of you living under a Rock March Madness is the 68 team tourney that decides the championship of NCAA men's basketball.

“So I’m watching the Kansas North Carolina game on tv .And I notice there are 9 black players and 1 white player btw the white player is amazing . Anyway I look in the stands and everybody is white .Since its known that college sports is big money . One could come to the conclusion that the nine black and one white player are playing to put 100 thousand white kids though college. I know no one is getting whipped or beaten but economically college sports are no different than slavery. I know a lot of black intellectuals will say we can do so much more than play ball and we can .But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t reap the benefits from sports .white kids that go to Syracuse and Georgetown do . These kids should be paid and allowed to get an education for themselves and there family’s for the rest of there lives. Black people not making money from college sports is like Arabs not making money from oil insane. We have our reparations lottery ticket right in our pocket and were not smart enough to cash it in.”

Mr. Rock is right and he is making an argument that has been made for decades.  It is an argument that dates back to, at least, the time of John Carlos and Tommie Smith, influenced by Harry Edwards, and their demonstration at the '68 Olympics.

As bad as it is in the NCAA it is worse here in Canada.  The NCAA mandates that kids go to class and graduate.  You may check out grad rates for all Division I, II and III schools in the NCAA at their website.  They compare the grad rates of non athletes to athletes.  You may cross reference by race, sport, gender and nationality to get a better/worse picture of what is what.

Canadian Intercollegiate Sport offers no such resource   I contacted their predessor, the CIAU, early in the century and they refused to even consider publishing grad rates, citing privacy issues.  I call bullsh*t.

CIS athletes  unlike most of their U. S. counterparts, do not not get full rides either.  Or partials.

Another thing that the NCAA strives for is gender equity.  Coz, under Title IX, which came in during the administration of Archie Bunker's favourite President, Richard E. Nixon, if you spend a buck on a boy in an educational setting you have to spend a buck on a girl.  That is why there has been an explosion in women's hockey, soccer, hoop and so on in the last couple of decades here and south of the border.  The CIS doesn't have to offer gender equity.

Good thing Mr. Rock isn't studying on Canadian college sports, eh?

WFDS