Impetus: Former NBA player and collegiate scammer Chris Webber compares collegiate sports to slavery
In more recent years, we’ve heard the argument that college players should receive compensation grow and escalate. Frankly, I agree to a point where perhaps student-athletes should receive some sort of exceptions when it comes to stuff like food and perhaps some leniency in academics, but I am 100% against the idea of college athletes getting paid to do what they do.
Given the fact that it was TMZ and their generally goading methodology that ultimately led to this sound byte, Chris Webber himself still had to think of what to say, and quite possibly couldn’t have said anything stupider:
Bill Russell told me that any system that gets free labor is slavery. So, I’m sure they have the right to unionize.
Quoting Bill Russell and trying to basically pin it on him doesn’t really help the cause, considering Bill Russell lived and went to college in an age where racism against blacks was vastly more predominant, compared to Chris Webber who was basically given a free ride to Michigan to boost their basketball program.
But the fact of the matter is that especially nowadays, schools aren’t getting “labor” for “free.” Just about every single student-athlete that plays major collegiate sports are doing so under scholarships of varying degrees. True walk-on student athletes are almost nonexistent in today’s collegiate athletic field, obsessed with winning and always recruiting in all the major sports. Guys like Chris Webber, Jalen Rose, Juwan Howard, Jimmy King, and the other jobber who comprised of the Michigan Fab Five, were all there on full rides; AKA, they had free room, board, meals, education and all student privileges, for playing, basketball.
It might not have been monetary compensation for playing basketball, but according to this link, the current yearly cost of all-inclusive tuition at Michigan is nearly $25,000 for in-state students, and over twice that for those coming in from out-of-state. Sure, the value of said dollars were vastly lower back in the 90s, but the point is that student athletes like Chris Webber weren’t NOT getting compensated for “their labor” of playing basketball, which is saying that they were NOT “slaves.”
It’s actually really funny that it’s Chris Webber that was the one who said this. Despite the fact that he was dealt a pretty sweet deal, not having to pay for shit while at Michigan, as long as he played a glorified children’s game, he still got greedy and got swept up in the notorious point-shaving scandal and deliberately threw the 1993 National Championship that has plagued his pretty dull, championship-less legacy.
In conclusion, Chris Webber is a fucking idiot, and NCAA athletes are as close as thing to slaves as pigs being birds.
