Schooled: The Price of College Sports

Whew. Here we go.

I have long thought for the last 6 or so years, basically most of my entire college career, that college sports were weird. I get being a fan of a team if your family went there, or you went there, but any other reason seemed silly to me. All I knew was that it was a huge huge industry that made a lot of money for any number of reasons.

I have also always thought that college athletes were getting shafted. They appear in video games, have jerseys being sold, and make a ton of appearances…but for what? No extra cash.

But I have felt like most people don’t share my belief. Whenever I bring it up, people say that they get free college and that should be enough. Little did I know there was a documentary that shared my point of view, Schooled: The Price of College Sports. Not only did it share my POV, but it also had a whole lot of information to back up its stance, which I lacked.

I understand it is an uncomfortable subject, because it is one of those situations where “it has always been this way” so why change it? Well, if it is bad, it should be changed, tradition be damned.

And how much Duke sucks. I am pretty sure there is a whole hour devoted to that.

But this documentary goes over almost everything. The history of college sports, the history of amateurism in sports and the Olympics, how sponsorships in college sports started, and oh so much more.

This documentary was also kind of hard to watch. Because it also talks about UNC and its Academic scandal with the football team players taking made up classes. That was terrible. It was. I was literally at school during this moment.

It talked about Devon Ramsey, the UNC football player and smart kid who got set up and screwed by the system for a very minor amount of help, despite actually being one of the brightest players. And it sucked knowing that a school I went to had some bad things go on during it, but I know in my heart it is true.

I won’t talk more about the documentary, because it does a very good job of presenting the facts in an easy to understand way. It has a lot of details to back it up, and even features some people who don’t want things to change and disagree with it. It isn’t incredibly biased in that regard.

But hey, it’s on Netflix, and I thought it was great. It also features a lot of Arian Foster, of the Houston Texas. He tells a lot of good stories and he is now one of my favorite players outside of my favorite team.