NCAA's Cultural Selfishness Extending To Sexual Assault
The Powerful Care Not For Safety But To Operate Without Accountability
Mark Emmert is an easy punching bag. So, too, is the NCAA; though the university members operating within the organization’s umbrella are one in the same, especially in conversations where measured decisions to ignore the health of students in the name of sportsball occur.
Moving forward, understand the term NCAA is a catch-all. A noun to also mean schools blindly following the NCAA’s lead and/or hiding behind it as a meat shield.
The NCAA’s selfishness created a culture of indifference to sexual assault.
During an Aspen Institute symposium about college athlete pay, Marky Mark Emmert defended the NCAA Funkybunch, deflecting blame to universities days after a USA TODAY report found that college athletes punished for sexual assault routinely transfer, ultimately still allowed to play within the supposed virtue-filled confines of college sports.
“When you hear, ‘The NCAA did this or did that,’ just insert, ‘the colleges and universities of America did this or did that,’ ” Emmert said last Tuesday. “That’s who makes those decisions.”
It can be, but it doesn’t rest solely on the shoulders of university presidents to make decisions regarding people who should likely be viewed as predators on campus. It’s an all involved circumstance.
USA Today, an outlet providing phenomenal work covering much of this, reached out to several universities in response to Emmert’s comments, receiving a mixed reaction and a bunch of no comments; although the obvious deflection back to the NCAA was also collected.
“This inquiry should be directed to the NCAA for a response,” Texas State University President Denise Trauth told USA Today, who sits on the NCAA Board of Governors.
Obviously, no one wants this particular blood on their hands. Nevertheless, no one wants to do anything about it, either.
Who is to blame for the NCAA creating a pipeline for predators?
Given the reaction from those with enough power to do anything about the situation clearly being apathy, pretty much just about everyone — including the general we.
In the marathon of life, we’re now sprinting from tragedy to travesty to scandal while hurdling trivial daily obstacles at a rate so fast it’s creating a culture of indifference. After all, when everything happening within any one person’s purview is nearly all bad, all the time, it’s difficult to put much of it in perspective.
A power ranking of misfortune isn’t the answer, but we need to be better. Not do better. Be better.
If those who have all the power refuse — usually since the potential positive doesn’t align with their pocketbook — it’s up to anyone with a platform to say something, anything, to push back on the idea any of this should be accepted as the new norm.
Closing in on 2020, with social media a place to share opinions, everyone has a platform. Long think-pieces are not always needed, as will be evident here in a minute, and voicing a displeasure is easier to be had than any other time in our species’ history.
No longer is there an acceptable excuse to not stand for someone, alongside something, or against an evil. Silence is a level of complicity.
It’s not okay. It’s not fine to read reports of an organization allowing predators to roam free in the name of whatever justification (it’s hard, their fault, etc.), then take a direct approach to avoid accountability by simply pointing the finger to another inanimate entity representing the same ideology.
Attempting to stiff arm any form of responsibility, allowing for chaos to rule as king, makes those involved as much beasts of prey as anyone else.
The NCAA’s impassiveness toward sincerely troubling information shouldn’t be met by an increased detachment from the general public. In a world where the majority of people on campus are not only marketed as kids, but are for all intents and purposes actual kids, we should both show compassion for them and concern for their well-being when intentional attacks on their health are happening for the sake of unchecked power and protecting the status quo.
Nothing about this is acceptable.
Fourth-Wall Breaking
The above, a shorter think-piece about something that should be easy to go against (I mean, no one is in favor of kids being sexually assaulted, right?), isn’t something people want to write or talk about. And yet, it’s something that needs to be.
In an industry that’s putting increased value on gambling content, strong takes and the like, all of which has a place in it, virtue-columns are a tougher thing to stand by.
A glorified op-ed, it relies on the reader to value the writer’s words, less so than the writer him/herself, in order to shift opinion — or, at the very least, attempt to put something in a perspective otherwise not considered. It’s not a perfect piece of content by any stretch, as it’s often used to push falsehoods or scare the masses in attempts to create an agenda laced narrative.
Still, if it’s accepted no one is actually in favor of letting kids be trampled over in the name of sports, why is this specific column even needed?
In theory, because it would eventually go away. The USA Today reporting is sensational on the matter. However, unless others signal-boost the journalism Kenny Jacoby and others are doing to provide truth to oppose the unfiltered NCAA narrative, a story of such magnitude can be lost to the aforementioned marathon/sprint through life.
The Witcher - The Mandalorian
Two genre based, episodic shows involving bounty hunters who barely talk and an IP to fall back on, allowing for a built-in audience.
Hot-take: Both are fine. Just fine. Neither are tremendous or excellent or a thing that deserves some insane amount of praise. They are what they are; fun shows that fail to further build worlds already built while also showing an inadequacy to create side-characters they want us to care about.
The Mandalorian has a very social media friendly Baby Yoda. Mostly due to that, it’ll get more run. But the two shows are eerily similar.
Again, neither are bad. I prefer The Mandalorian — to date, at least — as The Witcher attempted great scale, using a three-person main storytelling point of view, but never created a rich atmosphere to me. Each town was generic, the characters introduced early, who I suppose I was to care about for later, did nothing for me. So on and so forth.
It felt empty and hollow. And I still mostly liked it because my expectations were not that it would rival Game of Thrones in storytelling or acting — although, apparently, a large part of the consuming audience did.
There’s a difference between shows like GoT and The Expanse and then those such as Mando and The Witcher. The former are building rich worlds in attempts for long term satisfaction. The latter, they’re the microwave attempts at using good franchises to appeal to already loyal audiences.
Both have their places, but they should never be compared. It’s unfair to all involved, including the consumers, as their preconceived expectations will ultimately limit their ability to enjoy a show for whatever it’s supposed to be.
Moreover, and this is directly aimed toward critics who do this, simply because a few shows take place in space and a few more with mages and knights, it doesn’t mean they should all be lumped in as the same thing. Genres are things, but not all space-dramas or fantasy epics are the same much in the same way you can’t compare a hollowed episodic cop show with something earnestly groundbreaking like The Wire.
I’m full on meandering now, but this doesn’t have to be a Mando or Witcher or Show That Was Something Completely Different scenario. You can like both, or neither, or just keep re-watching SGU. It’s whatever.
In Closing Thoughts
This was a rather short Monday posting. In an effort to forever be transparent, it’s because I feel like death warmed over. Hopefully my feeling under the weather isn’t too heavily reflected in poor writing or whatever before any of this.
Anywho, if you’re still here, I love you. Not literally. That be weird, specifically because I don’t actually know who you are. More so in the sense that I love you in a way a lobster loves to fight unicorns.
What?
I’m sick, remember?
Word vomit and meandering and a college basketball column… kinda.
Well, that was one helluva voyage. If you like a Newsletter of Enchantment, any single part of it, the only support we ask you to give is to smash that subscribe button. It’s free!