Encourage a student athlete at a small college to develop a symbiotic business relationship with a local pizza parlor which includes an all one can eat stipulation, and the obligatory pitcher of beer, and at least for the meantime this “brave new world” system works.
Add the pepperoni topping of organized crime into the fray of lucrative decadence and experimentation and the entire framework of innocence crumbles. As the NCAA permitting athletes to receive compensation either through cash or product is still in its infantile stages, the art of bartering and negotiation is fun in a raw sense for the younger generations engaged within the process of forging a brand.
Welcome the second lap of the Names, Image and Likeness (NIL) movement where amateurs are instantly turned into pros as society delves into social engineering where one can have two at twice the cost, or a multiple of zero yields a precursor to delusion. According to multiple sources, a group of Division basketball teammates were paid to fix a game, an odd yet intriguing narrative during these interesting times when it is encouraged that athletes are compensated through various channels for their talents.
Allegedly, four players and members of the Alabama State University men’s basketball team were each paid a sum of money by two bettors aka fixers to throw the game against Southern Mississippi University in 2024. The blatant indiscretion on multiple moral and legal levels spurred both the FBI and NCAA into action prompting investigations and sanctions.
While players involved may have influenced the 6 point underdog Alabama State Hornets squad to comfortably lose the game allowing Southern Mississippi to easily cover the spread, the old saying summarizing something about the rich getting and richer and the poor getting poorer has emerged as an underlying theme to the divine comedy of chaos.
As unethical to tradition on a cavalcade of levels between the NIL and the illegal abuse of gambling, will the Alabama State controversy lead to an offshoot of the sportsbook where student athletes will be provided with the latitude to make side bets between consenting parties, or does the scenario illustrate one of the foundational concepts of government is that illegal only applies to an enterprise or behavior that cannot be taxed?
Unfortunately, the overall ugliness resulting from all the unsavory components marred an otherwise terrific season for the Hornets as the team ultimately made the NCAA tournament and won a play-game against St. Francis for their first ever victory in the Big Dance. Sometimes priceless and Cinderella success is subdued underrated beneath a shadow of greed and the maliciously unintended in a crazed world where making sense of things is only a wager away.