All Aboard TheHrubyPlan Train...

.

BL: All Aboard TheHrubyPlan Train…

Who said No Good can possibly come from slogging thru the toxic Twitter Swamp. IF you wear hip boots, have a tetanus booster, and “don’t eat the yellow snow” then good can be found.

I happened upon a modicum of good last week on Twitter – a sports journalist named Patrick Hruby – LINK.

Among Mr. Hruby’s assorted thoughts on the minutest details of American Sports, one of his reoccurring passions is Reform of Big Time College Sports. Yes… he “has a plan”.

Everyone “has a plan”.

My (and Mary Willingham’s) friend Dave Ridpath w/ The Drake Group “has a plan”.

Judge Bob “I Really Hate Trump” Orr – “has a plan”. JBO and I are supposed to have lunch soon. I will bring a tranquilizer dart because… well, you can guess why.

Wolfpacker Extraordinaire Bre’r Bob Kennel probably “has a plan” too. Bob’s is likely more Wolfpack-centric than the others from the front porch of his glass house of NCSU Is Quite Perfect In Every Way.

… and yes, I too “have a plan”. My more recent plans have become dangerously cynical bordering on “I don’t much care anymore”.

I initially discounted TheHrubyPlan because (1) I tend to discount anyone else’s opinions other than my own. Don’t you?… and (2) it was/is way too easy to implement… could be done by next season.

TheHrubyPlan is so obvious and uncomplicated I kicked myself for not devising it in which case it would forever be TheBobLeePlan… He who hesitates loses naming rights.

I met Patrick in a Twitter thread on College Sports Reform. College Sports Reform is a euphemism for…

“It’s Time to Pay College Athletes…

But HOW”.

I’ve always thought bartering blood, sweat and benchpresses in exchange for a legitimate marketable college education was a pretty solid win/win deal. It’s 2018, apparently I am the only one who can even say that sentence without rolling eyes and giggling… so I officially give up on that angle.

I challenged Hruby with the four basic questions that derail 99.6% of board monkey attempts at “a plan”.

• How much is enough? … $25K… $50K… 100K?
• Is “how much” tied to tuition at each institution? Does a Duke deep snapper get more $$$ than a UNC QB because Duke’s tuition is so much more than UNC’s?
• Does a “star player” get more $$$ than “a spearcarrier”? This is the Capitalism vs Socialism Conundrum. … and do only FB/MBB get paid. What about “fencers” and “field hockey”?
• Will “paying them $$$” REPLACE the current barter myth of blood, sweat, and bench presses in exchange for a LEGITIMATE college education. NOTE: My old silly concept.

Within moments Patrick tweeted back… “Glad you asked…” and a Link to TheHrubyPlan.

Brace yourselves because this sounds quite “OMG No No No” at first blush. By the 3rd / 4th “blush” it makes total sense.

The thumbnail essence of TheHrubyPlan is schools would pursue athletes just as they already pursue coaches… simply outbid the competition. Offer the 5-star QB whatever you can afford to, based on how much you want him; and how much he values his services.

Exactly like you would if you want Nick Saban or Dabo Swinney or Mike Krzyzewski as your coach.

Your representative makes “a pitch” just as they do now… stressing the advantages of their school… it’s fancy Indoor Practice Facility… its abundance of skanky coeds… and whatever other crap seems to matter to’em. … Except NOW you can openly offer $$$$, cars, condos, whatever.

Sure… $$$, cars and condos and skanky coeds have been offered for decades but on the downlow by middlemen using burner phones. NOW all that is out in the open.

Sign’em to a 1-2-3-4-5 year deal. Whatever you / they agree to. They can have agents of course. They can “go pro” of course, but they sorta already are “pro”.

The Head Coach and his AD assemble a committee of VERY Deep Pocket Fat Cat Boosters who are not intimidated by lots of zeros and they come up with “an operating budget” just like any Big Business. Like UNCCH did with its Lawyer War Chest to blow away the NCAA in THE GREATEST Ath/Academ ELIGIBILITY SCANDAL…EVER.

If we wanna win and beat “insert hated rival” it’s gonna take a minimum of $40,000,000 and a dozen BMWs… and at least one Lambo to get that rifle-armed QB out of Killian High School in Miami/Dade.

Won’t the schools with the most-desperate-to win, deepest-pocketed Fat Cats have an advantage? No more so than they have now.

Knowing their budget, the coaches hit the recruiting trail… competing just as they do now against rival schools with their operating budgets and fleets of tricked-out pimp-mobiles.

Again… JUST LIKE going after Big Name Coaches… every “sleeping giant” wants the next Nick Saban protégé but only a dozen or so schools can ante up for THAT level of high stakes poker.

But no school is excluded IF somehow you can assemble the package… the “ante” as it were.

In TheHrubyPlan every college athlete regardless of sport can “get paid” IF some school will pay him / her.

Is THE BEST High School Field Hockey player worth $$$ to some school somewhere? If so… she can take their offer. If the only offers are the traditional barter for an education then so be it.

No problem with Title IX… if it takes $$$ and a Miata to lure a 5-star Women’s BBer from going to UConn, then sweeten the pot more than Gino is willing to.

Yes… some players will make more $$$ than others – JUST LIKE in “the real world” – Prepare the young men for that shocking reality.

I don’t agree with how Hruby deals with that pesky myth of athletes and academics. As long as “academic eligibility” is involved in any form there will be nefariousness afoot. “Pursuing a degree” can/should be an option but nothing more.

There are other aspects to TheHrubyPlan that I might get into later. This has SHOCKED you enough for now.

The simple free market aspect of this will cause you to say NO WAY… until you reconsider and say “YES WAY”.

Yes… the above is a version of “legalize marijuana and prostitution and crime rates will go down” because those activities will no longer be “crimes”.

Legalize “pay college athletes whatever you want to / have to pay them” and we reduce the 800-page NCAA Rulebook to a 3×5 card.

“Tommy’s grandmother dies and he can’t afford a bus ticket home to the funeral” is no longer a problem. Charter a G-5 for Tommy… call Uber … borrow the QB’s Lambo… whatever.

But BobLee… this is not equitable to all schools? So?

For 3-4 years Poor Larry Fedora had to recruit WITHOUT AN IPF. Hellfire… “even Wake Forest had one”. Was THAT fair and equitable? Noooooo… so Larry cried and stomped his foot… and Fat Cat Boosters anted up $32,000,000 and now Larry has his IPF. VOILA! … TheHrubyPlan at work…

I’m doing more air travel lately back/forth to check on Twinkle & Scooter up in Wisconsin. Getting very familiar with O’Hare and RDU.

WHY doesn’t someone engineer a rest room sink where the motion-sensor faucet gizmo WORKS.

There are still some of us guys (and I assume gals too) that prefer to wash our hands after urinating. Yes, my dad taught me not to pee on my hands, but the post-urination washing is a lifetime habit.

So you got 6-7 travelers standing at these sinks frantically waving our hands every whichaway trying in vain to activate the hidden sensor to start the water flow. It’s like a row of slot machines… someone gets lucky, gets water and shouts “EUREKA This One Works”… and we all rush over to that one. Only one sink in each rest room works on any given day.

At the rest room down from Macaroni Grill in the American Airlines Terminal at O’Hare… it’s usually the 2nd sink from the left on Wednesdays. FYI…

I have noticed, thankfully, that hand blow dryers are fading out. Those round canisters with the scrunched-up paper napkin sticking out of the hole in the bottom are really stoopid. Hate those!

Give me 3-5 seconds of water… two sheets of paper towels… and a waste basket. I’m good to go. Soap would be nice but I can deal with that. Next lunch I have with POTUS Trump, I’m gonna suggest…