One other Senator saying one thing extremely silly about Identify, Picture and Likeness? And it wasn’t Tommy Tuberville? (/sighs)

Kentucky senator Rand Paul was on the board of a LIV Golf-PGA Tour merger listening to (lol) when he introduced up the dialogue of how antitrust legal guidelines impression school sports activities. How we received to THAT from LIV-PGA Tour speak, I haven’t a clue.

Nonetheless, Sen. Paul not solely determined to stay his foot in his mouth, he blew the racial canine whistle so rattling arduous even Sounder heard it.

Let’s take this point-by-point, to actually dig into the weeds of what Sen. Paul is trying to say.

“…They’ve utterly screwed school athletes. Many people liked watching beginner athletes that weren’t paid.”

Ah sure, I really like when the those that put their our bodies on the road for my leisure aren’t paid. That man watched Lynn Bowden go well with up and was like, “Rattling, I LOVE that this man isn’t making any cash to aim to reside on at any time in any way.” How disconnected from the precise human side of faculty sports activities do it’s a must to be to only straight up be like, “YEAH BACK IN THE DAY PLAYERS WEREN’T PAID AND THEY CARED ABOUT FOOTBAW.”

Reminder: it is a Senator. An individual who’s in command of making choices for an insane quantity of individuals.

Simply if you assume it will possibly’t worsen…

“Now everyone that performs basketball in school is gonna be driving a Bentley or a Rolls. I imply, we’re gonna be seeing rap stars as an alternative of basketball stars.”

To start with, that is essentially the most blatantly racist factor that’s been mentioned OUT LOUD IN THE SENATE about NIL that I’ve heard. An appearing senator saying that basketball gamers (which, as of the 2022 season, are comprised of 44 p.c Black gamers on the mens facet and 30 p.c on the ladies’s facet) will flip into rap stars as if that’s some form of consequence isn’t even a canine whistle. It’s a freaking bullhorn. It’s not even veiled racism, it’s simply straight up racist.

Second of all, it’s not even true! Not each NIL deal goes to offer a student-athlete a automotive. Most of them are simply stipends to get by the week! A number of the offers, like former FSU OL Dillan Gibbons, have been used to start out GoFundMe’s for mates or members of the family in want. Cease treating “oh no, this athlete may have a pleasant automotive to drive round campus” as boogeyman to cease NIL. Who cares what automotive they drive? Cease pocket watching, bozo!

There’s a very severe racial undertone to the whole NIL dialog as effectively. Black athletes made up 16 p.c of the NCAA’s demographics final yr, in response to their demographics database. For years, the whole beginner athletics system was constructed on the backs of labor that wasn’t being paid, many of the distinguished sports activities like soccer and males’s basketball being the money cows for universities and constructed on the backs of predominantly Black gamers. The idea of not paying your labor and holding them broke, whereas athletic packages rake in tens of millions and tens of millions of {dollars} does have a racial side to it. The NIL dialogue, in a manner, was certain to get thus far, as a result of somebody was going to fuck up and say the quiet half out loud.

It simply so occurred to be Rand Paul in the midst of July.