My favorite moment was with Elias Harris, who was raised in Germany. I caught his attention by hailing him in German, as I still remembered a few phrases from my time in Germany. Our brief conversation was entirely in German, befuddling those standing near by.
The Ed O'Bannon case will cost the power conferences some cash, but they're awash in it, so no big deal. The top ten revenue producers bring in over $30 million a year...each.
Mr. Zirin would have been shocked, had he been a GU student when I was there, 72-76, in the years before political correctness. Sociology students loved to use us as lab rats for their "experiments".
One of those experiments occurred in our bookstore, which wasn't much larger than a couple of phone booths back then. It consisted of a black student and an Asian student, calling each other really bad names while smiling at each other. At first, my friends and I were looking for places to hide from the upcoming fisticuffs. About a minute later, we all realized we were being played, much to our relief.
When I was there, Gonzaga had maybe 2000 undergrads. You pretty knew everybody there, maybe not by name, but by sight. I couldn't have asked for a better college experience.
But getting back to the point of the original article, I'll bet the foreign players on Gonzaga were thrilled to be given a scholarship and a chance to make the pros. I doubt they feel they're being used.
Leftists like Zirin will never see non-white athletes (or other persons) as human beings who make choices. Sometimes those choices are very bad. But it's amusing for a leftist to believe that these black athletes would be making zillions of dollars doing other things. Big time college athletics gives many of them a chance to make big money. The truth is if they couldn't play sports, there's very little else they have the aptitude for. Nobody twists their arms and forces them to go to college.
And on a side note, I see David Stockton received a tryout with the Sacramento. Unlike his father, he was not a big star at Gonzaga. I saw him play last year in some games, and he looked like a decent but not too great player. Then I read some stories of his exploits in the D-league (NBA's development league). I watched a few of his D-league games, and he looks like a superstar. I guess his college coach kept him on a short leash. He actually looks better than Pangos.