Free What?

"Honoring Ware? I call it taking advantage of him playboy!"

King Abdullah II once said, “Whenever you have a crisis, you’re always going to have the extremists taking advantage of the situation.” Bill Clinton gave it to us like this, “There will always be bad guys out there in the world who will try to take advantage of people’s vulnerabilities.” Old man Mr. Willie down at the shoe shine joint just said, “Aight young fella, don’t take no wooden nickels out there!”

Since the beginning of time boyz have been taking advantage of folks. You can go back as far as 92 BC during the Roman-Persian conflicts then travel through time to the early American slave trade on to big time college athletics. If there’s ever an opportunity to take advantage of people some dun will find and exploit it.

Louisville’s Kevin Ware shattered his leg last week in the Regional Final as he and his Cardinal teammates were attempting to get to Atlanta this week for the Final Four. Adidas and the University of Louisville have been selling shirts all week with ole boy’s number 5 on the joint. It reads, “Rise to the Occasion” with Ware’s No.5 substituted for the “S” in “Rise.”

Now they stopped selling the joints on Friday after they’ve already made a grip. For y’all that are sitting here dazed and confused, that’s hood for a boat load of paper, scratch, cheese, scrilla, dinero or bread depending upon where you’re from! These cats told you and I that they were honoring Ware by using his number. Big Momma calls it taking advantage of my baby because they clearly didn’t cut him in on the action. If they would have he’d become ineligible to ever play again. How’s them apples?

There is already an existing law suit pending against the NCAA and EA Sports for using the likeness of players without their permission filed by former UCLA Bruin Ed O'Bannon. Schools have been selling student-athletes jerseys in the bookstores for years and now a cat can even buy a video game and be himself on the joint! How cool is that? Not very, once he figures out that he’s not getting paid for it. But the NCAA will tell you and I that it’s all about the student-athlete!

In my Big Momma in extremely large curlers and that dusty old house coat voice, “You right! It’s all about you making as much money as you can off of my baby and then finding somebody else’s child to take advantage of when you're done with mine!” Y’all can stop me when I start lyin’ playboy!

For the clown in the background that’s about to fix his mouth to say, “THEY’RE GETTING A FREE EDUCATION MAN!” First of all, somebody punch that dun in the eye for being dumb enough to even think that. Is it free? Looks like a whole bunch of work to me homie. Ask the kids that are about to play in this Final Four how many classes they’ve been to over the past two and a half weeks. Then look up the amount of bread that each school is pulling in as a result of the freaking tournament through outright payments from the NCAA and the ancillary products sold as a result of licensing agreements etc. We haven’t even began to talk about all of the bread the alumni is channeling the schools way because they’re winning right now.

 Then put your eye on the 14 year $10.8 billion contract that CBS and Turner Broadcasting inked in 2010 to televise the joint. Did I mention the $740 million that the NCAA gets as a result of all of this? It doesn’t sound free to me playboy! Sounds like free labor especially when you understand that a scholarship is nothing more than an absorbed cost to the university. It doesn’t cost the school any more money to teach a class if there are 400 people in the joint as opposed to 401! Let’s keep it real or all the way 100, whichever comes 1st!

If you’re a young stud out there and the opportunity presents itself for you to go the league NOW, you better pack yo bags pimpin'. There are no guarantees in life except the guaranteed bread in the NBA for a lottery pick at 3 years $10 million! Sign on the dotted line and keep your nose clean playa! If you get hurt they've got to pay you all of that bread!

Don’t let some clown tell you that you need to stay one more year in school to improve your game. Didn’t you see Kevin Ware shatter his leg without contact with another player? Every time you step on the floor there is the potential of suffering a major injury that could potentially end your career. Trust me! When you can't play anymore you are worthless to the university! Why? Because a regular student doesn't make the school any money. In my Jay-Z voice, "On to the next!"

The only question that needs to be answered is how much is the NBA willing to pay you right now? If that number is more than free then you need to bounce. You can always go back to school playa! School has been open for more than 2,000 years and in my Puffy voice, “It ain’t go-in no-where!” If you want a degree you can always pay for your own because you’ve got the bread to pay for it now.

Holla At Ya Boy!
Jay Graves
Get @ me on Twitter: @jaygravesreport