A Small Difference

Rising crescendoes. Brass bands. For a typical rule-abiding, class-going, Asian kid, its enthralling.

Clouds of Cush. Needles and the like. For MR HGH, it smells like money. Or many, many joints for that matter.

Universitys' appetites for green and ESPN cameos are as large as Eddy Curry's is for unlimited buffet.

Ohio State totaled $104.7 million in athletic revenues...including Buckeye grill covers, Buckeye comforters, Buckeye lunchboxes, Buckeye steak... while Long Beach State reaps in about $1.5 million selling beach towels.

And then you have these kids, or parents, who feel that they are entitled to a college education because of being abnormally tall or abnormally large.

"Kids feel like they're victim[s] of the NCAA and I don't think anyone is happy with it...you can't have someone buy a kid a hamburger, but you can sell their jerseys and fill the arenas and it's fine."

So colleges must steal from players like Renardo Sidney, to self-promote... Isn't that just what Saint Stern wanted?

So college really doesn't develop these kids.

How about shipping them to Lithuania? Introduce them to the European mafia? Or unrestricted freedom that would inhibit their egos to go to work?

There's a highly rated point guard contemplating whether to play overseas instead of playing next year under Lute Olson. I wonder if he makes it back alive.

It's not those athletic directors or money-driven politicians that irritate me. And it's not the mindset of these spoon-fed, egotistical athletes. But it's actually how accepted it is to court these balloon heads into a post-graduate education, award them with accolades, praise them and feed their buffet-capacity stomachs with little regard for the masses that sit in lecture halls. And think.

But to promote, and in some cases, preserve the intellectually hungry who are at the school for a purpose, Renardo Sidney may actually mean something. Right?