A former Northwestern University football player named, Colter, has exposed the exploitative system of using athletes to make billions while denying them basic healthcare, a real education, and the basic fundamental rights of a worker. The colleges reap millions peddling jerseys, video games, and other items using the players likenesses without giving the so-called student-athletes a dime.
Sound familiar? Well, it should if you compare what big time college programs are doing with, say, Walmart. You know Walmart by their low wages, wage thief, documented discriminatory practices toward their workers. etc. College sports programs have a lot in common with Walmart. First, they recruit athletes who in most cases were low-achieving students from marginal public schools. Also, most of these athletes (minorities) were subjected to social promotion in K-12 schools and were the product of dysfunctional families making it nearly impossible for them to quality on an academic basis for a "real" college major. How many high school and college graduates do you think work at Walmart? Although the athletes have won an early victory, that victory has open many eyes to what has been a open secret in the college sports world. Their effort to unionize is an attempt to get respect and fairness in another of America's exploitative institutions. Denial of respect, healthcare, and income seems to be the prevailing mantra in America's bloodsucking capitalist system. Maybe this win will bring some parents and promising young athletes to begin to question the real value of an athletic scholarship and the NCAA's dubious claim to the term "student-athletes".
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