David French notes a Nation piece on the firing of Jim Tressel from Ohio State over in Phi Beta Cons. An excerpt:
A plantation-economy nonprofit really has no place in a civil society. College football needs to be shut down and reopened under new management. Give players a stipend, guarantee scholarships for four years, cap salaries of head coaches, and start over because the current model has failed: morally, ethically and economically.
Whatever else might have been said in this Nation piece, calling college football a “plantation-economy” is disgusting and ignorant of the facts. Nobody ever sailed a boat over to the fertile football grounds of Ohio or Florida and captured a blue-chip quarterback with a butterfly net and forced him to do anything.
Repeat after me: NCAA scholarship athletes are not, and never have been, slaves.