I spent two years at Ohio State in the mid-1990’s getting a master’s degree and being duly initiated into the cult of Big Ten football, so I was disturbed to glance up from the treadmill in the gym yesterday afternoon and see ESPN report that OSU quarterback Terrelle Pryor and four teammates had been caught selling things they owned to other people, for money.
Pryor is a 6-6" 240-lb professional football player who was hired by Ohio State in 2008 on a four-year contract to be their quarterback. He works for head football coach Jim Tressel, who earns $3.5-million per year. Tressel reports to Athletic Director Gene Smith, who earns $1.2-million per year. Smith reports to President E. Gordon Gee, who earns $1.5-million per year.
Pryor was the most heavily recruited young professional football player in the country when he signed his four-year contract in 2008, the equivalent of Bryce Harper, the No. 1 draft pick baseball phenom who signed a $9.9-million contract with the Washington Nationals earlier this year. But because Pryor has the misfortune of living in America in 2010, where professional football is operated in collusion by the professional National Football League and the professional arm of the NCAA, he gets paid approximately $24,000 per year. Or, rather, he receives a voucher in that amount that can be exchanged only for room, board, and tuition to attend classes at Ohio State until he leaves for the NFL without earning a diploma. Pryor has no choice in the matter—the last guy who tried to get paid fair-market value for his football services instead of tithing millions of dollars in free labor to the NCAA was OSU running back Maurice Clarett, who was released from the Toledo Correctional Institute earlier this year.
Pryor’s offense was to sell his 2008 Big Ten championship ring and a golden trinket that has been given to OSU football players every year since 1893 to commemorate their annual ritual humiliation of the University of Michigan. The word “his” has a slightly different meaning in NCAA world, translating roughly as “not his.” Pryor and his teammates have to return (to whom?) the few thousands of dollars they were paid in exchange for the things they thought they owned. They will also be banned from participating in the Buckeyes’ upcoming January 4th, 2011 Sugar Bowl matchup with Arkansas ha ha ha ha ha no, of course that won’t happen. Where do you think the millions of dollars used to pay Tressel, Smith, and Gee come from? From events like the “nonprofit” Allstate Sugar Bowl, which paid it’s three top executives $1.2-million last year. Sugar Bowl executive director Paul Hoolahan made $645,000 for directing a game that is played once a year. I guess the thinking is that’s chump change compared to the $20-million the Big Ten and SEC will receive, each, for sending teams to the “nonprofit” game. Those millions of dollars come from advertisers who want to sell products to fans who want to watch Terrelle Pryor play football. So Pryor and his compatriots will miss the first five games of next season and be unavailable to compete against powerhouse programs like Toledo and Akron.
OSU athletic director Gene Smith, showing just what $1.2-million buys you these days, kinda sorta defended the actions of his unpaid professional football players on the grounds that, what with the economy and so forth, it’s hard to make ends meet when your employer doesn’t pay you any actual money in exchange for your extremely valuable services. I’m not kidding:
“The time this occurred with these young men was a very tough time in our society. It’s one of the toughest economic environments in our history,” he said. “The decisions that they made they made to help their families.”
Fortunately—and really, here is something for us all to be thankful for during the holiday season—the fact that Terrelle Pryor will presumably be shutting down his Terrelle Pryor-related football memorabilia business for a little while doesn’t mean that consumers of Terrelle Pryor-related items have nowhere to turn. You can still buy an Ohio State football jersey emblazoned with Pryor’s own No. 2 at the official online store of Ohio State university athletics for only $23.95 plus tax, shipping and handling.
That is, you can buy one if you actually get paid money in exchange for services at your job.
