It Only Took Half a Year, But The NCAA Finally Cleared Blind Long Snapper Jake Olson To Play With USC
Fox Sports – One of the more amazing stories connected to college football appears set for a new chapter.
Jake Olson, a blind long snapper who had become part of the Trojan family a half-dozen years ago as a 12-year-old after then-coach Pete Carroll had heard about how Olson wanted to see his favorite team play one more game before a surgery that would cost him his eyesight, tweeted Monday that he will join the USC football team when it takes the practice field Tuesday.
Last April, the LA Times reported that Olson planned on joining the Trojans team; however the NCAA said USC needed a waiver because he accepted a Swim With Mike scholarship to attend USC, which is given to athletes with physical challenges, meaning he’d count toward one of the available 85 scholarship spots on the roster. And USC was already at its 25-person limit of initial scholarship counters for this season.
When contacted by FOX Sports on Monday night in an effort to confirm that Olson has been cleared to join the team, a USC spokesperson said Olson will likely be out at practice Tuesday.
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Oh hey would you look at that! After spending the time since LAST APRIL thinking it over and having a few board room meetings about it, the NCAA finally got around to approving the blind longsnapper to suit up for USC! Decided well, maybe a “Swim with Mike” scholarship for a disabled kid and a visit to the team when he was 12 years old wasn’t an impermissible benefit after all. Maybe it was just a nice gesture, and some common sense could prevail here and we could go ahead and make an exception for, you know, a fucking blind kid.
Ohhh no no no (Dikembe voice). Not on the NCAA’s watch. As I said before – Classic slippery slope situation. If you let one Make A Wish kid play D1 football a decade after he visited the USC football team, what’s to stop the next generation of kids from giving themselves cancer to do the same thing? You know how intense the recruiting game is and how ruthless the competition is for a roster spot. If it’s ok for Jake Olson to fight his entire life to overcome a deadly disease and lose both his eyes to an aggressive cancer then be allowed to join a team as a feel good story, how do you prevent dozens of other kids from doing the same thing just to get a leg up on their non-cancer having competition? A kid who is maybe not as strong, not as fast, not as talented as his peers, thinking he can just cheat the entire system by getting cancer and undergoing years of pain and agony and grueling chemo and blindness to put on a Trojan uniform someday as a longsnapper.
Some people see a nice, heartwarming story in this video. The NCAA sees a sinister attempt to subvert their rules and regulations.
Like I don’t even feel happy for Jake Olson anymore, I just feel fucking hate for the NCAA. This was an awesome uplifting story half a year ago when USC put Jake on the team and he was about to fulfill his dream of playing college football. Now it’s just the NCAA righting a wrong that their scummy soulless asses made.