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Friendly Reminder As March Madness Is Approaching: These Are Students First, Athletes Second

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March Madness. What a wonderful time of the year, right? Nothing quite like some good ol’ fashion friendly competition amongst collegiate athletes. Love to get me a couple of cold ones, a vasectomy or two, post up on the couch for 4 straight days and do nothing but watch some hoops. For those of you who never had friends growing up, “hoops” is code for basketball.

However, there is a dark side to all of the Madness that March entails and I’m just here to shed some light on it. The darkness which I’m speaking about, of course, is the fact that these are student-athletes who we are watching here. No mind the phrasing of that word. STUDENT-athlete. As you can see, the word “student” comes before the word “athlete”. Never once is it the other way around.

These are not professional athletes we are watching here. These are all individuals who have decided to grant themselves the greatest gift in the world. The gift of higher education. Do slam dunks and alley-oops get plenty of praise from the fans and the media? Of course they do. But so should high test grades and spirited class participation. I’m sick and tired of hearing about how many blocks these athletes record in a game or how many points they put up. Unless those points are highlighted just as much as the student-athlete’s GPA, then don’t bother putting that nonsense up on ESPN.

This is the NCAA, people. It’s not some major money making corporation. These games are not meant drive in millions and millions of dollars and exploit the athleticism of these students. The games are meant for these athletes to engage in some intercollegiate rivalry in which they have the ability to earn their respective universities plenty of pride and, heck, even bragging rights.

So before the madness really gets going, I just figured I’d remind everybody of this fact. We are watching student-athletes here. Not athlete-students.

@BarstoolJordie