I was unaware that Dele Coker got paid to play basketball. That makes me stupid?
No. Not only doesn't that make you stupid, that doesn't even follow. I could have picked anyone's name and whether you knew or didn't know whether that particular individual played BB professionally, it wouldn't change anything about you and particularly the fact that you are singularly uncharitable when you talk about these college students. And now I'm going to explain why that's particularly troubling in your case. Since you asked and all.
It's because you're allegedly a teacher. If I weren't a complete misanthrope I'd find that circumstance horrifying. However, hoping as I do that the world ends and everyone dies in a painful terrifying Armageddon, I just think it's funny and hope that everyone else's children are getting from you the education they deserve and hope that you're giving it to them good and hard. But understand: if I had the misfortune to have a child and my child had the misfortune to have you as a teacher I'd slit your throat and not lose a moment's sleep.
Because you do not seem to have the vaguest understanding of why there is an education system. You do not seem to understand that these players are children and that children can learn and the education system is there to help them do so. You do not seem to appreciate the value of experience, discipline and scholarship. You do not seem to understand that these players are young people trying to improve themselves and make sense of the world and become happy productive human beings and that the university's role in the community is to help them do that.
Instead, you talk about the players like they're fungible resources who have to earn your respect and loyalty based upon their FG percentage: otherwise you hope this one gets recruited over and that one loses his scholarship and the other one transfers and the fourth gets buried on the bench. Your most fervent hope is that they fail. And why? So that this stupid team wins enough games so that you can walk around the mall with your SJ cap proudly displayed at a jaunty angle. Your attitude towards these students - some of whom come from circumstances that would make you shit your pants if you found yourself similarly situated - is appalling and displays a dearth of character that makes even my skin crawl.
I anticipate your response. Foad you will say, you have an entire website devoted to talking shit about Saint John's and over the past several years have written tens of thousands of words disparaging the university and the program and everything about it. Isn't this screed a tad hypocritical? Yes, perhaps. But in the first place you would be hard pressed to find in anything I've written anywhere that wished ill upon anyone, much less a student athlete. That is, I might have mocked Lavin as a bobblehead but I never wished that his cancer returned so he had to retire. I mocked Jamal Branch's ineptitude for three years but I never cheered when his injuries forced him to the bench. I don't hope that Mussini slinks back to Italy with his tail between his legs because he's a lousy three point shooter and couldn't defend a pillar. Rather, I hope he improves at basketball and if he doesn't at least in the meanwhile takes advantage of the opportunities he has otherwise been afforded by virtue of his scholarship. I never wished for people to fail or suffer, I just reveled in their failures and suffering. And in the second place, I hate everyone and everything and am what can at best be described charitably as a #$%^ing a rear of a donkey. What's your excuse?