news:sjhRq.6836$UT4....@newsfe03.iad...
> What is the biggest addiction there is?
>
> Is it tobacco, it is heroin, is it cannabis?
> Is it chocolate is it beer is it wine?
> Is it surfing is it climbing high mountains is it driving fast cars?
> Is it sexual climax?
>
> No it is none of these.
>
> The biggest addiction there is, is the Love of God.
sex can't really be an addiction because that need was programmed into us
i'd say football
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/31/opinion/nocera-the-college-sports-cartel.html
The College Sports Cartel
By Joe Nocera, The New York Times
31 December 11
twice a year in Vienna, the members of the Organization of Petroleum
Exporting Countries gather to decide on the short-term direction of oil
prices. Sometimes, O.P.E.C. agrees to cut back on oil production, pushing up
the price of oil. Other times, it decides to boost production. Always, the
goal is to fix the price of oil, rather than allow it to be set by the
competitive marketplace. Indeed, collusion and price-fixing are the main
reasons cartels exist - and why they are illegal in America.
Yet, in Indianapolis a few weeks from now, a home-grown cartel will hold its
annual meeting, where it, too, will be working to collude and fix prices.
This cartel is the National Collegiate Athletic Association. The N.C.A.A.
would have you believe that it is the great protector of amateur athletics,
preventing college athletes from being tainted by the river of money pouring
over college sports.
In fact, the N.C.A.A.'s real role is to oversee the collusion of university
athletic departments, whose goal is to maximize revenue and suppress the
wages of its captive labor force, a k a the players. Rarely, however, will
the cartel nature of the N.C.A.A. be so nakedly on display as at this year's
convention.
In The Times Magazine this weekend, I lay out a proposal to pay the players
in the two big revenue sports, college football and men's basketball,
something the N.C.A.A. won't countenance. In the course of my reporting, I
gained a new appreciation for the cartel characteristics of sports leagues.
Sports leagues can't exist without at least some collusion. As Andy Schwarz,
an economist and litigation consultant, puts it, "If steel companies got
together to decide when and where to produce steel, that would violate the
antitrust laws. But if sports teams in a league get together to decide when
and where to play games, that's generally allowed." Major League Baseball
has long had an antitrust exemption; other professional leagues have salary
caps, which are legal because they have been agreed to by the players.
The N.C.A.A. has neither an antitrust exemption nor a player's union to
negotiate with. In other words, it lacks some of the legal protections that
shield professional sports from antitrust suits. What it has, instead, is a
work force full of young adults dreaming of becoming pros and willing to
sign any document, no matter how onerous, if it will help them reach that
goal. The document the N.C.A.A. forces them to sign completely stacks the
deck against them. To cite just one outrageous example, if a player runs
afoul of an N.C.A.A. rule, he isn't allowed legal counsel to defend himself.
Recently, Mark Emmert, the president of the N.C.A.A., tried to make the
rules a tad less onerous. He got the N.C.A.A. board of directors to approve
an optional $2,000 stipend as well as a four-year scholarship instead of the
current one-year deal for players.
And how did the cartel react to these modest changes? It rose up in revolt.
Enough universities signed an override petition to temporarily ice the new
stipend. The same thing happened with the four-year scholarship.
A lawyer in Fort Worth, Christian Dennie, who specializes in sports law, got
ahold of an internal N.C.A.A. document outlining some of the objections. One
is especially worth repeating: "The new coach may have a completely
different style of offense/defense that the student athlete no longer fits
into," wrote Indiana State. Four-year scholarships might mean that the
school would be stuck with "someone that is of no "athletic' usefulness to
the program." Thus does at least one school show how it truly views its
"student athletes." (Andy Staples at Sports Illustrated first reported on
this document.)
At the N.C.A.A. convention in mid-January, both of these rules will be
reviewed. In all likelihood, the N.C.A.A. will roll them back. However
benignly it characterizes this action, it will be as clear-cut an example of
collusion as anything that goes on at an OPEC meeting.
How can it be that the N.C.A.A. can define amateurism in one moment as
allowing a $2,000 stipend and in the next moment as forbidding such a
stipend? How can it justify rolling back a change that would truly help
student athletes, such as the four-year scholarship, simply because coaches
want to continue to have life-or-death power over their charges? How can the
labor force that generates so much money for everyone else be kept in
shackles by the N.C.A.A.?
The N.C.A.A. claims it has the legal right to do all the above and more. And
maybe it does. But it certainly would be worthwhile to see someone challenge
its cartel behavior in court. The inevitable rollback of the $2,000 stipend
and the four-year scholarship would be an awfully good place to start.