Thursday, November 4, 2010

SEC Football Blogger

Posted: 04 Nov 2010 06:19 PM PDT

The Cam Newton Kerfluffle

Because nothing beautiful can ever last in college sports, reports from ESPN are coming out saying that Kenny Rogers, he of 1980′s Mississippi State Football and not the chicken concern, sought money from the Bulldogs in regards to procuring the services of Cam Newton to the tune of 180 thousand dollars.

In the court of public opinion? Obviously, this looks bad. Colleges don’t pay their players anything in terms of cash and or money. And the history of college recruiting is as dark and muddied as your average state or national campaign. And when you add that to the fact that Auburn has had previous stints upon Probation…it doesn’t look good.

But that being said. Here are reasons why this seems like a Deadspin story writ mainstream. One, the Reverend Cecil Newton has expressed a vehement denial of this matter. Though the problem with that is if you have a case like this where it’s word versus word, the word of the athlete always gets short shrift.

And a libel suit would be a lot of work for a problem such as this.

Then again? If you don’t send a libel suit, there’s a certain tendency for the issues to be true. So basically, what’s the main idea here.

It’s exasperating that without firm facts this story came out. Watching Cam Netwon play football is a special experience, and now there’s that whole niggling thought of yeah, he took money. Also, recruiting is essentially a political campaign. A corrupt mess that no governing body is to mature to even want to fix.

And rivals can be sore losers. So basically, it’s a 270 word post that just could have been me saying sigh a lot.

Predictions to follow.