![]() ![]() As a former, low-level Division I football player, I can say with a clear conscience that college athletes are not getting ripped off. The notion that a full scholarship isn't a fair exchange for athletic services provided to a university - regardless of how much money an athletic department generates from those services - is ridiculous. ![]() We, the media, call Martin a "street agent." I bet the people who gambled with Martin on the job viewed him as a dear friend and saw him no differently than the convenience store clerk who punches in their daily lottery numbers.īut let me get back to my primary point. I'm sure he loaned money to and did favors for more Detroiters than just the city's top athletes. It's just that we need to view him in proper context. He deserves the jail time he's about to receive. He evaded paying taxes on large sums of money. I'm not throwing a pity party for Martin. They were even more popular before our government moved into their industry with state-sponsored "Numbers" men are prevalent in the black community. He's not some violent, game-fixing, Mafia gambling kingpin. ![]() I suspect if Ed Martin is anything like my grandfather who ran "numbers" in an Indianapolis automotive plant in the 1960s and '70s, he's a respected man in his community. And I say this in all seriousness, we've given "street agents" a bad name. By constantly beating the drum that college athletes are getting screwed, we created the market for "street agents" to flourish. Webber's claim that he couldn't afford a Big Mac in college was ludicrous.Īnd the whole time we've been singing the sad song about athletes getting screwed financially, we've been hypocritically complaining about the so-called "street agents" who are lining the pockets of the athletes and allegedly undermining their morals. The NCAA should give them something, at least money to go to the movies and do their laundry. For the past 20 years, ever since college football and men's basketball have become big, big business, we've wrongly told college athletes they've been getting ripped off. We, the media, can blame Webber and the Fab Five for sticking their hands out and accepting what was given to them, but that's pretty much what we told them to do. When Webber laughably claimed that he was frustrated because he couldn't afford to buy a Big Mac at McDonald's while local vendors sold his jersey for $50, we lapped the story up and cried about the injustice of the NCAA not paying its athletes. I do know only a man or woman devoid of his senses couldn't smell the sense of financial entitlement that wafted from the five teenagers as they made college basketball history and, in their minds, made middle-aged white businessmen wealthy.īut somehow many of us missed it. I do know only a fool would watch Webber, Jalen Rose and Juwan Howard drive up to practice and games in new SUVs, gaudy jewelry dangling from their necks and expensive leather coats and jackets wrapped around their shoulders and not suspect the Fab Five had a nice source of income. When you saw Juwan Howard, left, Jalen Rose, center, and Chris Webber driving around Ann Arbor, you knew they weren't typical college students. Never even had a two-minute discussion about him. In the two years I covered the Fab Five for the Ann Arbor (Mich.) News, I never met Ed Martin. I have no idea how much money Chris Webber and his Fab Five teammates received from old-school numbers man Ed Martin while they led the University of Michigan to back-to-back NCAA title games. ![]()
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