Matt & Shannon wrote:
 
> ...Just kidding.
>
> According to WEEI out of Boston, five members of the Gold Medal winning
> US Olympic Women's Hockey team will be kept from appearing on the team's
> Wheaties box because they still have college eligibility remaining.  As
> we all know, NCAA student-athletes cannot be promoted in such a manner;
> that would be bad.
>
> Thanks, NC$$, for looking out for these women's best interests...
 
It's not that I don't think this is ridiculous, because I do.  It's just for
different reason.  My point is that these athletes aren't really amateurs.
 
The NCAA's isn't so much that they're against the athlete's being promoted;
the rule is that athletes are not allowed to endorese commercial products.
This rule is absolutely essential if you are going to maintain the fiction
of amateurism; I'd even go so far as to say that it's one of the rules that
you couldn't bend at all, even in a case like this.  There are too many ways
to pro quo this quid (for pretty much the same reason Doug Woog shouldn't
have been leaving money under hats for a player even though his eligibility
was up).
 
Let's not kid ourselves; General Mills (I think that they are the
conglomerate in question) doesn't want to put the U.S. hockey gold medalists
on a box out of love of country and the goodness of its heart.  They think
(correctly in my view) that this is going to make them some money.  If you
really believe that college athletes are amateurs, then you should want to
keep them as far away from commercial endoresements as possible.  That means
keeping them off of Wheaties boxes.
 
I say, "Put 'em on there."  But then I think that anyone that plays a sport
explicitly for compensation (i.e. a college education) isn't an amateur
anyway.
 
J. Michael Neal
 
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