Omar Silverio, pictured, was denied a waiver request to West Virginia University this summer.
MORGANTOWN — I’m not foolish enough to argue with the NCAA about its own rules.
That would be like arguing with Picasso about the meaning of one of his paintings and, we all know, that only he knows what the true meaning is.
Beauty, or whatever it was that Picasso was putting on canvas, is truly in the eye of the beholder.
So, we aren’t going to knock the NCAA for failing to grant a portal waiver to transfer guard Omar Silverio to play basketball this year for WVU.
No sir.
Instead, we’re going to ream the NCAA and all connected with it for losing all sight of what the hell the college experience is supposed to be about.
College is about educating young people, yes. But it is much, much more than that.
College’s purpose is to prepare students for their future with education being only part of the path there.
It is not only a place for academic education, but a place where a transformation is supposed to take place. If you don’t believe a young person needs that transformation to be successful, you need spend just one Friday night in the downtown Morgantown bars to understand how far they have to go.
College isn’t only reading, writing and ‘rithmetic. It’s a bridge from an irresponsible, pimply-faced teen into a young man or woman about to embark upon a career, one that requires education for success, to be sure, but also a maturity that comes with being on one’s own from 18-22.
This is probably the most important part of college for most young people. It is where they figure out what they want to do with their life and how to get there.
It is a glorified trade school.
Want to be a lawyer, study law. Want to be an accountant, study accounting. Want to be a farmer, study agriculture. Want to be a doctor, go to med school.
You get the idea.
But there’s a subculture in college made up of students who are deemed student-athletes, even though that well might qualify as an oxymoron for the emphasis is usually more on the athlete than the student.
Funny, though, while English professors may make $80,000, give or take a few thousand on either side, to teach the students at the university, the school spends far, far, far, far more on its football coach and his staff than even the school president makes.
Obviously, with those salaries, one would think the student-athlete’s goal of becoming a professional athlete — or moving into coaching — is far, far, far more important than turning out lawyers or farmers or doctors.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
But I’m just thinking that a guy like Omar Silverio gets caught up in an out-of-control situation not of his own making at Manhattan and wants to come to West Virginia and wants to study journalism, he probably wouldn’t need a waiver to pursue his dream.
But colleges live in their own ivy-engulfed world where the student-athletes, as loved as they are by the public, are simply gladiators with their eligibility seen over by this group of NCAA power brokers whose own world is being threatened by a revolution in college athletics.
The serfs in the locker room have suddenly attained their freedom to move from school to school while being paid, pampered and praised. They are now represented by agents, paid by merchants to hawk their products and by school athletic boosters so they can say to their powerful friends “my school is better at football (or basketball) than your school.”
This has created a situation where the NCAA’s very existence is threatened and along with it those cushy, highly salaried jobs they hold in Indianapolis.
In fact, a former NFL executive, Andrew Brandt, who worked for the Green Bay Packers, recently predicted on the Ross Tucker Podcast that in five years the NCAA will no longer be the governing body.
“There’ll be some other body governing college football,” he said. “And then they’ll have to deal with NIL and boosters and collect all the abuse.”
I’m thinking no one would be asking Silverio to get a waiver to study computer science, he’d be allowed to transfer in to do it.
See, the idea is to prepare young men and young women to go out into the real world and begin their careers.
The NCAA executives have to make themselves seem to be still in charge of a system that has spun crazily out of their control, and so they make rules to control it.
Necessary rules? Yes, but rules that can take away from the very purpose of their existence, preparing someone for his career.
Omar Silverio had come to WVU to play basketball, hoping to launch himself into the NBA or some other professional league. He had done nothing wrong, yet after sitting out the last half of last year following his transfer, he was denied the right to play through his final year of eligibility.
His college career is over.
Last year WVU was victimized as Jose Perez ran into the same roadblock to his career and, somehow, this isn’t just or justified.
It’s absurd and asinine. This shouldn’t be happening to WVU again, especially with all the school and the basketball program has gone through over the past six months.
If they want to invoke a rule, make it something like the mercy rule they use in baseball.
College athletics has undergone a dramatic reformation. It is time now to reform the reformation, to understand there needs to be a major in athletics, that its place in the collegiate universe must be redefined and catered to as what it is, a stepping stone into life.
It is no longer being viewed as an extracurricular activity.