MONDAY, JUNE 23, 2014
PAGE 12
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Embiid's injury unfortunate, upsetting
NBA DRAFT
The kid from Cameroon can't catch a break.
It's old news to some as we've heard the former Kansas center Joel Embid suffered a stress fracture in his right foot this past week. In a matter of hours on Thursday the news went from bad to worse for the seven footer.
First reports announced it was a possible foot injury, then a likely stress fracture in his right foot, then finally a confirmed navicular bone stress fracture. It requires surgery, and possesses a recovery time of four-to-six months. Not good news at all.
The Big 12 Defensive Player of the Year struggled with back issues during this past year's regular season, missing a game when TCU came to Lawrence. He reinjured his back with
a lower back stress fracture in a game against Oklahoma State in early March, eventually ending his season.
When he decided to leave Kansas in April, we saw clear blue skies and a possible first overall pick in the 2014 NBA Draft. Embid was said to have the most room to grow as a player. He could be an all-star, they said. A Hall of Famer.
No one expected a week before the draft festivities began in Brooklyn,
N. Y. at the Barclays Center that embid would be planning to not attend
bid would be planning to not attend It's a truly unfortunate story, but has a chance to be even more tragic. His injury is one that has a horrid past among basketball players, particularly big men. The navicular bone stress fracture has sidelined numerous centers, derailing their careers for the worst.
Yao Ming, the first pick 2002 NBA Draft by the Houston Rockets, sustained the same injury in 2006; his career was never same after that. Another who suffered the same injury is former Cleveland Cavaliers center Zydrunas Ilgauskas. He endured the injury in 2000, and ultimately ended his season. However, Ilgauskas was able to make a full recovery, and played ten more seasons before retiring in 2011.
Since Thursday, Embiid has dropped significantly in draft boards. Prior to the injury, he was a consensus top three pick, with the other two players being Duke's Jabari Parker, and fellow teammate Andrew Wiggins.
Now Embiid sits out of the top five on most boards, and with little shot of becoming the first player taken in this years draft.
There have been different endings to this injury, and Joel Embiid's story has yet to pan out the way he like it to. On Thursday he tweeted, "Disappointment is inevitable. Discouragement is a choice." The surgery was successfully completed on Friday morning, which began his rehabilitation process.
Finally some good news for the kid from Cameroon.
NCAA VS. ED O'BANNON
Pros and Cons: Compensation for student-athletes
Imagine a business that creates a very desirable product. This business can sell tickets, merchandise and negotiate media deals that earns itself close to $1 billion in profit each year. This company has more than 400,000 employees feeding the profits but they don't have to pay any one of them a single dime.
This ingenious business model is the very structure of the NCAA: the so-called "non-profit" association that organizes college athletics in the United States.
Many would say that student-athletes are more than fairly reimbursed for their services to their schools. It's true that most college athletes receive.scholarships for tuition, a place to stay and eat, as well as a multitude of other free services aimed at fulfilling their academic and
athletic needs. But is that enough considering that all of it can be taken away in an instant upon injury or once their talents are no longer deemed necessary?
Being a college athlete is a full-time job. With morning workouts, class, practice, homework and study time, there's no time for these young players to do anything else. Their entire lives for as long as they remain at school, are centered around their sport and making sure they are good enough to stay on the field or on the court so they can earn millions of dollars in profits for their
school and the NCAA: profits they can't touch.
Amateurism in college sports is dead. There is big money being made, but it's not falling into the right hands. We live in a country where if you possess a unique talent or idea it can be marketed and make money overnight, but for some reason if that talent or idea comes from a college athlete no payment is necessary.
Paying student-athletes wouldn't hurt the games we know and love; we have seen the competitive nature of professional sports remain, despite constant salary increase. It is likely that fans would even see increased performance on the playingfield as players would work harder and smarter in hopes of staying on the payroll.
Read the full column on Kansan.com
The scholarships that athletes receive already give athletes opportunities that other college students are not given. An athlete's talent and skill might be enough to earn them a scholarship while a normal student needs to rely on their academics alone to earn scholarships. Student athletes are treated like celebrities on college campuses — and deservedly so — but that doesn't mean that they deserve better and more opportunities than their peers.
The most important thing for student athletes is having something to fall back on after their collegiate sports careers are over. The overwhelming majority of student-athletes find a career outside of the world of sports. That being said, it is crucial that athletes who do not go to the pros stay in school to earn degrees.
They are still young men
and women; and just because they are talented athletes, that shouldn't make them better than any of the other students at their university. A student with a 4.0 GPA, participates in Greek life and other various university organizations does not receive special treatment like these athletes do.
Professionals get paid, and collegiate athletes are simply not professionals. The student- athlete to non-student athlete gap is already getting further and further apart with all of the publicity and fame that these athletes get.
If they do begin receiving financial compensation, the gap
between students and student athletes will continue to grow, which will harm student relationships and take away from students' opportunity to interact with their peers.
Then, there's the issue of how you go about paying the players. Will football players make more money than basketball players because football tends to bring more money to a university? Or will the amount be determined by an individual's skill level? Will players receive a bonus for winning The Big 12 title? What about making the NCAA tournament and then each round after that?
Paying collegiate athletes could ruin the integrity and the beauty of the college game. Players play for their school and for the name on the front of their jersey. They don't play for a check in the mail.
Read the full column on Kansan.com
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