LLOYD CARR, HYPOCRITE

So I'm reading the blog of a fellow Wolverine http://mgoblog.blogspot.com/, and come across these quotes from Lloyd Carr (in response to night games and the addition of a 12th game on the schedule):

"Money … we need to make more money," Carr said, not disguising his sarcasm. "Let's play more games and let's make sure the players are available to play any time, any night, 24/7."

"I think we've gone down that road and there never will be a return unfortunately," Carr said. "I think the 12th game was just the first of what's going to be a continued growth…we're turning into a professional sport."

Well here's the thing Lloyd: it's always been a professional sport--as far as you're concerned anyway.

See, Lloyd Carr is a millionaire. Many times over. Many, many times over. Now I don't know where his (undoubtedly considerable) net worth puts him--other than "way the fuck above you", dear reader; but I do know making $1.4M a year puts you in the top 1/10 of 1% of earners in America. So what we have is an extraordinarily wealthy man bemoaning the greedy cesspool of capitalism run rampant that, you know, made him richer than 99.9% of the rest of the country.

So my question to Lloyd is this: If you're so upset about the amount of money NCAA football is collectively trying to make, then what is the "correct" amount of commercialism, what's the "correct" amount of revenue? Is it the amount where you get to make tens of millions of dollars in your career...and right there, hold it, stop! That's enough! Anything more than that is a moral outrage! It's sickening! We're turning into (snort)...a professional sport!

Yeah, "we" are.

(Aside: Hey, why do we even have professional coaches anyway? Why not have student volunteers? You know, the way we have student "volunteer" football players? It obviously would make for worse football (although perhaps not in Michigan's case), just like having student volunteer players makes for worse football, but at least that would restore the purity and amateurism Carr so obviously yearns for. Nah, on second thought, let's keep it the way it is: force young black guys to uphold the highest and noblest ideal in sports, if not all of life itself--amateurism--while old white guys get insanely rich).

I don't begrudge Lloyd Carr one dollar of what he's made (especially on Milton Friedman Day). You know me, I'm a big fan of unfettered capitalism. I'm going to buy a goddamn felt pennant with the words "UNFETTERED CAPITALISM" on it, that's how much of a fan I am. Good for him that he cashed in, good for him that he's richer than christ. I have no problem with that.

What I do have a problem with is a hypocrite like him crying about the greed, commercialism and big money in college football that he himself has profited off of so handsomely. He never had a problem in the world with any of that when he was getting his million dollar paychecks, but now that someone's asking him to play--shudder--a *night game*, well, let the sanctimonious moral outrage spew forth like so many USC touchdowns.

Look, if Lloyd wanted to coach football in a pure, pristine, amateur paradise, he always could have chosen to do that--there are many Division III colleges out there, community colleges, high schools, junior high schools, pee-wee leagues (where his soft zones might have a chance). Nobody's making any money there, nobody's a slave to the TV schedule, big donors aren't calling the shots in the football program, nobody's making a mockery out of the educational mission of the school--oh yeah, and the coach gets paid twenty grand a year...but with unlimited usage of the laundry facilities and one free dinner a week at the Applebee's over by the interstate.

Huh? What's that, Lloyd? Wha? You--you say you're fine where you are? You're good?

Yeah, I thought so. So SHUT THE FUCK UP about money ruining college football. It's astonishing that the only individual person making serious coin in college football--a head coach at Football Factory U.--thinks he has claim to the moral high ground with respect to college football becoming too money-driven. Now maybe there's a good point to be made there, but Lloyd Carr just isn't the one with the standing to make it. It'd be like Robert Nardelli going on the warpath about incompetent CEOs getting ridiculous golden parachutes.