[Hat tip to Kevin Weakley for sending me the link to the article that inspired this blog.] The worst contract in American sports -- that's what Sports Illustrated magazine's Andy Staples called the National Letter of Intent, a document that commits a high school athlete to a scholarship from a particular university. Upon signing the Letter of Intent, that athlete forfeits one year of college eligibility in the event he or she fails to enroll in that school. In contrast, the school doesn't really have to honor the scholarship offer to the athlete. As Staples points out, Sure, the NLI claims to guarantee a scholarship, but that simply isn't true. That is contingent on the player being admitted to the school and on the football program staying below the 85-scholarship limit. A school can dump the player at any point between Signing Day and preseason camp, and he would have no recourse. This guarantee is no different than the one on a conference-approved financial aid form, but it costs the player something the financial aid agreement does not. This situation drew national attention when highly sought linebacker Roquan Smith verbally committed to UCLA in a ceremony televised on ESPN, but news broke revealing the primary recruiter who gave Smith his very first scholarship offer and cultivated a relationship with the player over three years would be leaving to take a coaching job in the NFL, working for the Atlanta Falcons. Had Smith signed the letter of intent and faxed it, he would have forfeited a year of eligibility unless UCLA granted him an unconditional release. … [Read more...]
The American worker versus H1-B visa employees
I'm asking...no, I'm begging you. If you read this post, please share it with everyone you know. This information must become viral, if the economy of the United States is going to survive in the long run. This is a call for action. PLEASE, call the office of your representative in Congress, and your state's senators. The layoffs of 400 IT employees at the utility company Southern California Edison has finally caught their attention. The time for action is now. PLEASE -- call every politician you know. The only power the American worker still holds is their vote. The politicians need them. The corporate terminology used to describe this sordid business of laying off qualified American employees is called a reduction in force. As in, when you now get the pink slip, you say "I just got RIFFed" instead. Here is the obscene lie -- the workforce isn't being reduced. They're probably bringing in three or four foreign employees to replace one American worker, because they are that much cheaper than experienced American talent. Those numbers are empirical evidence, observed through personal experiences, not from some "study." The unemployment rate for American-born workers as a percentage of the workforce is at an all time high. Uber-rich businessmen and women have convinced Congress that their businesses cannot flourish without importing wave after wave of technically skilled people from India, China, and other sources of cheaper labor. So they literally bring in these people, have them trained by the U.S. employees, and then lay off the American … [Read more...]
Unsolicited advice for Roquan Smith
Dear Roquan Smith: We've never met, in case you might be wondering. My letter is addressed to you, but I'm posting this on the internet in the hope it will catch your attention, as well as those of others who might find my advice beneficial. This advice would probably be equally useful to any other young athlete who faces a tough decision about which school to attend...I am not speaking as a college football fan, but as a grandfather. I am a grandfather. My intention is to speak to you as any grandfather would speak to his grandson, with no disrespect intended to your actual grandparents. I want to offer you the exact same advice I plan to give my own grandson, if he works hard enough and grows into an athlete talented to be offered similar opportunities to those you currently have. But before going any further, in the spirit of full disclosure I must tell you that I am a Georgia Bulldog fan, plain and simple. My opinions are often jaded. I shall make every effort to not show any favorable bias towards UGA in this open letter directed to you, but you should know that it naturally exists. However, I don't know or speak for Mark Richt, nor do I represent the university in any official capacity. I do love UGA, graduating in 1983 with a degree in Management Information Systems from the business school that has served me very well in my professional career. For twenty years, I helped develop computer software that did everything from making an electronic deposit into your checking account to encrypting your PIN after a device captured it, and all sorts of … [Read more...]
Brian Bell and bizarre death of Kendrick Johnson
Today is national signing day for college football scholarships. It is a big day for a select group of young men who live in the state of Georgia. Valdosta, Georgia is a small city with a population of roughly 54,000 people down in the heart of south Georgia farming country. Valdosta is located only about 35 miles from Tallahassee, Florida, the home of Florida State University. It so happens that I personally know the city of Valdosta fairly well. My wife was a cheerleader at Valdosta high school.We still have family who live down there, including our daughter and grandchildren. Compared with metropolitan Atlanta, the crime rate in Valdosta is fairly low, and violent crime even more so. It may not be paradise, but it isn't a bad place to grow up. Valdosta is more or less known for two things: farming, and high school football. For a very long time, Valdosta has had a reputation for developing high school football talent, and Valdosta High School was a football powerhouse, claiming an incredible 23 state championship titles in their program's history that dates all the way back to 1913. In more recent years, the balance of power shifted more to arch-rival Lowndes County High School. The Vikings football program didn't exist prior to 1966. yet they have won 5 state championships of their own. Georgia Bulldog fans will remember Buck Belue, quarterback of the 1980 national championship team, played high school football for the Wildcats. More recently, Jay Rome and Malcolm Mitchell came to Athens by way of Valdosta. Another young man named James … [Read more...]
Are NDE accounts all full of Malarkey?
Critics of my nonfiction work are well aware that I believe that some NDE accounts may hold key evidence which could settle for good the question of whether our consciousness ceases to exist the same moment our physical brain/body dies. That answer would seem to be "no." Corroborated veridical NDE perceptions, refers to new memories created by the individual in question while they were in a documented medical state of emergency which might be most accurately described as "somewhat" near death. To be honest, I'm not really interested in generic claims of an NDE or knowing every story behind every claim. In fact, there is only one aspect of any potential NDE claim that actually intrigues me at this point. I've seen and heard enough of them about heaven to believe in the possibility that heaven exists. I've also seen and heard enough NDEs that claimed to have occurred in hell to accept that possibility as well. The fact that NDEs can result in either heaven or hell suggests that the experience is not dismissible as a euphoric hallucination caused by chemical reactions in a dying brain. It doesn't really matter to me about the "degree of death" involved, meaning whether or not a medical professional had technically declared the individual in question to be dead at some point, assuming they recovered after recovery became unexpected. My foremost interest is knowing whether or not this person claims to have learned new information while incapacitated, and whether that evidence can be investigated and corroborated or debunked by an independent third party. If … [Read more...]
