McConnell OUT? American Athletics/Chinese Intrusion? Hunter/FARA. School Choice.

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 Shocking: McConnell Officially Getting Replaced

See This →

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The Chinese are doing every thing they can to pit Americans against each other.  They began, vis a vis creating controversy by having  men participate in women's sport activities. I suspect, in due course, Xi will attempt to create more and more interference because Americans love their athletics.

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The Façade of the Student-Athlete

 By Judd Garrett

At the SEC pre-season press conference this week, Ole Miss Head Coach Lane Kiffin discussed the recent changes to college football with the introduction of NIL money and the transfer portal. He said, "We've got professional sports." He explained that there is “free agency”, except with “no salary cap or luxury tax”. He continued, "I don't think that's good for college football. These massive overhauls of rosters every year is not in the best interest of college football… a poor system that isn't getting better and now is going to get worse." Big-time college football has grown to a financial point where it seemed unfair that the players were not getting a piece of the multi-billion-dollar pie that they were generating, so they had to do something.

The puzzling thing for me is why college football is so popular that it produces such big revenues. Objectively, college football is an inferior brand of football to the NFL. There is no debate about that. The step from college football to the NFL is not a step, it is a gigantic leap that very few can make successfully. If the best team in college football lined up against the worst NFL team, the college team would lose decisively. Only a small percentage of Division 1 FBS college football players, end up playing in the NFL, and even a smaller percentage become NFL starters. Most of the Heisman trophy winners turn out to be average NFL players or outright busts.

So, if the product is inferior, then why is it so popular? Why do so many people go to college football games or watch it on TV on Saturday when there is such a drop-off to the product that plays on Sunday? Why do we care about college football games which are essentially the minor leagues for the NFL? Very few people attend Triple-A baseball and the NBA D-League games, and fewer went to the XFL or USFL games. I went to a Durham Bulls minor league baseball game in June and sat right behind home plate. Pitchers were throwing 95-96 miles per hour with nasty breaking stuff. Hitters hit 450-foot home runs. And there were about two thousand people in the stands watching extremely talented players who were a heartbeat away from the show. So, why does a product which is not any better quality than those minor leagues which are barely scrapping by create such interest that it produces billions of dollars of revenue? 

The answer – the presumption of amateurism. The only thing that gave college football the credibility that made people want to watch it over the NFL was the presumption that the players were amateurs. The interest in college sports hinges squarely on the tradition of college sports and the concept of the student-athlete. When you turned on the TV and watched major college football, you were watching the best amateur football teams and players in the nation. And for many years, the concept of the amateur student-athlete playing a sport felt more wholesome than watching the professionals play. The college players were playing for the love of the game, while the professionals were playing for a paycheck. The conundrum arises when the amateur status of college sports creates such a tremendous interest in the sports that billions of dollars are generated to the point that it is only fair to spread that money to the players which turns players into professionals thus stripping the veneer of amateurism which created the interest that produced the money in the first place.

With the NIL money that is infecting college sports and the transfer portal which creates a free agency, we are turning college sports into professional sports. The major college football player is no longer a student-athlete, he is essentially an employee. He is a paycheck player. He is no longer playing for the pure love of the game; he is playing for the money. It all becomes transactional. Many players are transferring two to three times in their college careers, chasing the bigger NIL money each step of the way. College sports is no longer what it was originally intended on being, and maybe it hasn’t been for a long time. The professionalism that is major college sports is bubbling to the surface. Soon, college football announcers will be discussing players’ NIL money on the air like NFL announcers discuss players’ multi-million-dollar contracts.

Will there be a point when this catches up to college football? When the presumption of amateurism is lifted from college football and it is seen for what it is, a professional minor league system, will the interest begin to wane and the money dry up? Professionals are allowed to compete in the Olympics and have done so dating back to the 1990s, and the Olympic Games in sports like basketball and hockey are not as interesting as they had been when amateurs were the only ones allowed to compete. The viewership is way down even though the teams with professionals are arguably some of the most talented teams on the planet. The fans do not care that much because the players do not care that much

Maybe, nobody will care that college football has officially turned into the professional minor league of the NFL. Maybe, the luster of college football is so engrained into our sports culture that it will never fade. But one thing is clear, major college football with a team full of student-athletes giving it their all for their school and the love of the game, no longer exists, and maybe, it hasn’t existed for a long time. Maybe it never existed. Maybe it is a good thing that the façade has been lifted and we see major college football for what it truly has become a big business. And maybe when it is seen for what it truly is, the interest will diminish to the point that there will not be enough revenue for the players to demand a piece of, and the student-athlete playing for the love of the game will re-emerge to its proper place in our sports culture.

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HOOVER  DAILY

Inequality (Part 2) - The Pathological Focus On Income And Wealth Gaps by Joshua D. Rauh, Greg Kearney via Liberty Lens - An Economics Substack In our last piece on inequality, we focused on claims from the World Economic Forum (WEF) and other progressive organizations about the growth in inequality over time in income and wealth and how those measures have been grossly exaggerated particularly when looking at post-tax and transfer income redistribution measures.

Climate Change Hasn’t Set The World On Fire by Bjorn Lomborg via The Wall Street Journal [Subscription Required] It turns out the percentage of the globe that burns each year has been declining since 2001.

Getting Inside The Mind Of Vladimir Putin interview with Michael McFaul, Andrew Roberts via Secrets Of Statecraft With Andrew Roberts Mike McFaul, President Obama’s ambassador to Moscow, drew on history to discover what makes Putin tick. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Hunter Biden, FARA and Unequal Justice A bad law used against Trump associates now haunts President Biden’s son. By The Editorial Board Unequal justice has emerged as a theme in the Hunter Biden plea deal, and one example came last week when Judge Maryellen Noreika asked the prosecution and defense in court if their agreement meant the President’s son could still be prosecuted for violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Hunter’s lawyers said no, but the prosecutor said yes, and Hunter can thank Robert Mueller if he is prosecuted under that statute. FARA is a long-ignored law dating to 1938 that special counsel Mueller brought out of mothballs in an attempt to pry information out of Donald Trump’s associates. It requires Americans acting as an “agent of a foreign principal” under most circumstances to register with the U.S. government. As we noted at the time, in the nearly half-century up to 2016 the Justice Department brought only seven criminal FARA cases and won three convictions. The rarity of prosecutions created much confusion about how and when the law applies. That didn’t stop Mr. Mueller. As special counsel investigating nonexistent Russia collusion, he used FARA to prosecute Trump associates who were mostly accused of lying about their work on behalf of foreign governments. This is how he nailed Paul Manafort, who took money from the Ukrainians. Michael Flynn admitted to making false statements in documents filed pursuant to FARA regarding his work on behalf of the Turkish government. FARA also ensnared Greg Craig—a high-powered Democratic lawyer and former White House counsel to President Obama—who was prosecuted as an offshoot of the Mueller investigation into Mr. Manafort’s deals with Ukraine. As long as FARA was targeting people in the Trump orbit, Democrats cheered these prosecutions. They weren’t even fazed when a federal jury acquitted Mr. Craig on FARA-related charges that we and others believe should never have been brought. They may regret that legal standard now that federal prosecutors have confirmed to Judge Noreika that FARA charges could still be lodged against the President’s son. Based on Mr. Mueller’s prosecutions, Hunter is vulnerable. We know Hunter set up a shell company to do business with CEFC China Energy, and that he didn’t register as a foreign agent. Shell companies are a common strategy for disguising ownership, and accepting money from a foreign entity would normally require FARA registration. Similar questions remain about Hunter’s dealings in Ukraine. A FARA prosecution has political implications for President Biden. To have his son acting as a foreign agent while they were travelling to the relevant foreign countries together on Air Force Two would make the President’s claims of ignorance about Hunter’s business even harder to believe. This is guaranteed to be an issue in his 2024 bid for re-election—not least because staffers in the Obama Administration sent up red flags about Hunter’s lucrative work on the board of Burisma, the Ukrainian energy company. FARA has never been clearly defined and is used selectively. That is the definition of a bad law that is too easy for prosecutors to exploit against their political enemies Democrats have reason to say that if everyone in Washington who violates FARA were prosecuted for it, half the lobbyists would be out of business. But this would be a more persuasive argument if they had made it when Robert Mueller was busy using it against their political enemies.  'Hunter, FARA and Unequal Justice'. And: The Rising Demand for School Choice Several states report big increases in voucher or ESA applications. By The Editorial Board Many states have recently created or expanded school-choice programs, but are parents taking up the opportunity? It’s early days, but data from several states should encourage lawmakers that robust offerings are in demand. Indiana this year reported an increase of some 20% in its voucher program. More than 53,000 students participated in 2022-23, compared with 44,376 the previous school year, according to the state education department. Thirteen more private schools were included, bringing the total to 343. All of this was before the state made vouchers nearly universal in May by raising the income cap and removing other restrictions. Florida also made its K-12 scholarships universal this year by removing income limits. Step Up for Students, a nonprofit administering organization, recently said it had awarded 268,221 income-based scholarships, up from 183,925 at the same time a year ago. The group said it also had granted 74,711 special-needs scholarships, an increase of some 15,000. Arizona beat Florida by a year in making its education savings accounts, or ESAs, universal. The state says it approved 47,667 new student applications in 2023, compared with 5,103 before the expansion. Nearly 700 private schools receive ESA funds. West Virginia’s ESA program, open to any student already in public school, is entering its second year. The program has received 6,323 applications for the coming school term, up from roughly 3,600 last year, per the state Treasurer. Iowa’s new ESA program received 29,025 applications during a month-long window, according to Gov. Kim Reynolds’s office. In Arkansas nearly 5,000 students and more than 80 schools have applied or begun applying to another new ESA system, the state Education Department says. Applications opened in late June and continue through July. The Iowa and Arkansas programs aren’t universal in the first year, but they’re likely to grow as they phase in broader eligibility. None of this should prompt states to rest on their laurels. A recent Manhattan Institute report points out that getting ESAs through the political thicket is only the first step. Many parents are unaware of the offerings in their states, and a law does little good if it isn’t implemented well. “We fear a program in which 100,000 families want to participate,” the authors write, “but cannot log in to the payment platform, or cannot track their expenditures, or cannot promptly pay the educational providers helping their children.” Some states might also find that the demand exceeds the supply of seats in private schools. But in time states that are generous with ESAs are encouraging a variety of options to expand or open, whether faith-based, classical, Montessori or something new, and with families choosing what works best for them. That’s what a future of school choice looks like. ++++++++++++++