Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for March 09, 2013

RG3? Bambi knees? Somebody elucidate, please….

Robert Griffin the Third is the starting quarterback for Washington Redskins but has had knee injuries due to his constant running of the football. He’s not a natural in the pocket passer.

@Buzza Wuzza, @MiepR ** Thanks. Football facts are not my strong suit :-)

The NCAA is a bizarre mix of unpaid labor risking life and limb generating bazillions within institutions that ostensibly answer to the higher calling of educating our future. Among the big institutions of America, it’s always struck me as one of the most amoral.

(Before you talk about the great education the athletes get while their coaches pull down 7 and 8 figure salaries [while libraries crumble and tuitions skyrocket] please check the graduation rates of those athletes.)

March Madness? Yeah, but it actually lasts all year long.

A-moral? How about immoral!

“Free of the NCAA…” but who you gon’a play against?

30 years ago my father said they should just drop the pretense of student athletes and call it what it is – minor league.

Bambi knees!

The last thing a for-profit school would do is leave the NCAA and start having to actually PAY its players. Unless, of course, the for-profit schools found a way to form their own league that exploited the players even more profitably…

Does that mean Pro-cheerleaders too?!

Who could forget the adorable video of Bambi trying to get up and straighten his legs as a young Bambi?

Of course, Bambi is only a cartoon character. Farmers around here don’t view deer as Bambi, only as giant rodents munching on their winter wheat…

I guess sports folks know who RG3 is. GT just gave RG3 a big shout out today. Perhaps the Trudeau bump?

Now Walden can be in the BCS

@montessoriteacher * Greetings – so nice to “see” you this morning!

**

“Who could forget the adorable video of Bambi trying to get up and straighten his legs as a young Bambi?” I wish I could remember that, but the scene with the pool of blood around the dead mama wiped out everything that came before.

Some folks don’t seem to be bothered by the 4,000 Americans who died in Iraq needlessly. Only the 4 who tragically died in Benghazi. Yet, they didn’t want to help the people to get better security when they had the chance. It is just political opportunism on the part of the GOP to keep beating the drum of a coverup in Benghazi rather than concentrating on avoiding such a tragedy in the future.

the ncaa should pay student atheletes.

@montessoriteacher

“I am sure you realize animals are slaughtered so that meat is available.”

**

I do now, and have for many years, and have no objection at all to either hunting or ranching with all that’s involved with getting meat to the table. As a small child, though, in the sanitized suburbs, I had no context in which to view the romanticized cartoon doe as anything other than a mother, whose beloved baby was now motherless. Years later, living in a little mountain cabin, my partner and I brain-tanned hides we were given by hunters, and we sometimes received the heads, too. There is always a lot of meat left in the neck, and I made many a great stew from the meat I harvested from that source, while the deer’s or elk’s own brain was boiled for use in tanning the hide. That’s about as up-close-and-personal as it gets, without actually having shot the gun or bow! And now I live near the heart of the city, where it’s fun to reminisce about those days despite its having virtually nothing to do with today’s Doonesbury strip. :-)

The best part of ‘for profit’ by far is dumping the NCAA. I’ll bet BIG money it’s run by republicans.

I wonder if you ever heard of Beirut (twice), the Berlin disco, and Pan Am Flight 103?

And exactly who is Walden going to play? None of the other college teams would do so (violation of NCAA rules, I’m sure) and the pros can’t, either (not part of the NFL, not to mention Walden would get creamed). So congratulations! You just paid for a team with nobody to play.

As for the NCAA and the money, it’s very simple: Cut the coaching salaries to match the rest of the faculty and use the money for the school. After all, the other departments that put on events for the public at large to attend such as the Theatre, Music, and Dance departments turn over their monies to the school.