Quality control

Maybe I'm not seeing this right. It happens sometimes.

It happens when you're a contrarian who frequently doesn't look at the world in the way normal humans do, or what we like to think are normal humans. Which is to say, things look yea different when you're seeing them upside-down and sideways, with your head cocked way over and your eyes  all scrunched up like a hurricane wind is blowing in your face.

And so to the topic du jour: The NCAA's new guidelines for agents wishing to represent NCAA players testing the NBA waters.

The NCAA's new decree is that in order to represent these athletes, agents must hold a bachelor's degree, NBPA certification for at least three straight years and professional liability insurance, and must complete an in-person exam taken at the NCAA office in Indianapolis in early November.

One presumes the NCAA sees this as protecting its "student-athletes" from being exploited by unsavory street agents and fast-buck con artists.

The Blob, however, suspects it's also just another way for a massive corporate construct to safeguard its product. Quality control, if you will -- with the emphasis on "control."

You can get all kinds of pushback by suggesting big-money college athletics operate with a plantation mentality, because all kinds of folks will indignantly fly to the ramparts if you do. Why, how dare you characterize as chattel the athletes who feed the NCAA's revenue stream! They get a free education! They get the best of everything their universities have to offer! They get special treatm--

Oops. Better not go there.  It leads to some thorny territory, because then you have to explain why "student-athletes" get their special treatment, and that leads to the uncomfortable truth that they get that treatment because they're ... well ... a valuable commodity.

In other words, they generate revenue. Goo-gobs of it.

And so, yes, there is a whiff of the plantation in these agent requirements, or at least a whiff of its paternalistic attitude toward its workforce  ("We're doing this to protect our student-athletes. They're such children, you see.") And it is about controlling that workforce, when you get down to the bare wood of it.

Why else would the NCAA presume to dictate who its "student-athletes" can hire to represent them, and by what criteria? Do they dictate the same to the coaches and other athletic personnel of its member schools? And if not, how is it the NCAA's business who its "student-athletes" hire?

Unless, of course, there's a presumption of ownership there. Or something akin to it.

I know. This is just me seeing things all catawampus again, right?

But what if it's not?