That's gratitude for ya

Many of you do not know who Billy Napier is, and you should not feel unschooled because you don't. That's because many of you -- the Blob might even say the vast majority of you -- are not big-time fans of University of Louisiana-Lafayette Ragin' Cajuns football.

Billy Napier, see, is the head coach of the Ragin' Cajuns, and, according to Deadspin, he makes $850,000 a year to coach up the Ragin's. His players, of course, make nothing. They get a free education, allegedly, plus the use of school equipment and facilities,  all so ULL can make millions, and pay Billy Napier his almost-a-million-dollar salary, off their labor.

Also, they can't just up and go play for another school whenever they want to, the way Billy Napier can just up and go coach another school whenever he wants to. They have to sit out a year, in most cases. Oh, and Billy Napier, and ULL, can refuse to release them if they don't like where they're trying to transfer to.

Reasonable people might regard this as indentured servitude. Or at least something that lives right down the street from it.

But you know what?

Billy Napier thinks they should be a little more grateful for that.

And so the other day he announced a new initiative for his football team. Starting this year, he said, all scholarship members of the team would be required (or at least strongly encouraged) to donate $50 to the Ragin' Cajun Athletic Foundation.

He went on to say this would be a gesture of gratitude to the university for all it does to enable the Ragin' Cajun football players to make the university a pile of money.

Some people would say this is an odd application of logic. Some people also would say it would be a more apt gesture of gratitude for Billy Napier to donate part of his salary to the workforce whose sweat equity earns it for him. But of course, in the inside-out, through-the-looking-glass world of corporate college football, that would be wrong.

So would selling your game-worn jersey to come up with the fifty bucks. Or selling whatever swag the NCAA says "student-athletes" are allowed to get if they go to a bowl game. Or trading on their status as Ragin' Cajun football players in any way, no matter how small and picayunish, even if it's just accepting a ride or a McDonald's cheeseburger from an alum.

That would be an impermissible benefit. Because, you know, no alum/professor/staff member/administrator ever gave a regular college student a ride or bought him or her lunch. Why, heavens, no.

What a racket. What an absolute, platinum-grade racket.