Forgive me if I sound like a nihilist, but I feel completely indifferent about Auburn quarterback Cam Newton winning the Heisman Trophy on Saturday.
I get the sense that I'm supposed to feel at least mildly outraged, or at the bare minimum, frustrated about "how far we done fell," as Bunk Moreland once memorably quipped in one of the best monologues ever featured on The Wire. But I don't. Unlike some of my sports journalism brethren, who stated prior to the ceremony that could not vote for him with a clean conscience because of how he was entangled in an NCAA pay-for-play investigation, I'd have no problem writing down his name if I had a ballot.
I'm not living in denial. I firmly believe that his father, Cecil, shopped his son's services around the SEC until someone came up with enough cash to get Newton's signature in return. And I find it almost laughable that the NCAA ruled Newton had no knowledge whatsoever of his father's actions.
What I do believe, however, is that our views about amateur athletics in this country are woefully naive, and tragically outdated. I'll concede that it's too cynical (even for me) to believe that everyone in college football is on the take, but big-time college sports have such an underground network of seedy nonsense that gets ignored, it's become almost impossible to sort out the rule followers from rule breakers. The NCAA doesn't have any interest in doing it either because no one wants to shut down the gravy train.
Ask yourself, why do we even know about Newton situation? Because ESPN ferreted out the story. Why do we know about what went on with Reggie Bush at USC? Because Yahoo Sports put together an exhaustive investigation. If ESPN and Sports Illustrated hadn't spend months looking into rumors about agent Gary Wichard, improper benefits, and academic fraud going on at University of North Carolina, would we know about that situation?
The NCAA only acts when they're forced to act because they've been embarrassed in public. By turning a blind eye to the majority of what occurs behind the scenes, everyone gets to continue pretending that college sports are, for the most part, pure. And they cash in while drinking to their own integrity. (At least in the NFL, everyone understands up front it's a business.)
I've decided to view college football the way I view the Tour de France. Moral judgments make very little sense. You know what you're getting into when you watch. If you take away Newton's Heisman and give it to someone else you consider to be untainted, you're just going to make me laugh unless that person plays for a service academy.
The current system is broken, and I can't tell you how to fix it. Paying players would likely create more problems than it would solve. But if Cam Newton did know about his father shopping his talents to the highest bidder, I don't care. Newton made a lot of people a lot of money this year with his talent. If you factor in advertising and increased number of eyeballs he drew, that number might be roughly equal to the GDP of a small country. Whatever his father was allegedly asking for, it was a bargain.
Major college sports in this country lost their virginity a long time ago. Newton certainly wasn't the first, and he wont' be the last. Until some drastic -- but realistic -- reform occurs, all that matters to me is that, this season, he was by far the best.