Hey girl, done with my paper yet?

August 23rd, 2007 | Posted by PostmanR

Taking nothing away from women’s sports, (even the most stringent cynics of female athletics can’t deny its steady growth) the playing field is nowhere near level to men’s in terms of revenue. The NBA makes more than the WNBA, MLB makes more than whatever the softball league Jennie Finch is in, so on and so forth. There is nothing inherently “bad” about this; it is just how the sporting world presents itself due to societal tendencies and um, genetics I suppose.

So one would think that in arguably the most rule-bending places in all of sports, college athletics, the women’s side might still be above the cheating and what have you. After all, they aren’t raking in the cash for the athletic department’s like their male counterparts. (This is not to say athletic departments actually profit. Because, most often, they don’t. Where you at booster club members!) Well, at Purdue University — a team that actually draws quite a few fans and has seen a considerable amount of success as of late — that’s not quite the case.

Purdue University’s women’s basketball team will lose two scholarships this season after the NCAA determined that a former assistant coach and former player committed academic fraud and then lied about it.

Recovered e-mail and text messages were used to prove that former assistant Katrina Merriweather helped write a term paper for a sociology class, the chair of the Committee on Infractions said Wednesday.

Merriweather helped backup point guard Cherelle George research and write a term paper for the Sociology 220 class. After lying about their involvement to school officials, the two were suspended before the Big Ten Tournament in March 2006.

Quite frankly (ha!), I could end this post by giving the old “well geez, if this is happening on the women’s side of thing, just think of what’s happening on the men’s side,” but, you know, there is nothing all too revolutionary about that. But what I will do is further amplify the argument to just start paying student-athletes at schools with big-time programs — which one could argue for the Purdue women’s basketball team on that accord. (Come to think of it, this argument isn’t very groundbreaking either.)

At successful, large programs these kids are treated more like athlete-students and less like student-athletes. With the amount of time chewed up by practice etc., it’s pretty much a full-time job anyways. Essentially, they’re working for a business, so I see no harm in giving them a stipend. Certainly there’s a lot more that goes into this and it creates a whole host of other problems perhaps, so I’ll just leave it be for now.

Oh wait, what’s that? They have their education paid for you say? Nevermind then.