Column

The rumblings surrounding corruption in high-profile college sports have reached an all-time high in the last year. Every couple of months, it seemed, a new “scandal” emerged — Jim Tressel and Terrelle Pryor at Ohio State, the Willie Lyles allegations at Oregon and Lousiana State University, and the all-you-can-eat buffet style violations uncovered at Miami over the summer, to name a few — followed by the requisite indignation on the part of the NCAA and the obligatory contrition from those involved.

Gone are the F. Scott Fitzgerald ’17 days of caravans leading up to the stadium and national heroes being made at the Yale game. What will take the field against Lehigh on Saturday is a group of honest workers that is not expected to win but will make the most of its time on the field. All it asks of us is a little patience and a little pride.

Soccer may be the beautiful game, but FIFA, its governing organization, is the ugliest of the lot. FIFA is probably the most corrupt sporting organization in the world, and its president, Sepp Blatter, is an arrogant hack. The duplicitous leader of the world’s most popular sport has made so many public gaffes that he could easily be deposed on this premise alone. Speaking about women’s soccer, Blatter told the media that “women [should] play in more feminine clothes like they do in volleyball,” continuing to inexplicably state that if women played with a “more female aesthetic,” they might gain more international fans.

I have literally just completed my last Dean’s Date assignment. This is my last column as a sportswriter for The Daily Princetonian. And all I can think about at the moment is all the weird facts I won’t get to write about. So, because I’ll never write again for this august newspaper, I’m going to list my favorite random sports facts until I run out of space. Freshmen, play intramural sports and enjoy late meal while you can.

A friend of mine recently commented that, if he had the immense athletic talent required to enter any professional sport, he would choose to be a basketball player. The mean salary in the NBA is the highest among American professional sporting leagues, the sport is not as physically taxing as football and the career life of players tends to be long: Usually basketball players work in the NBA for about five years, thanks to how hard it is to be struck with a career-ending injury. Note that many players continue their play abroad after they leave the NBA; former players have found consistent play in Turkey, Israel, Italy and Spain after their American careers have ended.