When it comes to exploiting top athletes, some high schools are no better than colleges. The nonsense over high school hoops sensation LeBron James’ expensive ride is a good example of that.
The idea that James should be punished for capitalizing on his fame is ludicrous — after all, everybody else in Ohio is getting a piece of the action, why shouldn’t James?
I assume, for example, that St. Vincent-St. Mary got a nice phat cut when ESPN decided to air a couple of James’ games. After all, the school was paying a sports marketing company to hawk the games to ESPN and other sports networks. Where was the Ohio State Athletic Association then with all of the hand wringing about somebody capitalizing on James’ fame and freak-like abilities?
As Jim Rome put it, “Everybody’s into the kid. Everybody’s making money off the kid except the kid himself.”
So please spare us the false outrage over this young man violating some Byzantine code about amateurism that the administrators at his school openly flouted (and cue up the commercials about how LeBron James helped fund terrorists who bomb nightclubs in Indonesia).