Depending on what time you checked most popular articles, story number one was “NCAA investigating fraud at 20 schools.”
Story Number Two: “11 of 12 Patriots’ Footballs Deflated.”
Story number three: So?
Back-to-back January 21st hot-news headlines from “The Daily Beast,” aka the “Cheat Sheet” ironically enough, concern reports that are full of hot air – authorities hot over the airing of revelations that revered academic institutions on the one hand, and a certain reviled Super Bowl-bound team on the other, have leveled their respective playing fields (normally a concept understood to connote honesty and fairness).
How does 92 percent of every designated game football hiked, thrown, caught and kicked through the uprights (speaking of being upright) get an illegal two pounds less inflation per square inch making the football “easier for Tom Brady (Patriot’s QB) to throw the ball and for receivers to catch”?
Answer: Those alleged having cheated went to college.
Where they learned the skills in the classroom they would use on the field.
On this January 21st – 11 days before Super Bowl 49 and 99 days until National Honesty Day (yes, we do have one of those too and although the two events occur only once per year they are not related) – “The Chronicle of Higher Education” reports on “a nationwide cheating scandal involving hundreds of college athletes” investigated by the National Collegiate Athletic Association which has found evidence of athletes “receiving (pass) impermissible assistance from professors” and coaches encouraging members of their staff “to cheat on behalf of current players or recruits.”
From sheepskins to pigskins, graduates to gridirons, fellowships and fame are accorded with equal acclaim upon (insert orchestral “Pomp and Circumstance” also known as “Land of Hope and Glory”): cheaters.
