*The latest episode of HBO’s “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel” focuses on the physical and mental health of college athletes, and whether it’s on the NCAA to bear at least some of the financial responsibility for the bills once the athlete has graduated.
The first segment deals with athletes who are unable to play professionally or earn a living in a regular job due to severe injuries sustained in college. Unable to generate income, these athletes are often saddled with thousands of dollars in out-of-pocket expenses without their alma mater kicking in a dime.
Gumbel, who has called college football a “free farm team” for the NFL, thinks the league should contribute at least some of its billions to these athletes in the form of health and disability insurance. But he knows it will likely never happen.
“The NFL is not even willing to compensate its own people who have been hurt. So asking them to compensate people who haven’t even joined them yet, you’re really not going to get very far,” he said.
Watch a clip below:
The episode’s second segment followed the journey of Ebony and Amber Moore, twins on the Temple University track team. When both began to chafe under the coach’s alleged verbal abuse, Amber was able to quit because she wasn’t on an academic scholarship, but Ebony had received an athletic scholarship, and was forced to stay on the team so that she could remain in school. The verbal abuse, Ebony says, eventually broke her.
Watch below:
Gumbel, meanwhile, has a serious bone to pick with the obscene amount of millions paid to college coaches while many of their athletes from impoverished backgrounds are struggling to get by under strict NCAA rules regarding limiting any exchange of money or services.
Listen below:
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