Joe Buck and His High Horse School of Journalism

“Hi Class, thanks again for showing up to Lazy Journalism 101, I’m professor Joe Buck and our motto here is, “Beat that dead horse that nobody cares about until people start caring about it.” Let’s jump straight into this week’s dead horse story: OJ Mayo taking money from a shady agent’s rep. Who would like to comment on this story? Anyone? Anyone? Nobody wants to get fired up and worked up into a tizzy about this? Oh, I see a hand in the back there, Pat Forde, please share your thoughts.”

“Well, teach…it’s like this:

"When you recruit someone radioactive, you better have everything checked down to the smallest detail. Or else your program turns into Three Mile Island."

“Very well done, Mr. Forde. Equating a broke kid from middle-of-nowhere West Virginia whose mom didn’t have enough money to pay for a cell phone bill to a nuclear disaster is a great use of hyperbole and I commend you greatly. Who would like to piggyback on Mr. Forde’s statement?”

“Professor Buck?”

“Yes? Who are you? I’ve never seen you in this class before, Mr.--?”

“Yeah, it's BG and actually I was looking for the bathroom but I wanted to say that I don’t think anybody really cares about this story. Are we really supposed to be surprised? Didn’t SLAM Magazine write the whole ‘Mayo signing with SC thing seems fishy’ article like a year ago? This sort of thing happens all of the time.”

“You seem pretty sure of yourself, but how can you argue that this doesn’t compromise the integrity of the NCAA, the NBA and American society as we know it?”

“Seeing as how the NCAA makes billions of dollars off of these players, seeing as how their coaches make hundreds of thousands if not millions off of these players, why not pay them a stipend? Say $20,000 for each full scholarship? Then if they are still greedy and can’t keep their hands out of the cookie jar then slap them with a lifetime NBA ban. If I was OJ Mayo I probably would have held out for a hell of a lot more than a TV and a new iPhone.”

“You would make a terrible talking head and there’s no room for you in this class, get the hell out of here and please don’t trip over my soapbox on your way out the door. Class, please pay no attention to that man. There is always outrage to be found in every story. Now go out there and find it."