Not Bowling For Dollars (and other stuff)

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Unless they are playoff games that lead to the national championship, college football bowl games are glorified exhibitions. Always have been, always will be.

So bravo to Stanford's Christian McCaffrey, LSU's Leonard Fournette and a few other college stars for opting out of their teams' meaningless games so they can take a positive step toward what just about every student's goal is: getting a good job after college.

Almost immediately, some coaches, media mopes and other idiots started whining about these athletes' "selfishness."

Funny, I didn't hear that Tom Herman was "selfish" after he bolted Houston to take the Texas coaching job. Herman's move came only a few weeks before the Cougars were to play in the Las Vegas Bowl. Oh, and he left Houston only months after having signed a $3 million per year contract to stay there through 2020.

McCaffrey and Fournette don't have eight-figure contracts to fall back on.

Despite making billions of dollars for their universities, college athletes don't get paid. If one of them suffers a career-ending injury in the TaxSlayer.com Bowl, he goes from being a multimillionaire to being a zero-aire in the blink of an eye. Even more likely: a concussion. And if a player suffers a bad enough concussion to make NFL teams question his long-term health, it would cost him big-time.

So any coach who is outraged or even slightly miffed by the actions of McCaffrey and Fournette is just a run-of-the-mill hypocrite. What else is new? Hypocrites are everywhere in college sports, especially in the coaching fraternity.

Some are predicting that this is just the start and that, in coming years, more and more future pros will skip non-playoff bowl games.

Well, if this is the beginning of the end for the Quick Lane Bowl and the Poinsettia Bowl, so be it. Somehow, America will survive.

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And now we go from smart jocks to one who should be smart enough to know better ... but apparently isn't.

What's the deal with Grayson Allen? The dirty Dookie got caught tripping an opponent for the third time in 10 months. Coach K at first wasn't going to suspend him but, after public pressure built, he decided to suspend his best player "indefinitely."

After watching this latest incident, I'm pretty certain Allen needs some psychological help. I am not saying this with the least bit of sarcasm.

He leg-whipped Elon's Steven Santa Ana and then glared at his fallen victim -- as if Santa Ana had been the one who had done something wrong. Assessed a technical foul and taken out of the game, Allen pounded the bench with his hands, screamed and started wailing. I almost felt sorry for him -- almost.

There already are yahoos saying the reason Allen is being suspended is that he is a white kid from Duke and people hate the likes of Christian Laettner, Bobby Hurley and J.J. Redick.

Here we go again ... poor Whitey just can't get a break in this country! Just ask President Tweety.

Face it ... had Allen been a black player at, say, Miami, he'd be called a "thug" and a "punk" -- and many of those defending Allen now might be screaming, "Lock him up!"

I hope Coach K keeps Allen off the court until the kid can undergo several counselling sessions. Allen needs to come to terms with why he keeps doing this and needs to come up with ways to stop.

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And speaking of President Tweety ... here's hoping McCaffrey's pro football career begins and Allen's tripping tendencies end before the world gets blown up as a result of Arms Race 2017.

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My Scholars Academy Eagles have reached Xmas break with an 8-1 record. We were unbeaten before losing our last game before break by 4 points to one of our conference rivals. A similar thing happened last season; not long after the regular-season defeat, we beat them in the playoffs en route to our championship, so I'm not sweating it too much.

Since the game, we had a fun team party and then said our goodbyes for two weeks. I hope the girls don't forget how to play basketball!

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I had been so busy with basketball that I hadn't done much writing for Seeking Alpha. I finally got around to doing an article a couple of weeks ago, and I followed that up with my latest piece on the Dividend Growth 50 portfolio that I created and funded.

Feel free to check it out HERE. With every click, I get a penny. And if I make enough pennies, I can buy some fashionable, made-not-in-the-USA Trump ties.

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I have 8 days to mail in my ballot with my Baseball Hall of Fame votes. I plan to give it a lot of thought over the next few days, and that will be the subject of my next TBT.

Till then, Merry Whatever You Celebrate. (Hopefully, life itself).
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