Diddy Problems - and Others

Fred Cozens, UCLA's first football coach

LA Times sports columnist Bill Plaschke raises some unpleasant thoughts about the recent football-related confrontation at UCLA involving singer "P Diddy" and his son.* Plaschke points to other recent football-related issues at UCLA and suggests that nowadays, they may be inherent in big time college football. We have posted about other legal challenges currently in the mill regarding collegiate sports that have as their theme that the major sports are essentially commercial ventures and that the athletes are quasi-employees, even if not treated as such. And, of course, there is now concern about football concussions.** From the Plaschke column:

...All these crooked roads led to Monday's events in the school's weight room, where the Bruins suffered through the perfect storm of an overbearing parent [Diddy], a marginal athlete [his son], and a law-and-order coaching staff. While the legal system will decide the fault here — a yet-unreleased surveillance tape is key — there will remain larger questions that only [UCLA football coach] Mora can answer.

How can a parent, even one as rich and influential as Sean "Diddy" Combs, feel so empowered he would bypass the head coach's office and enter one of the team's sanctums and demand to talk to an assistant coach? Are the monetary and recruiting benefits of a parent such as Combs really worth the roster spot that his undersized son Justin requires and the access that Combs demands? If Mora truly wants to build a championship program with hard work, commitment and discipline, are these really the kind of glamour deals he wants to be making? ...

Full story at http://www.latimes.com/sports/ucla/la-sp-plaschke-ucla-20150624-column.html

The complete column is worth reading and pondering.
---
*Three years ago, we posted about an issue related to Diddy and his son's athletic scholarship at UCLA:
http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2012/06/moguls.html
We noted the more recent event two days ago at:
http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2015/06/good-thing-to-know-brendan.html
See also http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2015/06/integrity.html
**http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2015/06/and-if-research-finds-injuries.html