Former basketball star Jalen Rose recently offered up some unique advice to college basketball players in the midst of the controversy surrounding the FBI’s probing of the NCAA as it attempts to bust several student athletes, coaches and universities for their practice of improper benefits violations.
Jalen Rose cheers in the second half of an NBA basketball game between the Detroit Pistons and New Orleans Pelicans in Detroit, Monday, Feb. 12, 2018. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)
Rose, a former member of University of Michigan’s Fab Five who played 14 years in the NBA, now works as an ESPN studio analyst. According to a tweet from ESPN’s Adam Reisinger, Rose encouraged all college basketball players to boycott the NCAA’s biggest cash cow — the “March Madness” men’s basketball championship tournament.
“Don’t play in the NCAA Tournament,” Rose stated, as quoted by Reisinger. “Send a message, young fellas… go for the money.”
The message Rose is telling players to send is the same one he’s been supporting for years – that the NCAA is a hypocrite for penalizing players for taking money while it makes billions of dollars from the players’ talents.
Rose wrote a column for the Huffington Post back in 2011, advocating for the NCAA to pay student-athletes a $2,000 stipend every semester. By 2013, he had upped the stipend to $2,500.
“My lights are about to get cut off,” Rose told the media, as he recalled his playing days at Michigan. He said when he had a bad day, his coaches would ask him, “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t have any money in my pocket. That’s what’s wrong,” Rose continued, as quoted in a 2013 USA Today article. “You got a new car, that’s what’s wrong. I want a new car; I like nice things.”
Now Rose is telling student athletes to ask for even more of the pie, especially considering how the FBI is now involved in the investigation of players getting their money under the table. According to Yahoo!, several major programs are about to get busted for allegedly paying its players improper benefits, including Kentucky, North Carolina, Duke and Kansas.
Although Rose didn’t personally tweet his comments about players boycotting the NCAA Tournament from his own Twitter account, he did tweet a “fun fact” about the NCAA on Feb. 24 that supports his criticism of association.
“Did you know the NCAA has had a Non-Profit tax code designation since 1956? 501(c)(3). Mockery.”
