I wanted to lighten things up a bit today after Tuesday's historic presidential election and was listening to The Dan Patrick Show on my way to work. His guest was former NFL QB Jim McMahon, who led the Chicago Bears to victory in Super Bowl XX and was recently snubbed by the BYU Football Hall of Fame despite being one of the greatest players in school history. McMahon's dad also wrote a letter to BYU asking for Jim to be inducted...
McMahon said he's been told he's not in the BYU football Hall of Fame because he didn't graduate. But he hints there were several other issues and says BYU is hypocritical.
The most amusing part of the interview was McMahon openly talking about how he wanted to go to UNLV because they were offering him a "side job" in which he had to do nothing along with a car compared to BYU where he had to pick weeds for $3/hour.
This reminded me of the 80s movie Johnny Be Good, starring Anthony Michael Hall as QB Johnny Walker who goes on several recruiting trips and ironically also features McMahon as himself. Can you imagine McMahon in Vegas? Would he have put up similar numbers and started a QB tradition like the one that played out at BYU?
I love playing "what if" and have wondered the same thing about Michael Vick had he gone to Syracuse rather than Virginia Tech. Would Vick still have turned out to be the same person and ended up in jail? We will never know. What we do know is that big-time college athletes do get benefits and preferential treatment, so let's stop pretending that they don't.
On a side note, I also find it hilarious that USC head coach Peter Carroll thinks the BCS system stinks. Would he still think the system stinks if the Trojans beat Oregon State and were the #1 team in the nation right now? C'mon now Pete...