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September 17, 2012

THE PEOPLE SPEAK – Pay OU, OSU players like state employees

Anonymous The Muskogee Phoenix Mon Sep 17, 2012, 11:25 PM CDT

— The quarterback who made Oklahoma State into a national championship contender confessed, “You come to one of those workouts in the morning and you don’t work, bad things are going to happen.”

Brandon Weeden, who calls signals for the NFL’s Cleveland Browns, was talking about Oklahoma State’s year round speed, strength, and conditioning workouts: One, they run eight miles a day; two, use the run rocket, a resistance machine that connects a retractable cable to the player’s back and teaches exploding off the line and sprinting 20 yards; three, cone drills; four, weighted ball throw underhand to a teammate 10 yards away; lifting in the weight room, squat, bench press, glute/hamstring raise, triceps extension, shoulder press, position specific lifts, should “pre-hab” to prevent injury; six, passing with quarterbacks and receivers, defensive back backpedaling, and linemen/linebackers gap control; seven, sprinting from one sideline to the other three times, in 28 seconds or less for skill players.

Do these student athletes deserve a paycheck for their demanding duties? “If you want money go to the pros or get a job,” says former Notre Dame coch Lou Holtz, “I would’ve played football for nothing.”

Texas coach Mack Brown and South Carolina’s Steve Spurrier say pay the players because the new playoff system will produce a half-billion dollars in TV rights alone. A better argument was made by OSU’s All-American basketball player, Bob Kurland, “The pressure to win at any cost, brought on by alumni and NCAA rules that are impractical and invite cheating, have made crooks out of the coaches and hypocrites out of the players.”

Our millionaire football coaches, OSU’s Mike Gundy and OU’s Bob Stoops, should demand their players be paid a salary like all other employees of the state.

VIRGINIA “BLUE JEANS” JENNER

Wagoner

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