First things first: yes, rapper/emperor Sean Combs' son Justin Combs is going to play college football for the UCLA Bruins. This means we are all very old, but he's a very good cornerback who had offers to play big-time football at other good schools as well, and these things happen.
P. Diddy’s Son Should Give Back His UCLA Scholarship, Says Pretty Much Nobody
Even though his father is rich, UCLA would still like to pay for three-to-five years worth of schooling in return for football-related services. Somehow, this has become an Internet controversy this week despite not actually being a controversy.
Every link I’ve seen on the story winds back here, where a CNN education contributor named Steve Perry defends the “merit-based scholarship” from someone only known as Some. (There’s also this story, which quotes one UCLA student who disapproves of the scholly, but that link isn’t being cited nearly as often as the CNN one.)
What has Some done? Well, Some “would say,” we’re told. There’s nobody actually accusing UCLA or Combs of doing anything wrong, other than whoever Some is.
Could this all be cleared up by pointing out this isn’t a taxpayer expense? UCLA, just like every other major athletic department, has an athletic fund that pays for scholarships. What would Some say in response to that?
You'd wonder why we didn't hear this from Some about Andrew Luck, who got an even more expensive scholarship despite his parents being both well-off and specifically connected to the field in which Luck will make his millions. Luck's father is the athletic director at West Virginia. There are also the scads of other sons and daughters of athletes and other wealthy figures who get free school in return for providing sporting value.
I don’t want to sound like I’m accusing Some of anything here. But unless Some is going to make a to-do about this even when some CEO’s kid gets a crew scholarship to Yale, Some might want to just stop talking about college sports.
For more on Bruins football, visit UCLA blog Bruins Nation, plus Pac-12 blog Pacific Takes and SB Nation Los Angeles.
While we’re here, let’s watch some college football videos from SB Nation’s new YouTube channel together:
