Why LSU is the only team that deserves to win the NCAA tournament

You should absolutely cheer for LSU in tonight’s Sweet 16. You should’ve been cheering for LSU this entire time, and you should want them to win the entire NCAA tournament specifically because they paid (at least one of) their players.

Allegedly* paid; at this very moment the public forum lacks inarguable, conclusive evidence of payments from suspended head coach Will Wade to the family of guard Javonte Smart.

Allegedly, but also of course. That kid and his family got paid. Of course they did. And of course the coach arranged for it. Smart got paid because thousands of college athletes do every year. Just like leaving a pile of shit in the dark, the process of feeding “amateurism” as a supply line to a billion-dollar business model has mushroomed a fertile underground economy.

The NCAA and its member institutions — like LSU — have thus far survived this fact by characterizing what is ubiquitous and benign as isolated and dangerous. That’s how they convince us: LSU is cheating an otherwise fair system! They are not, because the Tigers are far from the only ones doing this, nor was the system of college athletics ever once designed to be universally fair to all of its member institutions.

The great news is those seeking to righteously stop poor athletes from receiving small amounts of money relative to their market value are actively working against their own agenda. Amateurism stans need us to believe that Wade and Smart are isolated bad actors, except those same people are constantly telling us how widespread this “corruption” is.

“It’s happening at LSU! This will corrupt the soul of the game!” OK. But it’s also Arizona. It’s Kansas. It’s Auburn. It’s North Carolina State. It’s Oklahoma State. It’s Wichita State. It’s Texas. It’s Seton Hall. It’s Washington. It’s USC. It’s Louisville. It’s Kentucky. It’s Utah. It’s Xavier. It’s Miami.

Of course this happens everywhere. Every time there’s a new “BOMBSHELL”, every time there’s a new “scandal” that “taints” and “mars” an NCAA tournament that’s now suddenly been reduced to “a joke”, the ennui among actual consumers spreads a little bit more.

Every time the actual players and their families are framed as the real criminals, lacking some kind of moral equity and disregard for fairness, more and more people object to that narrative. More and more people can’t stomach the economic hypocrisy. More and more people notice the racial and cultural motivations baked in to the presentation of these “scandals”.

And less and less people give a shit if a kid’s mom gets $10,000.

And no one stops watching.

LSU’s is not an isolated event that unfairly gives one team an advantage. They’re a minor production error in otherwise humming factory. Maybe that inarguable proof will surface in the FBI wiretaps, maybe not, whatever.

But this is not an appeal for chaos. Cheering for LSU is cheering for history: We could witness a national championship built by a compensated star player. Paid talent! A LSU title would certify the process of paying players outside of NCAA bylaws. The system, albeit rogue, works!

“Except of course for the fact that surely the Tigers will have to vacate that championship.”

Ask a Miami football fan if they didn’t win those games. Ask an Ole Miss fan if they now suddenly didn’t beat Alabama in back to back years. Ask a Michigan basketball fan. And congrats again to 2013 National Champions Louisville. That happened.

There’s no such thing as “vacated wins.” It happened. We saw it. It counts now as much as it ever will, because any win in sports is measured solely by how much its fans and players can celebrate it. And make no mistake, the cradle of Huey Long would never, ever stop celebrating a “vacated” LSU national championship. You cannot stop a parade.

Asking you to vacate your team’s victory is a faith based proposition. And so is shame, for that matter. Opt out. There’s nothing to feel guilty about here, save for the fact that Smart arrived for a mere fraction of his market value.

If you want to feel shame, feel shame that your coach was such a rookie he decided to talk on the phone, himself, about cash payments. You dumbass, that’s what middlemen and burner cells are for.

Cheer for LSU regardless of your affiliation. Avoid partisanship. Partisanship is how the NCAA has thrived in selectively enforcing the concept of amateurism — by incentivizing administrators and coaches at rival programs to rat one another out whenever convenient.

Avoiding this urge is especially tricky for fans because it contradicts the basic idea of fandom. But the idea of “It’s always them! It’s never us!” allows NCAA enforcement to divide and conquer.

Cheer for LSU because the unregulated payment of athletes to participate in a billion-dollar business isn’t a stain on college sports, it’s the fabric we refuse to believe we’re wearing. It’s a process that’s becoming undeniable, and this would hammer that fact home like nothing before.

Cheer for LSU because Javonte Smart deserves the fucking money.