Oklahoma State’s Marcus Smart Has To Keep His Cool Better

On Saturday night, Oklahoma State’s super sophomore forward Marcus Smart, a potential NBA lottery pick, got into an altercation with a fan after being fouled hard into the crowd. The fan, Jeff Orr, made a remark to Smart that triggered Smart to shove Orr, leading to a technical foul. 

Oklahoma State Forward Marcus Smart.

The Big 12 Conference will be reviewing the matter today & surely giving a ruling quickly. 

No matter what was said to Smart, this is a lesson for the young man that he has to be able to keep calm in tough situations. As he gets to the next level, he will have far more hecklers who pay a lot more money to tell Smart terrible things about his family, manhood, etc. 

And yes, it does hurt, and yes, fans should have even a slight bit of decorum, but as we all know, fans take the literal meaning of the team, meaning “fanatic,” to a whole new level seemingly on a daily basis. 

Where this could get a bit scary for Smart is if Oklahoma State or the Big 12 Conference comes down with a suspension similar to the Ron Artest suspension for the fight at the Palace of Auburn Hills years ago when the Pacers & Pistons had their crazy brawl in the crowd. 

Marcus Smart has been in the public eye for a bit, now, and if the reports are true that this fan said the “N” word to him, he has to understand that Orr is ignorant and be a stronger person, and feel that way to anyone else that would stoop that low to say those words to him. Though it is sad that in 2014 that racism still exists at that level, but I digress. 

Smart will learn from this, & honestly, this will – & should – blow over quickly, but what about the fan? Yes, I understand that fans have freedom of speech with what they say & all, but Jeff Orr should not be allowed to attend another Texas Tech basketball game IF it is true about what he said to a kid. Really? That makes him a big man. I think he is lucky that he wasn’t in the streets or anywhere like that saying stuff. 

However, it still goes back to Smart. He has had some other emotional outbursts this season because of the Cowboys decline over the last couple of weeks, most notably mentioning that most players are flopping because they aren’t getting the referee calls. 

This is a situation where everyone can come out of this far better than they went in, as long as Smart is just plain Smart. 


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Oklahoma State Shows World That NCAA Needs To Adapt With Times

Ahhh…………..college days. Being an athlete. The time of your life where you should feel like the big man on campus, the time when you are supposed to be able to get a quality education and play sports and feel the comrodery of being on a team and working hard to become a better person as well as doing what you can to get to the next level of being a professional depending on your sport and level of skill.

Except when you break the long arm of the NCAA laws, which are old and outdated to say the least. And the Oklahoma State situation is another case where these issues have come to the forefront yet again.

This week, SI.com is revealing the contents of their investigation on the Oklahoma State football program, an investigation that has revealed that players at the school from the years of 2000-11 allegedly took money from boosters, had sex as recruits and was participating in widespread drug use in the program, among other things.

Yes, everyone in the coaching ranks are all saying no, didn’t happen, never knew anything, blah, blah, blah, the players are being very open about it. Obviously, the drug use and the sex can’t be tolerated with the football program, even though some students on campus do have massive amounts of sex and do experiment in drug use in college, but since we hold the athletes to higher regards, then they have to be a different breed of student altogether.

My issue is with the money. College athletes are grossly underpaid for what today’s society deems enough to live on during a regular week, month or school year. I can’t fully blame the students for taking money, since the NCAA has such terrible payouts for students, who maybe don’t come from a wealthy background where they have money constantly in their accounts all the time, where they can’t get 3 square meals a day, and where they can’t even go to a movie with friends just to hang out a bit.

If the NCAA athletes were compensated better for their work, then I truly believe there would be far less issues than what is out here now. In the articles, a dude was selling pot just to be able to go out and live like a regular college student, however, the regular college student can go and have a full time job and bring in money in many ways that athletes can’t. However, the NCAA tells us that they are STUDENT-athletes and are college students who happen to play sports.

My question then is what is the difference in the college student who plays sports and the college student who does theater? or in engineering? or any thing else that brings the university revenue?

 Yes, college football, basketball and baseball bring in tons of revenue to the NCAA and schools, and while many schools claim that they don’t always break even with revenue from the big sports, they do get donations from boosters and other alumni for the sports buildings, coaching staffs and more. The schools have enough to give the athletes a weekly stipend or salary that will allow them to live the life of a regular student that the NCAA wants them to be anyway.

 If the NCAA wants to cut down on these scandals blowing up all over the place, its imperative that they open their eyes, stop living in the 1960s and understand that these athletes, especially the ones that might be going pro, are not always worried about being a model student and citizen, they want to be able to eat a damn meal and actually grow as a human being, which consists of a lot more than just books and balls.