The Lost Art of Pragmatism

 The more I think about it daily, the state of wrestling politics is a microcosm of our nation and in some cases, our international political climate. There is a saying as old as time, "A proper compromise is when both parties leave the table unhappy." The very basic definition of a compromise is an agreement that is reached with both sides making concessions. I don't understand why we think shaming AD's and talking about the "benefits of wrestling" on Twitter does anything except piss off AD's. Everything that circulates on the dark embers of social media about various athletic directors is probably true. They are crooked. They are short. They are arrogant. They are unfair. They are apathetic to student-athletes. This has been the reality of college sports certainly in my lifetime, and probably will be at least for the next 10-15 years. Just like in modern-day politics, the hardest changes to make are to those of the structure itself. Pointing out the flaws of the NCAA and various Athletic directors is about as original as those Coke knock-off brands at Dollar Tree. My point is, these are power-grabbing, mean, and nasty dictators, and the best path forward is to suck it up and deal with it. We've been trying to institute structural reform in the college sports system for the better part of 20 years, with at best a mixed bag of success, and at worst it has taken up so much of our time that we have become so tunnel-visioned on a singular goal that we never look toward other potential avenues on how to leave the landscape of college sports in a better place than we found it. I've watched enough Shark Tank episodes to hear Mark Cuban say "follow the green, not the dream". The inevitable will happen, people will think that I am advocating a terrible climate in which only the big hegemonic sports and we sink into a world in which only Football and Basketball exist, while Athletic Directors sit on a pile of cash with an evil grin on their faces like the Lorax, but the reality of it is we're further down that path than you think already. All I'm saying is cutting sports is nothing new, and the evilness and apathy from the millionaire AD'S will be at an all-time high. Stop getting on your knees and begging for the "moral card", it hasn't been there for 20 years, and it's not coming anytime soon. The million-dollar question is would you rather fight the content director of a "media company" or a snobbish, malicious rich dude that probably finds the concept of a singlet uncomfortable at best(cough cough Old Dominion). You tell me which fight you think you're more likely to win.