The Supreme Court ruled earlier this week that college athletes should be compensated. For decades, the National Collegiate Athletic Association, colleges, and universities have made billions off student athletes.

Supreme Court Justice (sic) Brett Kavanaugh wrote, “The bottom line is that the NCAA and its member colleges are suppressing the pay of student athletes who collectively generate billions of dollars in revenues for colleges every year. Those enormous sums of money flow to seemingly everyone except the student athletes. College presidents, athletic directors, coaches, conference commissioners, and NCAA executives take in six- and seven-figure salaries. Colleges build lavish new facilities. But the student athletes who generate the revenues, many of whom are African American and from lower-income backgrounds, end up with little or nothing…and I like beer.”

I might have made up that tiny last part…but yeah. For decades, universities have made billions off the backs of student athletes, most of whom will never play a professional game. For most athletes, their best bet is to go into coaching and perhaps someday make money off the sweat of other student athletes.

This doesn’t mean student athletes will earn salaries. How would that work anyway? How would New Mexico State, whose head football coach makes $374.044 a year, compete against the University of Alabama, who pays their coach, Nick Saban (sic) over $9 million a year (This is Doug Martin, New Mexico State’s coach who is forced to make out with other head coaches for extra income). The highest-paid basketball coach is Nick Calipari who makes over $8 million a year, and the second-highest paid is Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski. Last year, neither team was good enough to be in the NCAA tournament and both coaches were forced to make out with Doug Martin.

How do you pay these kids? Do you give them shoe deals? Let them make money from the video games that feature their images? Let them have all the potato chips they can shake out of the snack machines? Fortunately, the NCAA has a plan. Wait…what? Never mind. They DO NOT have a plan. The NCAA has no freaking clue what to do but they’re currently looking at several options, including the Doug Martin idea.

The NCAA has never planned to compensate student athletes. For them, why fix something that’s not broken? When you’re getting millions of dollars each year, it’s hard to see something’s broken. Will paying students ruin the game? Maybe. But then again, maybe if there is compensation for student athletes, players like Kobe Bryant and Lebron James would have had a college career. Maybe others, like Zion Williamson and Cam Newton would have had a career longer than one season. OK, Cam did play a year at community college before his one year at a major university, but still. Players of that caliber typically leave as soon as they’re eligible to go pro…and get paid. Zion was ACC Athlete of the Year, Rookie of the Year, and Player of the Year…in his only year.

That’s enough to make you scream, “FUCK,” which SCOTUS ruled high school cheerleaders can now say on their own free time and off school property.

First: I should have started my research for this by Googling “Cheerleader SCOTUS” and NOT “Cheerleader fuck.” I did not find what I was looking for…but…wow, and somehow…still got a photo of Brett Kavanaugh.

In 2017, 14-year-old Brandi Levy didn’t get promoted to varsity from her junior varsity at her Pennsylvania high school. She went home, or to Starbucks, or to wherever, but it was off-campus, and made an Instagram video featuring her and a friend flipping the bird (which still means the same thing it did when I was in high school), with the messages, “Fuck cheer,” “Fuck school,” and “Fuck everything.” That’s basically what I do online everyday and my free speech is protected, so why not Brandi’s?

Brandi was suspended by her school on the claim she “disrupted” class. But c’mon. Doesn’t everything disrupt class? Drama, drama, drama. I’m sure no student has every said the word “fuck” while inside a school (but lots of teachers have, usually after looking at their paychecks). But, Brandi and her parents didn’t take this punishment sitting down. They took their pom-poms all the way to the Supreme Court where Brett Kavanaugh said, “Hey, cheerleader…wanna beer? I swear I mostly didn’t put anything in it.”

I may have made up that last part.

Brandi’s family argued the school had no right to punish her for off-campus speech, whether it was posted online while away from school or spoken out loud at a Starbucks across the street from school, or…wait. They got a Starbucks across the street? When I was in high school, the closest thing we had was a 7/11 a few blocks away which I hear is where a lot of kids skipping class went to get a Big Gulp. One kid would pile a bunch of his friends into his ugly pea-green ’72 Gran Torino and leak oil all the way to the 7/11 and back anytime there was a substitute teacher. Subs rarely ever took roll call, and if they did, they usually didn’t mark it down in the book because they were afraid to touch anything. Also, they didn’t care.

Note: When I was a kid, 7/11 didn’t not have the variety of hot dogs, nachos, taquitos, wings, pizza, etc, they have today. All they had back then were green tuna sandwiches.

Anyway, Brandi won. The Court said that while her post was “less than admirable…” Uh, I don’t know. I kinda admire it. But Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer wrote, “The speech that Levy uttered is the kind of pure speech to which, were she an adult, the First Amendment would provide strong protection.” Then Kavanaugh came in and wrote, “mmmmmmm, cheerleaders.”

I may have made that last part up again.

Brandi can now go to Starbucks across the street from the school (damn, I’m jealous of that), and scream, “Fuck, fuck, fuckity fuck, fuck, you fucking fucks” all fucking day long…just so long as it doesn’t disrupt school.

Brandi’s next case will be against Starbucks over being kicked out and banned for all the “fucks.”

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