This is pretty cool. On Thursday, I offered a leather-bound edition of Das Kapital to any reporter who asked Bob Bowlsby just one little question. Bowlsby is the Big 12 commissioner who, in an act of face-melting chutzpah, recently decided to wrap himself in Marx's labor theory of value as intellectual cover for not paying revenue-sport athletes. "If you apply any form of the labor theory of value," he said the other day during the Big 12 forum, "that is to say the work that goes into something is determinant of the cost, football and basketball players don't work any harder than any other athletes."
And so my question for Bowlsby, who makes around $1.8 million a year, was this: "Do you think you work harder than your secretary?"
Now here's Kevin Negandhi, interviewing Bowlsby on Friday morning's SportsCenter:
OK, so he doesn't quite ask the question, which is a bummer because the ensuing pause would've been big enough to live in. But Bowlsby's little chuckle at :23 is great. The philosophical and psychological underpinnings of the NCAA can be reduced to that little chuckle. If you slow it down enough, I bet it sounds like "let them eat cake." (Needless to say, Bowlsby doesn't answer the question.)
Anyway, Kevin Negandhi, if you're out there, please send your mailing address to [email protected] and claim your prize. Good work.