Orlando Magic head coach Stan Van Gundy often has a lot to say, whether it's about Pat Riley, LeBron James or his team's performance. Now, he's decided to take a stand on another contentious issue — that of paying college athletes.
Stan Van joined Dan LeBatard on Tuesday morning and said what many others believe but are afraid to say: If you were an incredibly talented college athlete from a humble background, how could you not take money?
He saw no reason to blame agents, players or coaches.
"First of all I just think the system is a little screwed up and I have a hard time blaming anybody. The agent is simply doing whats best for his business and really what he’s doing is making an investment. He’s willing to play a player who at that point is not earning anything in the hopes that he will secure that player as a client and make money down the road. He’s taking a little bit of a risk for his business.
"I don’t blame the player because a lot of these players are coming from not great economic circumstances. Sure they have a scholarship but they still don’t have a lot of what other college students have. They have someone willing to give them money and they’re making money in a lot of cases for the school and not getting any of that back, so I have a hard time blaming the player on that.
"I don’t even think the coach knows what’s going on most of the time. I think it’s a system that is a little bit broken and I’m not sure it’s that big of a deal if the player can make money from an agent while he’s at school. Take away the part about the NCAA rules and I don’t see what the problem is. I really don’t," he concluded.
As for Reggie Bush, Van Gundy feels that he has been treated unfairly, and that whatever happened off the field has no bearing on his Heisman worth on-field performance.
"First of all, he was hardly the only one I’m sure that year taking money. It has nothing to do with or doesn’t taint what he did to get the Heisman. I think this whole idea of college kids not being able to get paid in that way, basically people are paying them for their talents and the only travesty in college sports is when kids aren’t there getting an education and nobody cares about them getting an education. I think that’s a far bigger problem than kids getting paid. I just don’t see that as a problem."
Of course, it wouldn't be a Van Gundy interview if he didn't have a little to say about Pat Riley.
"I haven’t talked to Pat in a long time, certainly not since any of that. I didn’t take it as big of a deal as what everybody else did. He was upset about some of the things said about some of the players that he now has. I honestly did not mind his criticism of my comments as I said when he mentioned that I was out of line on my comments about Chris Bosh, he had every right to say something about that.
"I took offense to it and came back at some of the things that he said about Otis [Smith] primarily and his comments. Then just in general just accusing other people of moralizing and things and I had just heard too many things from Pat moralizing things over the years to not be able to laugh at that, that he was taking others to task at that. I didn’t take it as a big deal. He had his say, I had mine, people disagree in these kinds of situations all the time, and it’s no big deal. It didn’t change the way I thought about anybody that’s for sure."
The Magic begin their season next Thursday, Oct. 28, against the Washington Wizards.
