Get your brackets ready, and prepare to get very little sleep for the next few weeks. March Madness is finally here, and you better be pumped for one of the biggest sporting events of the year.
As you get your bracket ready and plan your life around catching every single one of the games, John Oliver wants to remind you that while the NCAA Tournament is fun for spectators, it takes a lot of hard work on the part of the student athletes to get there. Sometimes, it may not even be worth it.
Oliver took down the NCAA and its treatment of student athletes in Sunday night's episode of Last Week Tonight. Like many of Oliver's segments on his satirical HBO show, he exposed some possible wrongdoing on the part of the NCAA, many of which you probably knew were true but try not to think about.
The segment really revolved around the hot topic of whether or not student athletes should be paid like employees, which you will see that Oliver is most definitely in favor of. Oliver pointed to examples of athletes having to play basketball on an empty stomach because they couldn't afford to eat. He goes on to refute the claim that student athletes are paid in education, a.k.a. "the only currency more difficult to spend than Bitcoin," according to Oliver, citing examples of student athletes being steered into easy courses in order to keep them academically eligible to play. The segment only gets worse from there as Oliver tackles the high salaries of coaches, the moneymaking machine that is collegiate sports and the lack of support for student athletes who can't play anymore due to injury.
In case all of that didn't suck the fun out of March Madness for you, Oliver's trailer for a more accurate and authentic NCAA basketball video game surely will. The game called March Sadness 2015 is rated "E for Exploitative" and lets you experience what it's really like to be an NCAA athlete outside of the glitz and glamour of the tournament games. This includes having your coach yell profanities at you, living in constant fear of losing your scholarship and, when you're in Administrator Mode, trying your best not to give any money to student athletes, otherwise you lose. Yeah, you're probably not going to have much fun playing this video game.
Check out the full segment below.
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