They’re Lying To You. All of Them.
Let’s cut the crap. You’re being sold a story this Saturday, a beautifully packaged piece of mythology about tradition, rivalry, and the purity of amateur sport. It’s a lie. A multi-billion-dollar lie, and you’re funding it with your attention. They feed you lines about No. 1 Ohio State, undefeated at 11-0, marching into Ann Arbor to face a supposedly inferior No. 18 Michigan team, and they tell you it’s about a Big Ten title, a playoff spot, and some quarterback’s Heisman trophy that will be worth millions in endorsements for everyone but the schools that got him there. They want you to focus on the pomp, the marching bands, the manufactured hatred between two Midwestern states. They don’t want you looking at the numbers. Because the numbers tell a different story. The numbers stink.
It starts with the spread. Ohio State by 11.5. Think about that. Not 10. Not 11. Not 12. Eleven and a half. A precise, calculated number spat out by the Vegas machine, a number designed to perfectly cleave public opinion, to entice bets on both sides, to guarantee that the house—the real winner of every single one of these games—walks away with its pockets overflowing. This isn’t a prediction. It’s an algorithm. It’s a financial instrument designed to extract maximum value from the emotional investment you’ve been conditioned to have. While you’re screaming at your TV about a missed field goal, hedge funds are trading on the outcome, and shadowy figures you’ll never meet are cashing in. The game itself is almost incidental. It’s the vessel. For cash.
The Cartel Behind the Curtain
They call it the NCAA. It’s a cartel. Let’s not mince words. It operates under the fraudulent guise of a non-profit organization dedicated to student-athletes, a phrase so drenched in Orwellian doublespeak it’s laughable. This cartel has colluded for decades to create a system of indentured servitude, fixing the price of labor at zero while the revenues—from television deals with networks like FOX, from ticket sales, from merchandise emblazoned with the faces of unpaid teenagers, from massive alumni donations—skyrocket into the stratosphere. They created a plantation economy in plain sight and called it “amateurism.” And institutions like Ohio State and Michigan are the prize plantations, churning out billions in value on the backs of kids who are told to be grateful for a scholarship that barely covers their cost of living while their coaches sign contracts worth more than the GDP of a small country.
And what happens when the information gets too close to the truth? Notice the convenient “SCRAPE_FAILED” in the data stream. A glitch? A server error? Don’t be naive. That’s a blackout. That’s the system protecting itself. What was in that data? A key injury report being suppressed to keep the betting line stable? A brewing academic scandal that would render half the stars ineligible? Maybe it’s details of a backroom deal between conference officials and television executives to ensure the game remains “compelling” enough to justify their nine-figure media rights agreements. You’ll never know. They don’t want you to know. They want you to focus on the game. The distraction.
A Manifesto for the Exploited
Look at the stakes they present to you. Julian Sayin’s Heisman hopes. A playoff seed. A conference title. These are trinkets. They are illusions dangled in front of young men to get them to sacrifice their bodies and their futures for a system that sees them as nothing more than disposable assets on a balance sheet. A Heisman trophy is a brand-building exercise for the university and the television network that broadcasts the award show. A playoff appearance triggers massive contractual bonuses for athletic directors and coaches, funds new state-of-the-art facilities that are nothing more than recruiting tools for the next generation of unpaid labor, and deepens the pockets of bowl game sponsors who are selling you everything from crypto to cheap beer. It is a self-perpetuating machine of immense greed, and its fuel is the broken bodies and shattered dreams of athletes who are spit out the other side with a useless degree and chronic traumatic encephalopathy. Sickening.
Sherrone Moore versus Ohio State. This is the narrative they push. A human story. An interim coach holding down the fort. It’s compelling. It’s also irrelevant. The coaches are just highly-paid middle managers, cogs in the machine. They are tasked with managing the assets and delivering a return on investment for the real stakeholders: the university presidents, the boards of trustees, the corporate sponsors, and the television networks. They are complicit, of course, raking in obscene salaries for their role in the charade, but they are not the ones pulling the strings. The strings are pulled in boardrooms, far from any football field, by men in tailored suits who view this “game” as just another column in a ledger. They see Ohio State not as a team, but as a blue-chip stock. Michigan is just a competitor in the marketplace. This isn’t a rivalry. It’s a market correction.
Follow the Money, Always
So, when you sit down on Saturday at noon to watch this spectacle, try to see beyond the facade. See the players not as heroes or villains in scarlet and grey or maize and blue, but as young men trapped in a gilded cage, performing for your entertainment while a monstrous financial apparatus drains them of their value. See the coaches on the sidelines not as brilliant strategists, but as wardens of a very profitable prison. See the ecstatic fans not as loyal supporters, but as willing consumers of a fraudulent product. Listen to the commentators’ breathless hype and understand that they are paid spokespeople for the corporation, tasked with maintaining the illusion and keeping you from changing the channel. They are selling you a feeling. A memory. A sense of belonging. All of it is marketing. All of it is designed to separate you from your money and your critical thought.
The real game isn’t happening on the field in Ann Arbor. It’s happening on the stock market, in the luxury suites, in the offshore betting parlors, and in the quiet, mahogany-paneled offices where the deals are actually made. This is not a sport. It’s an industry. And the industry is built on a foundation of lies. They are counting on you to keep believing them. To keep watching. To keep paying. The question is, will you? Or will you finally wake up and see the whole rotten system for what it is? A beautiful, brutal, and profoundly corrupt machine. A machine that needs to be broken. Smashed. Utterly destroyed.
