After watching commercials about crack babies, Kyle decides to volunteer his time to the local hospital. There, he finds Cartman has already started. Kyle knows Cartman too well and decides to investigate.
Cartman Starts the Crack Baby Athletic Association
Cartman informs Kyle that he is starting a league in which crack babies fight over a crack ball. He calls it the Crack Baby Athletic Association. Kyle is disgusted at first, but Cartman tells Kyle that it doesn’t hurt the crack babies so there is nothing wrong with it.
Kyle joins, but when he tells Stan what he is up to, Stan accuses Kyle of turning into Cartman. Kyle denies it and constantly tries to rationalize how this business venture is not immoral.
Kyle informs Cartman they must pay the crack babies or the government could come after them. Cartman decides to see how the other “companies” get away without paying their players.
Student-Athletes are Slaves
The “companies” turn out to be colleges. Cartman is referring to student-athletes that play for a school, but do not receive any of the profits from TV revenue, ticket sales, jersey sales, etc. Cartman is essentially calling student-athletes slaves. Of course, slaves are forced to do their work, whereas student-athletes are not forced to play a sport. But the analogy still fits.
Trey Parker and Matt Stone have a great point about student-athletes. The colleges reap all the benefits from their athletes, but are not allowed to compensate the athletes in anyway. Of course, there have been many instances in the past of student-athletes illegally getting compensated with money, cars, etc.
However, Parker and Stone did fail to mention anything about scholarships. Many student-athletes do get full-ride or even part-ride scholarships to the school they attend. It is not nearly as much as the money the colleges are making off of the athletes, but it is better than nothing.
Kyle comes up with an idea to build a crack baby orphanage. Even though the league can’t pay the crack babies, they can still provide them with a place to eat and sleep. Cartman is on board with this idea, which of course is similar to colleges providing their students with dorm rooms to stay in.
This was, by far, the best episode of South Park this season. The student-athlete/slave analogy was brilliant. No one really thinks about how much money colleges are making off their athletes since it is the athletes that get all the fame and glory.
The only thing that didn’t make sense was the part about Slash, the guitarist from Guns ‘n Roses not being real. Although it was funny to compare Slash to Santa Claus, it didn’t really fit with the rest of the episode and felt very forced in order to give the episode a second storyline.
Tom Mitsos - Tom Mitsos currently works at The Grand Rapids Press as a copy editor for the sports department. Contact Tom at tommitsos@gmail.com.
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