And now is such a time.
Cam Newton has been built up to be a great man who is a great Quarterback in the NFL. He has set himself up to be an icon for the ultimate black athlete.
He has now become fair game to smack that smile off his face and to have his past hauled out before America so that we can see what kind of man he is when no one is looking - when no cameras on him.
He suddenly becomes not much of a man.
I wonder how many of you who have fallen for the bravado of Cam Newton with his unsportsmanlike dancing and constant first down hand motions really know much about this guy? For all of the reports of him doing things off the field to help children, we have more than that to flesh out a showboating, brash, arrogant, and until this season, NFL loser of a quarterback.
How many of you graduated from college? How many of you took a full course load and worked one or more jobs to pay for college? How many of you put in the hours to actually research and to write term papers to earn a high grade? How many of you actually studied for tests so that you could earn a high GPA and to actually learn the subject matter under which you were being tested?
And how many of you approached college as just an exercise in getting high grades and to hell with actually learning anything?
Understand this - cheating in academics to me is like producing counterfeit currency. Anyone can cheat - anyone can print a fake one hundred dollar bill and then attempt to pass it off as real. That takes no talent and that takes no exercise in working hard and earning.
Cam Newton didn't bother to work hard in college. He look the easy way out - he cheated. He didn't cheat once or twice. He was caught - and this is the startling point - caught cheating three times. And one has to wonder how many other times he got away with fabricating a narrative and transcript of grades he never earned by putting in the work. He took the lazy way out. When no one was looking, he skirted the honor code by counterfeiting a college transcript of fake grades and unearned accolades.
According to ESPN in November 2010, "Newton, a Heisman Trophy front-runner, is said to have been caught cheating three times, including putting his name on someone else's paper without that student's knowledge."
We aren't talking about just a Joe Blow student who phoned in his college education by cheating. We are talking about someone who from day one in college to now in the NFL has been blowing his own horn about how amazing he is.
Yet he cheated three times. And was caught.
There is more to this story. Newton was attending the University of Florida when he defiled the University's Honor Code. ESPN continues, "Auburn quarterback Cam Newton was facing possible expulsion from the University of Florida for academic cheating when he transferred to junior college in the spring of 2009, FoxSports.com reported Monday."
It is one thing to cheat. And to cheat at least three times and get caught. It is quite another to be such a low life piece of shit and to flee being held accountable. As an athlete, he insulted every student in the entire country by thinking he was so important that he could flee being held accountable and to undertake and underhanded way to get rewards he never should have been able to get.
Since Cam Newton and the Carolina Panthers have injected race into this Super Bowl, we thus have to wonder if him being a black male in college and being a black athlete resulted in him being able to get away with academic dishonesty. Perhaps you should re-read that last statement. Is the college football system so corrupt that we can have a student with documented unethical issues being allowed to persist from University to University just so he can play sports. Universities are not just sports factories where the only job you have is to play sports - universities are all about academics first and sports second. Yet, Cam set himself above all rules and regulations and felt he was owed a career in sports at the expense of defiling and raping the Honor Code.
Understand this - I don't give a shit if Cam Newton plays football - he has every right to earn a living and to follow his dreams - but he took a route that was as dishonest and unethical as he could have done to get here. In many ways Cam's actions were worse than what the New England Patriots have been said to have done. The Patriots are a professional team that is in constant scrutiny - Cam did all of his actions while no one was looking and did so because he thought or believed he could get away with it - and he profited from it immensely earning college playing time he had no right to participate.
What is shocking about Cam Newton is that he didn't just rape the Florida Honor Code. He did much more and continued his pattern of dishonesty after fleeing Florida.
ESPN continues, "Newton attended Florida in 2007 and 2008 before transferring to Blinn College, a junior college in Texas. Newton decided to leave Florida following a November 2008 arrest after he bought a stolen computer. The charges were dropped last December when he completed a pretrial intervention program for first-time offenders."
The Huffington Puffington Post (Nov 9, 2010) had further details to this stolen property episode by painting a more disgusting picture where Newton was the thief, not just an innocent person who was in possession of stolen property, "The Heisman hopeful landed at Blinn after an arrest at Florida in November 2008. Campus police said he stole a $1,700 laptop then threw it out his dormitory window when officers arrived to investigate. The charges were dropped last December when he completed a pretrial intervention program for first-time offenders. Newton has said he bought the stolen computer from someone else."
"According to FoxSports.com, Newton again violated the university's honor code by putting his name on another student's paper and turning it in. Newton was caught after the instructor asked the real author of the paper why he had not turned in his work," ESPN's report noted.
USA Today in November 2010 also added a timeline and more details, "The story reports Newton violated the honor code as a freshman by cheating in class. Then in his sophomore season - after his arrest - he allegedly turned in two separate papers that he did not write."
Cam was a serial cheater - adding counts of dishonesty as ESPN continues to note, "Newton turned in a second paper to the instructor, but that paper was later found to have been purchased off the Internet, according to FoxSports.com. He was to appear for a hearing in front of Florida's Student Conduct Committee during the spring semester of 2009 but instead transferred to Blinn College."
Sadly, these reports on Cam Newton are not speculation or rumor - these are facts. He was caught cheating - caught with stolen property - and given preferential treatment in escaping any accountability.
So when you are rooting for a winner in the Super Bowl today - do you want to root for a man who has the personal integrity of an academic thief? How low can you go to overlook a man who is such a disgusting person and who has not made right what he did to get to this stage? His career has to be rebuked for being a fraud because he counterfeited his resume.
It should also be noted that Newton's father is complicit in much of what went on with Cam's college years and there is so much more dirt - but it cannot be substantiated - but taken in context with what can be proved above, we have a picture of a disgusting young man who will stop at nothing to advance his career - and now as a pro, he is using his race as a weapon.
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