Mike Golic Jr. talks a lot about how he approaches covering college athletics in a new profile written by The Athletic’s Christopher Kamrani. Golic, his former teammates, co-workers, and even his father, Mike Sr, are quoted in the piece.
Kamrani writes that Mike Golic Jr has become “exactly what they’ve been hoping would arrive on the scene” for ESPN. He is a former college athlete that is comfortable talking about the inherent unfairness of an organization that makes billions off of athletes it pays nothing.
“People say players are given free this or free that,” Golic says of the idea that a scholarship is payment enough for student athletes. “None of it is free. You’re working a very full-time job in all of this. You can look at it and say, maybe it’s true, maybe in the beginning this wasn’t a multi-billion dollar industry overall. But if everything around the players has changed, why hasn’t anything changed for the players?”
Dane Crist, a former teammate and roommate, praises Golic for his willingness to “call out the B.S. in a game that we all love and appreciate.” Kamrani writes that it is more than just a welcomed change of pace, Golic advocating the need for a college sports players association across multiple platforms owned by the NCAA’s biggest media partner is actually giving ESPN a role in shaping the future of college sports.
“As basic as it sounds, it’s just the acknowledgement from that current establishment, right? That this is a group we’ll actually deal with in good faith, the way we see within other unions and leagues,” Golic says of the idea of the student athletes unionizing. “There’s obviously a snowball effect in the eyes of the establishment that sees any ground made by the players in all of this as slowly but surely but cracking away at the foundation of this amateurism model that this pedestal that all of college athletics is on.”
Mike Golic Sr. admits that he and his son don’t totally see eye-to-eye on the issue, but he is proud that Junior doesn’t have any reservations about expressing his opinion. That is the only way he would ever grow out of the image of simply being “Mike Golic’s son.” It’s an image that Senior says at this point is simply unfair.
“Does anybody in their right mind — Mike’s been there five years now — think that if he wasn’t good on the air that they would keep him around? That my name still carries that much weight?” Golic Sr. asked. “Hell, they took away my radio show. It’s not like my shit carries any weight anymore”
