A former USC football player has launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund a documentary, "The Business Of Amateurs," which he says will "examine the evolution of the NCAA and the lopsided role of the multi-billion dollar non-profit." Bob DeMars, who played for the Trojans from 1997 to 2001, wrote that playing college football was a dream come true. But, he said, "some of my old injuries have opened my eyes to the fact that my future medical costs will likely outweigh the monetary benefits of my free education by the time I'm a senior citizen."
Through the documentary, DeMars says he hopes to "discover how college sports and the NCAA evolved into the disproportionate model of today.
"However," he adds in his pitch, "we won't just shed light on the problems of the NCAA; we are going to search for solutions that will spark change in the NCAA and work towards moving the focus back to the health of the athlete."
DeMars is asking for $30,000 for bare bones production costs. So far, in addition to receiving $15,000 so far, he's received notice from another one of USC's biggest names: Matt Barkley.
Do you think collegiate athletes deserve better benefits? This Kickstarter film thinks they do http://t.co/Wg94EPrnID
— Matthew Barkley (@MattBarkley) May 28, 2013
In an interview earlier this week with ThePostGame, DeMars said numerous other former USC athletes had also reached out to him after hearing about his project, including Scott Ross, who played next to Junior Seau during his time in Southern Cal.
"[He] played one year of pro and he's 44 years old and he's unbelievably deep in his stages of dementia," DeMars said. "I took a lot of head shots and had a few concussions and probably a lot that were undiagnosed. So when I have lapses in my memory I wonder if that's just a precursor [to something worse]."
Lack of enough health benefits is a common concern from current and former players and anyone watching the game. DeMars said he thinks his documentary will be different because the illustration of problems and brainstorming of possible solutions will come from the people involved in the NCAA -- former players, coaches and hopefully some NCAA officials. He said he even received a promise months ago from his former coach, Pete Carroll, to talk about his experience as a coach.
"Workers compensation exists in every other job," he said. "There's nothing related to that [for former college athletes] because players aren’t employees and if there was a way to fix the system, I think we should find it."
You can check out DeMars' pitch here:
