A little more than a month ago, HBO's Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel ran an excellent report about former college athletes and the medical care that they receive—and in most cases, don't receive—after finishing their college careers. It featured former football, basketball, and even track stars talking about dealing with life-altering injuries following college without any help from their former schools. It also featured some athletes talking about their former coaches holding their scholarships over their heads and forcing them to play through painful injuries all in the name of getting a "free" ride through college.
If you're interested, you can watch the Real Sports report here:
We bring it up because, with that report in mind, it wasn't all that surprising to hear that former Illinois offensive lineman Simon Cvijanovic went on a long Twitter tirade against the Illinois program and, more specifically, his former coach Tim Beckman over the weekend. But by doing so, he shed even more light on a growing problem amongst college athletes. Too many student athletes say that they're being mistreated by coaches and then left out to dry with injuries once they part ways with their respective programs.
Cvijanovic—who left the Illinois program during the 2014 college football season—started things off with this tweet:
He then sent out a series of tweets illustrating how he feels he was mistreated at Illinois. There are way too many for us to post them all (you can check out his entire timeline here). But here are some of the most interesting tweets he sent out:
Because of Cvijanovic's Twitter rant, Coach Beckman was forced to issue a statement late yesterday. He sent this out:
2.
But it's clear that Cvijanovic is not happy about the way his Illinois career ended. And sadly, it seems like there are a lot of other former athletes who feel the same way. Add this to the growing list of problems that the NCAA is facing right now.
Send all complaints, compliments, and tips to sportstips@complex.com.
[via Eye on College Football]
