As I was standing behind a bush in Old RCA committing a heinous act of Onanism while watching 70 high school cheerleaders do aerobics, I had a revelation.

The Lord appeared to me as a bright light, and He spoke unto me these words: Hey, Lunchbox! If you played for the Cyclones you could just run over there and take your pick.

In retrospect, I am not so sure if it was the one true God speaking to me or a mysterious, disembodied voice located elsewhere, but the message was received loud and clear.

Frankly, if I were on either the football or basketball team, I could probably have just run over and assaulted a couple dozen of the honies with near impunity.

Far from being thrown in lockdown, I could have called my coach from booking and had a host of public relations gurus to smooth over my abnormal tendencies. “Greg spent nearly 10 minutes last semester helping a Korean student pronounce ‘pizza,’ I think he’s done some good things at Iowa State, as well, but you never read THAT in the Daily!”

I took this column-writing gig to meet the ladies, and so far, it just hasn’t panned out.

But if I were playing ball for ISU, I could fulfill my dream of riding through Ames raping and pillaging like one of the Mongol hordes. I would get a large sword, one of those furry hats, a horse and tribe of hellions.

On weekends, we would raid Story City looking for women and the perfect funnel cake. When we were done, we would burn everything down to the ground leaving living untouched.

I had better get myself in good with the Athletic Department.

I want my free ride, man. This working-to-pay-for-school thing is bogus in the extreme.

I want to get a free education that I can take for granted while I beat down some pencil-necked geek at the Burger King for not getting my fries to me fast enough.

I want to be able to cruise the various shelters and charitable organizations for underage girls to ply with liquor before forcing myself upon them sexually.

Maybe, if I really distinguish myself, I can even get away with robbing a liquor store or a Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise dressed as the Archbishop of Canterbury. The sky is the limit.

I appreciate the value of sports. I played football in high school and it was a great time. I don’t remember anyone kissing up to us, but we weren’t that good. Come to think of it, there are some similarities to ISU.

We felt like we ruled the school because we had the cool coats and somewhere to go after school, but after a while it just seemed like so much wasted time.

If I had been good enough to be considered for a free-ride scholarship, I can’t imagine that I would have ever thrown it away in illegal activities.

The Daily takes criticism for never talking about the good things that athletes do, but that’s bogus.

It’s about as valid as the criticism leveled at us by fraternities that complain we only put them in the paper when someone gets raped in their house.

If anything newsworthy occurs, good or bad, it’s going to get in. But not getting in trouble is nothing to be praised for; that is the standard by which most of us live.

Granted, the majority of athletes on this campus aren’t running around with wild abandon looking to do violence to us plebeians.

Let me be the first to thank you all for not being violent criminals. Never let it be said that the Daily failed to recognize you for doing nothing evil.

But I believe it was Peter Parker, Marvel comics’ Spiderman who said that with great power comes great responsibility.

If you want to be among the elite who are looked up to by the majority of students on campus, then you must be held to a higher standard. The average student doesn’t get half the perks. Many students work more than one job to pay for school, and no one cheers them on while they’re doing it. Yet, somehow, they manage to not commit acts of violence.

Every week now, it seems like there is some new true crime tale to tell about an ISU athlete, and the summer is supposed to be a time to relax? What do we have to look forward to in the new year?

All I want to leave you with is this: Give it a rest. There are entire groups of students who manage to never make it into the police blotter while at ISU.

If you can’t make it through four or five years of school without a violent crime, give your scholarship up to someone who can.

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Greg Jerrett is a graduate student in English from Council Bluffs. He is opinion editor of the Daily.