|
OUT OF LEFT FIELD |
 |
|
Golden Fleece
|
Some Halls of Academia
Are Paved in Pigskin
of TheColumnists.com
In 1932, Reed Harris, a former editor of the Columbia student newspaper, The Spectator, wrote a book, “King Football, The Vulgarization of the American College,” It was an expose of college football in the days when the Ivy League dominated bigtime sports. He indicted college sports for commercialism, anti-intellectualism, distorted priorities and hypocrisy.
To repeat, that was 1932. The only difference with today’s vulgarities in football is that current evils dwarf those of 1932--and the Ivy League is hardly in the picture because it benefitted from a drive by educators to deemphasize the sport. The Ivy League is small potatoes in a world dominated by such as Ohio State, Southern California, Miami, Auburn and Texas.
These are striking examples of football academia today:
* Ohio State coach Jim Tressel was forced to resign for lying about whether his players sold team memorabilia. Tressel, who left a trail of shady dealings at smaller schools before he came to Ohio State, had a choirboy image. He text-messaged psalms with a former player. He was celebrated for having his players sit together for 10 minutes before the start of practice for 10 minutes of “quiet time” to read about virtues such as humility, faith and gratitude. A former colleague said Tressel “in the morning would read the Bible with another coach” and in the afternoon at a football camp would run a crooked raffle favoring the better players.
* Southern California was stripped of its national title for the 2004 season. Its star player, Reggie Bush, was forced to return the hyped award that is the Heisman Trophy because he accepted payments from marketing agents. The NCAA didn’t lay a glove on coach Pete Carroll; he jumped to a $30 million-plus five-year contract with the pro Seattle Seahawks.
* The father of last year’s Heisman winner, Auburn quarterback Cam Newton, was found to have tried to sell his son to another university for $180,000.
* Most recently it was revealed that Nevin Shapiro, a Miami U. booster, had provided 72 athletes, mostly football players, with cash, cars, jewelry, and prostitutes between 2002 and 2010. It conjures up all too readily the Casablanca image of Claude Rains saying, “I’m shocked, shocked.”
* If Ohio State’s Tressel is the hypocrite, a bloke named Al Golden has emerged as the ambitious dupe of these days. Golden had a modest success in coaching Temple’s football team for five years. He succumbed to the lure of the big time and bigger bucks and signed a five-year contract with Miami over the winter.
Now he’s stuck running a program in which 12 of his players will suffer various penalties keeping them out of games this season. And down the road there will be recruiting restrictions levied on Miami by the NCAA. Golden is left holding a deflated pigskin.
It should be noted that the president of Miami is Donna Shalala, a longtime educator who was Secretary of Health and Human Service in the Clinton administration. She seemed to have no trouble basking in the success of her football behemoths. And now? Now she is investigating the situation brought to light by the evil Miami booster, Shapiro.
Frank Fitzpatrick did a series in The Philadelphia Inquirer 10 years ago in which he said, “The trouble with college athletics is college athletics. Sports at the large universities is a multibillion-dollar business fed by corporate sponsorships, television and cable deals, booster payments and advertising. …Now television networks, booster and corporate sponsors have as much a stake in a team’s success as the university.”
He said, “Miami’s just a symptom. It’s the system that’s diseased.” (That’s the echo of Reed (“King Football”) Harris in the background.)
Some of those rightfully appalled at the amount of money the schools and conferences make from successful football teams are arguing that the players on revenue-producing sports should be paid. It’s not enough for them that the players are given a chance to enjoy an expensive four-year education which, for the most talented, is a training ground for a professional career.
Paying the players would bring up intriguing questions. What kind of pay scale would be fair? Does a linebacker make the same money as a quarterback? How about paying the cheerleaders? They work hard and are part of the gaudy spectacle in 100,000-seat arenas. Maybe financial payoffs would reward touchdowns, completed passes, 100-yard runs….
Michigan football fills its 100,000-plus stadium a half-dozen games each Fall. Some years ago, a physics department was shut down for lack of funds. Money from the athletic department was untouchable for the rest of the Wolverine community.
Sports Illustrated has urged Shalala to voluntarily shut her football program down. The magazine believes this is a brave gesture that would send a message of resolve nation-wide. Indeed. The silence from Ms. Shalala is deafening.
In the early 1900s President Teddy Roosevelt, alarmed at the injuries in college football, helped bring about a change in the rules to cut down on violence. Today there is no strong figure in the government or public life who could shame the universities to live up to the ideals of a noble calling.
©2011 by Stan Isaacs. The Stan Isaacs caricature is ©2001 by Jim Hummel. The photo is courtesy of Wikipedia. This column first posted Sept. 5, 2011.
TO ACCESS STAN ISAACS' ARCHIVE OF COLUMNS
ON THIS SITE, CLICK HERE: ISAACS
ARCHIVE
You can comment
on this column online via our TALKBACK page. Please address your e-mail message to either
"The Editors" or Stan Isaacs at Syndpack @ aol.com.
|
|
|
Archives |
|
|