I missed the New York Times article about Rutgers professor William Dowling, who is campaiging against college sports, and has written a jeremiad on the subject and gotten it published by-- slight irony alert-- Penn State University Press.
There are a lot of things to dislike about big-time college sports, starting with the rank hypocrisy of the NCAA, and continuing on through the lack of a meaningful championship in college football. I have to say, though, that Dowling kind of puts me off the book when he describes it to the Times:
"I wanted this book to be a monument," Dr. Dowling, 62, said after class. "I wanted it to be a monument to the kids and the faculty who rallied around this issue. We tried to take on the monster of commercialized sports, even if it swallowed us up and passed us out the other end. Someone should know that we fought the good fight. And because I believe in literature as a form of symbolic action, I want readers to see the possibility of another way. Think about the impact of a book like 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' on slavery."
OK, let's try to maintain a grip, here, shall we? Let's review:
- Chattel slavery: a moral evil exceeded only by genocide, whose existence in the first century of the American republic is a blight on the high ideals of the founders.
- College athletics: a fairly corrupt enterprise of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, attaining (in a transient way) a level of evil somewhat below that of a subprime mortgage lender.
Let's not go around making rash analogies between the two, or even rash analogies between literary campaigns against the two. Though, on the bright side, this does make the various "New Atheists are just like ______" analogies look less offensively silly.
And then, of course, there's this gem:
"If you were giving the scholarship to an intellectually brilliant kid who happens to play a sport, that's fine," he said. "But they give it to a functional illiterate who can't read a cereal box, and then make him spend 50 hours a week on physical skills. That's not opportunity. If you want to give financial help to minorities, go find the ones who are at the library after school."
Oh, yeah. That will end well...
(Via Inside Higher Ed)
- Log in to post comments
He's campaigning against scholarship athletics, not college sports. He advocates participatory athletics.
I wish I could remember where I heard it but I've always loved the quote, "We need to make this a University the football team can be proud of."
His tone is off and the "Uncle Tom's Cabin" thing is ridiculous. His overall point is well-taken though.
Justawriter, I happen to know who said that and in what context...being a Sooner fan and OU alumnus.
That statement came from former University of Oklahoma president George Lynn Cross when asking the Oklahoma State Legislature for more funds for the University.
At the time, OU had dumped a lot of money into the football program for a number of reasons, the biggest of which was to give the people of Oklahoma, who were just emerging from the dust bowl days, something to be proud of. That spending on athletics, if I remember correctly, had the full backing of the state legislature. After a time, the increased spending on athletics gave OU, and the state of Oklahoma, a better image not just at home, but across the nation, and helped the state grow economically. However, during that time, state spending on the educational side remained stagnant, up until the time that Dr. Cross made that now famous statement.
The "Uncle Tom's Cabin" thing means he's hit some generalized form of Godwin's Law, doesn't it?
Though, on the bright side, this does make the various "New Atheists are just like ______" analogies look less offensively silly.
What are you talking about? New Atheists are EXACTLY like a brief series of underscores!
If the NBA and the NFL were to start minor leagues, and actually pay the players, I suspect they would get plenty of really good players who aren't really scholars and would rather play and earn than play and study. That would leave college sports to the folks who actually want to both play and study, which I think would be a very good thing indeed. Not incidentally, it would also remove most of the really nasty corruption right away.
And it's not like the leagues would be doing this out of charity. Baseball doesn't keep the minors around out of charity; there's not reason basketball or football would need to do so either. So why haven't they done it yet? I wish I knew.
It's not impossible to have scholarship athletics and high standards for the athletes. The 2 Catholic universities, BC and ND, are good examples of this.
"It's not impossible to have scholarship athletics and high standards for the athletes."
Sure, just like it's not impossible for a politician not to feel beholden to his campaign donors. But the incentive is there for lowered standards and corruption, because if your school is getting into the big-time sports game in the first place they're dropping a lot of cash and they want a return on that cash. If your standards are too high, you're actually putting yourself at a disadvantage compared to the schools who fudge things.
Minor leagues for the NFL are the only real solution I see.
My solution is for the NCAA to change the scholarship regulations for big-time athletics to require that the students only carry a half-time load while they have eligibility to play, and the scholarship should include 2 full years after there eligibility has been used up - the 2 years should be redeemable any time in the 5 years after their eligibility is done. That way they can focus on the athletics while they are playing but still get an education in the event they don't make it in the pros.