Tag: college sports

sports culture

Questioning the place of sports in college: Character

Posted on by Beau Dure

Forget about the BCS for a moment. Forget Title IX. Forget conference re-alignment. In the post-Penn State scandal world, we’re seeing something that runs far deeper: People who aren’t sure colleges should be in the sports business at all.

They’re popping up a bit more at the Washington Post’s education page, where Jay Mathews bemoans the greater attention paid to the BCS than to a study showing a lack of analytical skills among college students. (Frankly, he should take that issue up with his editors rather than his readers.)

And The Chronicle of Higher Education has taken up the topic, today with a lengthy take on whether sports build character:

Do Sports Build Character or Damage It? – The Chronicle Review – The Chronicle of Higher Education.

The piece hints at something I had drilled in my head by my father, a philosophy major and high school QB who went on to become a biochemist: Ancient Greeks believed strongly in developing mind and body. But the writer has a different take here, calling on Plato to bolster the argument that sports help warriors find an outlet for their aggression when they’re not at war.

In a civilization that doesn’t send many people to war (no disrepect to Iraq and Afghanistan vets — their numbers are simply far smaller than the entire generation sent to WWII), that argument suggest that we don’t need quite as many athletes. Maybe we should all be re-training our brains for gentler pursuits like deconstructing 19th century’s women’s literature through the lens of 17th century patriarchal hegemonic archetypes for a post-structuralist buzzwordist obscure-termist discourse, or whatever English departments are doing now while the entire country forgets how to speak English. But I digress.

It’s a funny coincidence — some might call it “ironic” — that people are questioning the idea of sports as character development while Title IX enforcers give a hard sell on the notion that sports are good for women. But it’s not such a bad idea to stop and take stock while the sports landscape is rapidly changing.

And while most questions on sports lead back to football, the most violent and warlike (but also the most complex) of our sports, we can’t forget how much these questions apply across the board. Grantland had a story this week about concussions in football, saying the risk in football was far more than the second-placed sport. But that second most dangerous sport was one that may surprise parents. It’s girls’ soccer.

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sports culture

Title IX: Would it ever collapse under its own weight?

Posted on by Beau Dure

Many thanks to the folks organizing the NCAA convention for streaming today’s session on Title IX.

If only it weren’t so depressing.

Sure, this wasn’t some rah-rah session to cheer about how much progress women have made in American sports, progress that shouldn’t be taken for granted. The target audience was athletic department types who have to make sure their schools are compliant.

And the middle segment was a topic that’s not going to be pleasant under any circumstances — sexual violence and what universities need to do not just to prevent it but help victims. Hearing some of the examples of what victims can face is just heart-rending.

The more mundane details were just overwhelming. If I were a compliance officer, I would have walked out of that meeting with an overriding sense of hopelessness. (Granted, I might have walked into that meeting with the same feeling.)

We know the basic issues — as colleges skew more female, it’ll be tougher for schools to meet strict proportionality. North Carolina has one of the best women’s sports programs in the country, but the student body is more than majority female, so it’s not likely to meet proportionality as long as it keeps up a football team. The next two tests are more nebulous.

So what did we learn in this session? Well, for one thing, “lack of facilities is not a defense.” They didn’t go into detail on that point, but I’m wondering where the line would be drawn. If you have enough people who want to play tennis, do you need a tennis facility? A competition-quality pool if you have a demand for swimming? Maybe a velodrome for track cyclists?

Well, maybe not. The one thing that I learned from the session that made me think athletic departments are going to survive is that sports don’t need to be added unless they have enough students who are not only interested but reasonably capable of competing at a varsity level.

And yet we have enough giant rowing teams with marginally interested athletes that they actually joked about them in the presentation.

So it seems like something’s gotta give. That, they didn’t talk about.

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sports culture

The Atlantic, the NCAA and the wrong discussion

Posted on by Beau Dure

By now, you’ve probably seen at least three of your friends Tweet or share The Atlantic’s sprawling expose, The Shame of College Sports.

My question: Was anyone else disappointed? Is anyone else worried that the wrong issues are emphasized?

A lot of effort went into reporting this story, and it touches on several issues that rarely see the light of day. The NCAA comes across as a petty organization, consumed with power, that aims to destroy the careers of anyone who dares to question nonsensical rules. The cases are shocking and should be fodder for follow-up discussion.

But reporter Taylor Branch digresses from this damning expose to pontificate about amateurism and offer simplistic solutions for paying players. And in doing so, he doesn’t address the fact that most schools with football programs actually are NOT making money on sports, and many of them are losing money on football alone. See for yourself. And it doesn’t help that the bowl system is a gravy train for all the wrong people.

So most schools’ athletic departments are accomplishing two things. First, they’re enhancing the prestige of the school, giving students more reason to attend and alumni more reason to donate. My alma mater’s rise to national prominence came partly through a slow-moving movement to enhance and advertise its academic stature, but the 1986 Final Four team of Dawkins, Bilas, Alarie and company turned that slow growth into an outright boom.

Second, they’re fulfilling that Greek ideal of developing mind and body. Or, more simply, offering students activities through which they can be well-rounded. A swim team is like an orchestra — it won’t generate much direct revenue, but it’s a part of the school’s student life. And the occasional rare talent may go on to make a living at it.

So before we can call football players slaves — a suggestion Branch dismisses and then uses anyway — we have to bear in mind a couple of things. The money from jersey sales (as an aside: I was told in my college days that schools couldn’t sell jerseys that *named* a player — is that no longer true) does more than fill coaches’ and administrators’ pockets. And while those coaches may be overpaid, their work enhances a player’s earning ability down the road. If they’re excelling on a college playing field so much so that they’re selling merchandise by the ton, they’re likely in that 1-2 percent of people who’ll reap pro benefits down the road.

All that said, Ed O’Bannon’s suit is interesting. Once a player has completed college eligibility, shouldn’t he be allowed to trade his fame for modest fortune? Perhaps so.

And paying college players, frankly, would be less of an issue if other people paid them. What is the harm to the game if Lauren Cheney takes her bonus money from winning the 2008 Olympics and returns to the UCLA soccer team? If a collegiate golfer wins the U.S. Open, what’s the point of returning the money?

Sponsorships are trickier. If Nike and adidas start sponsoring college players, the divide between “Nike schools” and “adidas schools” will just get wider. But if the school doesn’t gain a recruiting edge from, say, a basketball player endorsing Starbucks, then why not allow it?

Those are the real issues of “shamateurism.” The NCAA is full of counterproductive rules, and woe be to the college tutor or student-athlete who questions them. Might be nice to see a follow-up that focuses more on that aspect and less on questions of slavery.

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