Are you sick of schools paying coaches 10 times more than Nobel Prize-winning professors? Are you tired of kids who can barely spell SAT getting into college?
If you can’t live with the exploitative, money-grabbing business of college sports, here’s the first thing you do.
Look in the mirror.
It’s your fault. It’s my fault. It’s everybody’s fault, and always has been.
So what do we do about it?
The topic is hot again after a report by the Knight Commission, a group of 28 ex-college presidents and other eggheads. After 18 months, it concluded higher sports and higher education don’t mix. Next, it will report Chihuahuas can’t speak English.
I long ago accepted college sports for what it is — big-time entertainment in school clothing. The coaches, administrators and players do what they’re hired to do. Try to win, sell tickets and keep fans happy.
Most play by the rules we’ve given them. And when athletes get an education along the way, all the better. But first and foremost, college sports is a business and has to be treated like one.
Unless you live in an ivory tower. The commission envisions an Ivy League panacea, where every jock is a scholar, Steve Spurrier teaches P.E. and winning doesn’t matter. In a perfect world, sure. In our world, such idealism and reality has never mixed.
“The responsibility to bring athletics into a sincere relation to the intellectual life of the college rests squarely on the shoulders of the president and faculty.” So said a Carnegie Foundation study. The year was 1929.
The sports genie isn’t out of the academic bottle, it was never in it. The public has always wanted student/athletes. But forced to make a choice, we’ll take the latter. The Knight Commission believes change will come with a few simple steps. Like slashing salaries, eliminating corporate money and telling TV where to stick it.
OK, you slash Bobby Bowden’s salary. You make Michigan return the $22 million it’s getting from Nike, then see how long non-revenue sports survive. You suspend Lute Olsen because his starting five declared early for the NBA draft. You tell CBS the $6 billion it pays for the primetime NCAA Tournament isn’t as important as getting Shane Battier in bed by 10 p.m.
The commission has a valid point. Things are getting worse.
So look in the mirror. If you want colleges to be purely educational, start by calling Florida Athletic Director Jeremy Foley. Tell him the school should junk its $50 million football stadium expansion. It’s too symbolic of a system we can no longer live with.
Somehow, I think his phone will remain still. A silent testament to a system we really can’t live without.