The Shame of College Sports

[RedEarth]

“I’m not hiding,” Sonny Vaccaro told a closed hearing at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C., in 2001. “We want to put our materials on the bodies of your athletes, and the best way to do that is buy your school. Or buy your coach.”

Vaccaro’s audience, the members of the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, bristled. These were eminent reformers—among them the president of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, two former heads of the U.S. Olympic Committee, and several university presidents and chancellors. The Knight Foundation, a nonprofit that takes an interest in college athletics as part of its concern with civic life, had tasked them with saving college sports from runaway commercialism as embodied by the likes of Vaccaro, who, since signing his pioneering shoe contract with Michael Jordan in 1984, had built sponsorship empires successively at Nike, Adidas, and Reebok. Not all the members could hide their scorn for the “sneaker pimp” of schoolyard hustle, who boasted of writing checks for millions to everybody in higher education.

“Why,” asked Bryce Jordan, the president emeritus of Penn State, “should a university be an advertising medium for your industry?”

Vaccaro did not blink. “They shouldn’t, sir,” he replied. “You sold your souls, and you’re going to continue selling them. You can be very moral and righteous in asking me that question, sir,” Vaccaro added with irrepressible good cheer, “but there’s not one of you in this room that’s going to turn down any of our money. You’re going to take it. I can only offer it.”

William Friday, a former president of North Carolina’s university system, still winces at the memory. “Boy, the silence that fell in that room,” he recalled recently. “I never will forget it.” Friday, who founded and co-chaired two of the three Knight Foundation sports initiatives over the past 20 years, called Vaccaro “the worst of all” the witnesses ever to come before the panel.

...in depth article at The Atlantic

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/10/the-shame-of-college-sports/8643/

[Scuba]

1. For all the outrage, the real scandal is not that students are getting illegally paid ...

"For all the outrage, the real scandal is not that students are getting illegally paid or recruited, it’s that two of the noble principles on which the NCAA justifies its existence—“amateurism” and the “student-athlete”—are cynical hoaxes, legalistic confections propagated by the universities so they can exploit the skills and fame of young athletes. "

[msongs]

2. its entertainment, not sports nt

[SheilaT]

3. The other outrage is the claim that the big-time

sports bring money and donations to the college. No. Those football and basketball teams COST, and cost a lot.

As for donations, I read somewhere a couple of years ago that the school whose alumni donate to most generously is . . .







That major sports powerhouse . . .







The school EVERYONE wants to attend . . .




Cal Tech. Yeah, California Institute of Technology.

I did a quick google search to try to verify that, and couldn't, actually, other than an article that says CalTech -- which does NOT give legacy preferences at all --raised $71M in alumni donations in 2008, only a little less than MIT's $77M that year, and MIT does give legacy preference in admissions.

I did find another article which listed the top ten schools for alumni giving by percent, and almost every single one was a small, private college: Carleton, Davidson, Indiana Institute of Technology, Williams, Amherst, Middlebury, you get the picture. Princeton was on that list, but Princeton isn't exactly a sports powerhouse either.

I do know that some of the big sports schools do things to promote sports which totally piss of the students. My son went to the University of Tulsa, which generally has a decent football team. During the four years he attended, they revamped the stadium, reducing the number of seats for the students and locating them in increasingly undesirable locations. It left a very bad feeling, and I wouldn't be surprised if he's never very inclined to give them money.

[swilton]

4. As an alumna of the University of Oklahoma

I'm embarrassed by the corporatization of the college football industry....College football is for the sub-elite strata of American society who can't afford or do not live near the professional football franchises (i.e., Oklahoma).

As someone in the 1970s pointed out - college football is a farm for the pro's.

Having said that I'm still addicted to the illusion that college football is superior to the corporate NFL - I've seen in the nation's capital that only the elite can afford the pro-football culture...dismiss the notion that bringing a football/baseball franchise to an area provides jobs...it's a past-time for corporate elites...

And in some ways, I feel sorry for the players - despite their high profile lifestyles, stratospheric salaries...they are as Marx put it alienated from their work...

[saras]

5. It's not a matter of doing it "right" , it's a matter of not doing it.

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/f/football/head_injuries/index.html

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090127165938.htm

http://www.slate.com/id/2281515/

http://www.huliq.com/10282/football-players-have-some-sort-brain-damage-states-top-neurologist

Google "football brain damage". There's hundreds more, and there's no informed counter-opinion, just reaction.

It's the sort of information that all kids need to have available before they get emotionally attached to sports.

[Igel]

6. Great quote.

"here’s not one of you in this room that’s going to turn down any of our money. You’re going to take it. I can only offer it.”

We may make excuses for succumbing to temptation, but it's usually a bad practice to say that yielding is some sort of virtue when the outcome is so universally bad. That's true for college sports. That's true for illegal campaign contributions and other kinds of bribes. It's true for subprime loans.


Churchill: Madam, would you sleep with me for five million pounds?

Woman: My goodness, Mr. Churchill… Well, I suppose… we would have to discuss terms, of course…

Churchill: Would you sleep with me for five pounds?

Woman: Mr. Churchill, what kind of woman do you think I am?!

Churchill: Madam, we’ve already established that. Now we are haggling about the price.