On Penn State, The Problem is not (Just) Football Culture, But Brand Culture

[alcibiades_mystery]

I've seen a lot of claims floating around about the problem of treating football as a religion, protecting the football program, and similar arguments in that vein.

What is left out of these discussion is the larger issue: brand culture.

There's no doubt that football attains the level of the quasi-sacred in State College, Pennsylvania. But the more interesting phenomenon, in my view, is the branding of universities - a movement within which Penn State was at the leading edge. Since Graham Spanier's tenure as President of the university commenced in 1995, Penn State has been perhaps the most successful university at creating and marketing a brand. Certainly in the top ten at these efforts. The football program is an element in the brand, and Paterno was an element of the brand, but they are just elements: the real issue is the corporate university as a brand itself.

Why? As we see from the endless Mac v. PC wars and other similar nonsense, a brand is co-constructive of identity itself: when branding is successful, it becomes part of the way we recognize ourselves and build and live our lives as individuals. Of course, we all deny this: I can switch from Canada Dry to any other ginger ale whenever I want, since I'm no zombie of some advertisers, haruumph! Our denial is part of the way branding works. It has to function as an apparently free decision or it doesn't latch itself successfully on to our constructions of our own identity. But I don't switch from Canada Dry to another brand. It becomes part of who I am.

In the ginger ale example, it is merely a small and trifling part. When it comes to a school or university, the brand as an element of a person's identity becomes deeply rooted in their own sense of self. Of course, there were such feelings before the emergence of brand culture, and brand culture draws on an exploits previous modes of belonging (there was "school spirit" long before the aggressive brand culture of the last two decades took root in universities); the transformation of a university into a brand is an amping up of these feelings to a new point of intensity, a quantitative change that becomes qualitative.

This is what needs to be understood to truly grasp what we are seeing right now at Penn State: the football program became nothing more than a delivery device for the brand, and Paterno himself functioned as a quick and easy signifier for the brand, a Ronald McDonald of sorts. There is, in this sense, no Joe Pa as a person: "Joe Pa" is little more than a symbol for the brand, little different than those cardboard cutouts of Paterno in all the memorabilia stores on College Avenue.

There's no doubt that we can find individual villains here, starting with Sandusky and moving through the cast of characters from McQueary to Joe Paterno, to Curley and Schultz and Spanier and others. There's no doubt that we can set this at the feet of the football program, and big college sports, and all that money that flows through. But while we're at it, we might also look at the more disturbing trend of the corporatization of the university, the transformation of students into consumers, and the transformation of universities into brands for those consumers, and for their families, and the now lifelong adherents of the brand we call "alumni." People have said "This is what happens when you put the football program over the safety of children." Maybe. But it is perhaps more accurately stated as

This is what happens when the brand becomes the sacred object.

[Populist_Prole]

1. One of the reason I despise spectator sports, especially football

The hype and bullshit has a life of its own.

[RainDog]

2. k&r n/t

[Fumesucker]

3. We see it here on DU, fairly blatantly sometimes..

Often accompanied by little blue links.

[SoDesuKa]

4. This Is Much Worse Than an Ordinary Scandal

If this were an ordinary scandal the university community could more easily distance themselves from it. Jerry Tarkanian's UNLV basketball team was barred from tournament participation following a point-shaving scandal, but that doesn't come close to the damage done here. Point-shaving isn't honorable, it's unsportsmanlike, but it isn't deeply shameful.



UNLV: No lasting tarnish

[alcibiades_mystery]

5. I have no doubt that that's true

But perhaps you were responding to a different post?

[robdogbucky]

6. I know of what you speak

I am a native Madisonian and a life-long Badger/Badger fan. The honorable institution of the University of Wisconsin went from Red Ink to Roses in just a few short years. The school was moribund in terms of the progress of developing big business football success back before Donna Shalala became Chancellor. The football team, facilities, recruiting, all of it was in the dumper. Always in the top ten nationally in attendance but in the bottom ten in win/loss and conference standing. It had some tradition from way back when, Pat Harder, Crazylegs Hirsch, Alan Ameche, but after the 50s and the rise of big time football and big time conferences for colleges began to get television exposure and Katy bar the door. Football programs were the cash cows that supported all other sports. They even classify the majority of those other sports as non-revenue.

When Title 9 requirements took effect the UW had to cancel mens' baseball, fencing, and I think mens' gymnastics to fund the womens' sports that were emerging, softball, track, basketball, soccer, etc. and come into compliance with the new rules to support womens' sports. The new chancellor saw the need to bring the entire athletic program into the modern era of branding and program success. It worked. They retired Hirsch as the AD and put in Pat Richter, a former AA football player that made it in the pros as a tight end for the Redskins, and who just happened to also be a success in business for corporations.

Long story short, they got a new thinking regime into Madison, made the one, single move that made the difference almost overnight. They hired a big time coach, Barry Alvarez, who in his first and only head coaching position turned a moribund bottom feeder program into the spotlight of national attention by getting the Badger football team to experience so much success that they won 3 Rose Bowls in 7 years. He is now the AD there, but he is much more. He can do no wrong. Is there a cult over Alvarez there? Probably. Can it get like Penn St.? You haven't spent much time in Madison if you think it can. Example: The students were asked to stop a chant (eat shit, fuck you) that embarrassed Alvarez and older alums, one of the many traditions that actually started back when the football program was in the dumper and has survived through the years of transformation. And their response to the nearly annual requests to cease and desist have been to? Do it more and louder. You would think after about 20 years, the admin would get the hint.

Long story short, Alvarez and the success of his football program (he's from western PA coal country BTW and has greatly admired JoePa and tried to model his own success on P$U) has garnered him a bronze statue outside of Camp Randall Stadium in Madison. I know for a fact his persona, success and charisma, etc. have meant much in terms of drawing corporate dollars to the university in terms of donations and in investments into specific schools within the university as well. It has also been huge in the development of Madison and the surrounding metro area. He is now known as simply "The Emperor." Other non-revenue sports have benefitted greatly from the corporate donations he can finagle based on who he is. So he has done, and is doing, a lot of good for the development of the athletic department, the university as a whole, and the surrounding community.

The big draw back of all this branding success and growth in a corporate sense has meant that a once-great public university, formerly financed and supported by the citizens of that great state, is now almost majority financed by corporations through grants, donations and other funding. Of course you know where the research gets directed in this case. UW is the 4th largest "public," research institution in the world. In the world. There is also the tradeoff in terms of the almost purely commercial aspects of becoming a UW student. The mystique is there for it is a destination of preference for many prospective students with academic excellence, and the ever-present party reputation of the place, and now such athletic success to go along with the rest. Talk about branding? Bucky, Brats & Beer is the brand that an entire nation is now familiar with, like the frozen tundra.

Not to mention that the football team is expected to win every game now. That and it's a lot harder to get tickets on game day



Just my dos centavos


robdogbucky