Page 3 of
3 DISPATCHES FROM
AMERICA Hoopla 101: Chronicles of
higher education By Robert Lipsyte
schools in question, at once
victims and accomplices when it comes to sports.
They are intimidated by the jock bullies, easily
bought off by them, and protective of their own
little campus deals - why risk blowing the whistle
on the altered or eased grades of athletes when
someone could knock off your summer-in-Prague
Kafka scam?
The combination of Jon
Ericson, a professor of rhetoric and
communication studies as well
as former provost of Drake University in Des
Moines, Iowa, and Linda Bensel-Meyers, a professor
of rhetoric at the University of Tennessee (No 5
South), helped create the Drake Group, one of the
most promising reform organizations in college
sports.
Bensel-Meyers was run out of
Tennessee when she tried to correct a system in
which tutors she was supposedly supervising in a
remedial program were actually writing papers for
athletes. She thought the athletes were being
cheated out of an education. She is now at the
University of Denver. She sees "the endemic
problem" as this: "The values of a commercialized
and professionalized playing field, not the values
of the university, have become dominant. They
become our national values. Might makes right.
Scapegoat women. Win at any cost."
Of
course she's right, and so are the other Drakes,
even the ones who narrow the problem to a specific
issue such as hazing, gambling, coaches' salaries,
the NCAA's non-profit status, the lack of health
care and welfare for athletes, the licensing of
rights for which the athletes receive nothing
directly, and so on.
For Ericson, however,
there is only one key to reform, and that is
"disclosure": revealing athletes' test scores,
grades and courses, and the names of the
professors who waved them through the eligibility
process. This March, when the rest of the Drakes
refused to rally around the disclosure issue as
the way to make the faculty responsible and change
the "closed society of college sports", Ericson
regretfully left the group. Soon afterward, Bruce
Svare, a neuroscientist at State University of New
York-Albany (No 13 South) and director of the
National Institute for Sports Reform, also left,
saying, "We need to focus only upon academic
integrity, and Jon is right when he says that
emphasizing disclosure is our most effective
method for ensuring that everyone (athletes and
non-athletes) is getting the kind of education
that they deserve."
I tend to agree with
them; let other groups go after racism,
commercialism, sexism. The Drakes are brothers and
sisters of the jock-sniffing professors who travel
with the teams, drink with the coaches, sit and
cheer in VIP seats in their free caps and jerseys
in return for keeping the boys eligible as long as
they are needed.
Disclosure is currently
banned by US federal law. I'm less interested in
athletes who manage to pass, say, the sociology of
gym at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas for a
year or two than those who were graduated from
Duke, Stanford (No 11 South), Indiana, and other
schools held up as models of the student-athlete
ideal. Did they take the same courses as everyday
students, attend them, turn in the same papers,
and actually write them? How could they - why
should they - exhausted from practices, traveling,
and absorbing the pressures from the full-time job
of entertaining us?
And if they couldn't,
why can't we give them a break - honestly - and
also pay them?
5. The bracket
racket "No 2 seeds are 80-4 in the first
round; but No 2s are only 16-14 in the second
round vs No 10 seeds." - R J Bell, About.com's
sports-gambling authority
According to
shaky numbers published in all manner of
platforms, some US$3 billion - second only to the
Super Bowl - will be bet by 30 million Americans,
online and in Vegas and in office pools, which are
illegal but encouraged by all manner of platforms.
I have absolutely no moral position on this. I do
wonder, though, how TV viewership would fare
without gambling.
And I wonder what's
going to happen when The Little Dance begins, the
inevitable national tournament of high-school
teams.
6. Last shot "College
basketball is genuine." - Duke Coach Mike
Krzyzewski to Jeremy Schaap of the US sports
network ESPN
Six years ago, Sonny
Vaccaro said to me, ''The kids these days know
what's going on. They also know they're the only
ones not getting big dough. If the kids had a
plan, they could cut themselves in. All you need
is one kid who can rouse the posse.''
That
seemed like an invitation to tell him my longtime
Final Four fantasy: just before the title game,
the opposing captains demand $50,000 per player
from the TV producer. No cash, no game.
The devil chortled at my innocence.
''Almost been there,'' he said. ''Some
years ago, one of the Final Four teams had
T-shirts and statements ready. The team leader was
a terrific spokesman - he's playing pro now - but
they were upset in the semifinals. But that's
their story to tell, not mine."
Notes 1. The Super Bowl
is the championship game of the US National
Football Association. 2. In the US, unlike
elsewhere in the English-speaking world, the word
"college" may be used for any undergraduate
post-secondary institution, including, as in this
reference, a full university.
Robert
Lipsyte, the Jock Culture Correspondent for
Tomdispatch.com, is a former sports journalist for
the New York Times as well as Columbia
Broadcasting System and National Broadcasting Co
network news. His most current book is the
controversial young-adult novel Raiders Night.
His interest in this year's March Madness
soared as Coach K, Bob Knight and Rick Pitino left
the bracket. He can be reached atRobert@Robertlipsyte.com
.
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