Letters to the Editor
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Lewis article
I thought this was fantastic and forwarded it to everyone at my university (which has been trying desperately to build a football program). Particularly powerful was the disturbing racial imagery of (mostly) wealthy/comfortable white fans cheering on (mostly) poor black athletes and how we continue to ignore that and claim it's all about education. Anyone who has taught "student-athletes" at a BCS school knows which part of that description takes precedence. I also completely agree that the NFL has a huge financial interest in the college game and (if forced) would manage to work out a deal that is more fair than the current hypocritical system. I love college football (go gators!) but the exploitation of its core members is shameful.
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"Student" Athletes & The Academic Big Lie
Lewis glides nicely over the truth when he opines: "It's not that football players are too stupid to learn. It's that they're too busy. Unlike the other students on campus, they have full-time jobs: playing football for nothing. Neglect the task at hand, and they may never get a chance to play football for money."
Lewis evades the issue. Would any of these people be at "college" at all if academic credibility were part of the recruiting process? I doubt it. The truth is that most of these "students" are not students at all, at least not in any meaningful sense of the term. In fact, if faced with an honest academic evaluation most would fail to graduate from any self-respecting high school let alone enter a "college."
The Big Lie of American "academic" life runs far deeper than Lewis imagines and is not confined by any means to "athletics." Maybe Salon can get off its far-too-fat and far-too-self-congratulatory ass and find a reputable journalist to investigate the Biggest Lie of All: i.e., that American universities are the envy of the World!
That piece of self-serving idiocy is right up there with the farcical assertion that"Intelligent Design is real science"!
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The Big Lie?
No one I know seriously considers college football as anything other than what it is portrayed to be in the NYT's article.
Clearly college football has nothing (or at least little) to do with academics.
Maybe that is news to fans with more recent football success (such as Rutgers), but it's not news to anyone who has attended a school with a football factory or is a fan of such a team.
I am OK with that, and I think most fans are too.
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Who are the suckers?
Family members often shape the attitudes of college athletes. I doubt many parents turn their noses up at the propect of their child receiving an athletic scholarship. The illusion that a "free college education" is worth anything beyond unpaid labor belongs to the family of the athlete. The kids just go along for the ride that most of them have enjoyed since middle school...that of a socially accepted star athlete.
If and when family members of gifted athletes ever pull their heads out of their asses and demand real value for their son's or daughter's talents on the field of play, then maybe things will change. But that's not going to happen as long as fathers can live out their sporting fantasies through their offspring, and mothers are star struck with the dream of a college educated child.
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Another Way of Looking at College Sports
As a very occasional follower of college football, I found King's item and Michael Lewis' opinion piece highly persuasive, until I discussed the issue with my wife. (For whatever it's worth, my wife was born, raised and educated in Europe, so she has no interest in college football whatsoever, though after 18 years of living in the U.S., she knows what a big deal it is.)
My wife asks why it is fundamentally unfair for college athletes not to be paid to pursue their sport -- presumably in the hopes of securing professional employment -- while the vast majority of students actually have to pay to obtain the education and training necessary to secure professional employment in their own chosen fields.
In my own case, I incurred a massive amount of student debt to obtain a professional degree which I had to have in order to practice my profession and secure employment. My experience is hardly uncommon. Michael Lewis and King presumably learned the craft of writing at a university, and they likely paid for the privilege. This is the bargain almost all of us have to make. We (or our parents) pay for a university education in the hopes that our university degree will enable us to pursue a career which is lucrative enough to justify the cost of the education.
Major college athletes are presented with a somewhat different bargain. They receive expert coaching, state of the art training facilities, adulation and, perhaps, national exposure, all of which are essential if they wish to pursue a career as a professional athlete, and all of which probably bring some pleasure and satisfaction to the athletes. If the athletes are good enough, they do not have to pay for any of this. They simply have to perform their sports for their universities, albeit without pay. Yes, for most of these athletes it is a full time endeavor (though it can be a lot of fun to play sports at a very high level), and, yes, the universities derive a huge economic benefit from the unpaid efforts of these athletes. One can certainly question the wisdom of many athletes in pursuing such a risky career as professional athletics. But, given society's acceptance of the universities' usual model of requiring students to pay for their training and eduction, what is the basis for concluding that the universities' treatment of these athletes (while perhaps hypocritical) is corrupt or unfair or immoral?
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Lewis Article
I think what this article is really "arguing" for is a semi-pro football league, a subsidiary of the NFL, which is unrealistic considering the history and popularity of college football. It would seem very unfair for colleges to be paying football players a salary based on revenue while other college athletes (track and field, wrestling, volleyball)are either given scholarships or a salary based on attendance. Football is the most popular sport in the US, one that offers its fans a more viceral shared experience than most other programs in college athletics. College Basketball would also need to be included in this argument, as well as the revenue generated by print, radio and televised journalists. There is really a lot of "shame" that can be spread around regarding this issue, and I think the article is a bit alarmist in most of its points. One of the ideas of College Athletics is that it is a shared revenue stream for the athletes of all sports regarding training, travel and healthcare. I also think this NY Times article was a little bit lazy in including the poor black athlete vs. rich white fan juxtaposition. How about just stating poor college athlete vs. rich post graduate professional. I'm not trying to be PC, but really, there are examples of both in all races.