Whether authorizing the payment of a modest stipend to student-athletes in order to ensure their continued loyalty or penalizing academically noncompliant programs to remind fans that college sports are not simply a farm for professional sports, the NCAA will do whatever it can to preserve its extremely marketable illusions. Absent organizing myths that appeal to casual fans, public interest in a spectator sport will dwindle. A purely cynical atmosphere is bad for business… Revenue-generating college sports will endure as an ungainly appendage to American universities until the precise moment when its costs outweigh its benefits. That day may come sooner rather than later. A chain of unfavorable legal decisions, culminating with a massive judgment award in one or more of the 65 concussion-related lawsuits pending against the NCAA in state and federal courts, could accomplish what a long tradition of media outrage has not been able to: the effacement of a puzzling 100-year marriage between research universities and high-end athletics. Should the plaintiffs prevail in some of these cases, payouts to injured athletes could run into the millions or perhaps even billions of dollars, rendering athletic departments insolvent and unable to continue subsidizing athletic exhibitions of any sort.
While UD agrees with Oliver Bateman that absolutely nothing will change about university revenue sports (beyond these sports plantationizing [Don’t think it’s a word? Look it up. – And I use it because Taylor Branch calls the revenue sports-mad university a plantation.] our universities yet more than they’ve already been plantationized), she disagrees about the cynicism thing. What more purely cynical atmosphere can you think of in current American culture than professional revenue sports? Professional football, professional basketball, professional baseball… I mean, baseball — are you kidding me? UD barely follows baseball, and every year it’s a race to the bottom to see which component – players, owners, agents – can out-cynical the other. Cynicism is part of the American Master of the Universe mystique (watch the game players in this film) and a national hero like Nick Saban or Bob Knight or Johnny Manziel or Cam Newton is a hero because he’s cynical, not despite the fact that he’s cynical.
(Sports like cycling are definitely bringing up the rear in the matter of sports and cynicism in America. What brought down Lance Armstrong would never bring down a baseball player. Not a really good baseball player. Eventually we’ll come to revere cyclists for their cynicism in the same way we revere other sportsmen for their cynicism.)
There’s no reason to think the illusion of student athletes is what makes university revenue sports profitable. The most profitable university programs are the most professionalized, the most nakedly cynical. These programs will fail – if they fail – due to financially crushing personal injury lawsuits.
College fans only care about the same thing professional fans care about: winning. You’ll find a few rows of drunks freezing their asses off in the stadium waving their school colors, but everyone’s laughing at them.
Even the drunks aren’t in it for whatever the old school thing means. They’re in it to get disorderly.
It’s not the sports program which is an ungainly appendage to the university, but the university which is an ungainly appendage to the sports program, and the university is ungainly because by definition it cannot be purely cynical (it’s a non-profit, and people like Charles Grassley are watching). It can be very cynical indeed, as Gordon Gee made clear when he made the mistake of going public with the absolute cynicism he brings to the concept “university president.” (‘When asked in March 2011 whether the school had considered firing embattled coach Jim Tressel, a grinning Gee said: “No. Are you kidding? Let me just be very clear. I’m just hopeful the coach doesn’t dismiss me.“‘)
Many presidents of our present-day Penn States know they owe their job to the politezza of the coach. They are very very very cynical. But unlike Gee they keep it to themselves.
April 7th, 2014 at 9:57AM
Yet another awesome post–you’re on a roll!
One doesn’t have to be Foucault to understand the power of discourse. If only we had more faculty like you who would refer to the NCAA as “the plantation,” and if challenged on that would explain the appropriateness of the term, and who whenever appropriate would use the terms “corrupt,” “cartel,” etc. As a next move in my battle with the overseers at my own little plantation I’ve decided to give the AD photocopies of “Battle Royal,” with its instructive spectacle of the black kid hoodwinked by a cruel and vaguely “academic” promise and lured into performing for a bunch of drunk white guys.
You inspire me, UD. You’re my H. L. Mencken.
April 7th, 2014 at 6:15PM
It just may be the time for unis to pay for their cynicism and their meat on the hoof sentiment toward their football players has arrived. William Lowe, a former cornerback, a position dear to my heart, has sued his former school, the University of Iowa, for injuries he sustained while participating in a particularly grueling off season workout. Lowe, along with twelve other players, suffered kidney damage, and in some cases, kidney failure, in a weightlifting test, designed to weed out the weaklings. The suit contends that the players were pushed past reasonable athletic limits, underscoring a lack of concern for player health.
What does U of I do? They form a committee which determines that coaches shouldn’t conduct them there gumption tests ever again. No one got fired, no one said why the hell we paying all this much money for coaches and athletic trainers who don’t know what the hell they’re doing. Head football coach Kirk Ferentz is still the highest paid state employee, still stands by the notion that no one could have seen the possible danger of having someone do one hundred back squats at 50% max effort, among other drills, in a short period of time.
Well, gotta tell yass, whether or not the admins, students or Iowa tax payers like it or not, the coaches, et.al, are your agents, you pay them to do this kind of nonsense, and you should be on the hook for any damages caused by their putative ignorance. Mr. Lowe is one of 13 guys who suffered major kidney damage, and if it’s permanent, then the damages will be in the millions. Game means more than academics, it’s a business, the players are expendable, okay then, let’s see how these athletic/academic piggies squeal about integrity when it comes time to testify….
April 8th, 2014 at 7:17AM
Dr_Doctorstein: To be mentioned in the same breath as Mencken! … Thank you. UD