UD finds this statement, at the end of an article in the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill’s student paper, refreshing. It states the truth, bluntly. When you do this grotesque thing – when you import professional sports to universities, of all places – you’re going to have to prostitute the universities. That’s the cost of playing the game. Many of your players are going to play, and nothing else. Somehow you’re going to have to solve the problem of that pesky – even embarrassing – “university” identity, and it’s going to mean tutors who write papers for players, online classes ostensibly taken by players but actually taken by designated online-class-takers, and the creation of bogus departments with bogus courses designed to allow everyone to pretend that players have studied something.
Many of the players have already been admitted in bogus ways – they graduated from fake high schools (usually with reassuringly fervent Christian names) designed to produce legit-looking diplomas for sports guys. Your job, at Chapel Hill, is to figure out how to retain your recruits even though they’re not doing any schoolwork. Your biggest challenge is not the NCAA, which doesn’t give a shit, but rather the rogue tutor or investigative reporter.
A university like Chapel Hill – a community like Chapel Hill – sees itself above all as a professional sports team. Everyone, from the president down, has a role to play on the team. The president issues high-minded language about the glorious nexus of physical and mental achievement on campus. Professors pass the players along no matter what they do. Tutors do the players’ schoolwork. Local reporters are slavish panting boosters.
It all holds together very nicely – UNC’s bogus courses sailed along for decades – until, as most recently at the University of Missouri – someone has a crisis of conscience or something, and the ship goes down.
And then it comes up again. I mean, the scandal costs the school (taxpayers, often) zillions, and getting rid of a coach or two (this is de rigueur post-scandal: dump some coaches) is also expensive (you’re breaking a contract; plus these guys are liable to sue), but in the end none of these jock school academic scandals amount to anything. Even if you decide to dump the president, she’ll just move to another jock school, and you’ll have all the time and expense of finding another person able to talk about your rigorous academic program with a straight face.
Cost of playing the game.
December 1st, 2016 at 2:10PM
I think it’s woprse than this:
“A university like Chapel Hill – a community like Chapel Hill – sees itself above all as a professional sports team.”
Would that it were true, and thus honest. No, they SEE themselves as everything BUT a professional sports team. They see themselves as all of the bullshit people talk about rah rah sis boom bah, win for alma mater, student athletes. It’s why they so ardently believe paying athletes would be beyond the pale.
They CONDUCT themselves, however, just like big business, just like professional sports. I find the hypocrisy to be far worse than the pretense, because you can believe pretense. I feel bad for people who are blinded by false ideals. I am furious at people who know the ideals are false but continue to peddle them.
December 1st, 2016 at 4:03PM
dcat: Thanks for that – I think you must be right. Self-perception here most likely has less to do with the straightforward truth and more to do with winning FOR the alma mater… meaning something like an alma mater must exist in their minds…