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Wednesday, January 24, 2007
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"It Isn't Going to Change, Folks," ...says folksy Frank Deford in Sports Illustrated. "We love our college sports," and always will, so there's no point protesting athletic programs that impoverish universities morally, financially and intellectually. The only thing to do is "be honest" about the fact that revenue sports in colleges "have nothing whatsoever to do with education." Bigtime sports should be "removed from colleges' athletic departments and placed in their own new Department of Entertainment." It's a strange argument, with a strange sort of hopelessness/nonchalance attached... It inspires in UD all sorts of existential questions. We love our college sports. But when is college sports college sports? What's "college" about college sports if we can happily imagine college sports completely uncoupled from any college? The players and coaches in the self-sustaining Department of Entertainment have nothing to do with the college: the athletes aren't students, and the coaches no longer pretend to be university staff. The Entertainment people inhabit a playground physically attached to the college, but there's nothing "college" about them. So there's nothing really "college" about the bigtime college sports we love. Is there? Beyond mascots and songs and shit? And if all of this is true (and this is certainly, as Deford points out, the way the revenue college sports story's evolving -- toward more and more professionalism and autonomy, and toward having nothing in common - in terms of salary or ethos or whatever- with any college or university), why not have local professional or semi-professional teams impersonate college teams for colleges? They'd come to play in your stadium, and they'd wear your uniform and you'd do your cheers and all; and they'd play against the team that's impersonating your rival that day. Or you could take it the other way. You could designate certain ex-colleges Centers of Entertainment (instead of Centers of Excellence)... You could take, say, Oklahoma State and transform it into a collection of sports teams. All students would be players, and all faculty would be coaches and support staff. However you swing it, the implication of Deford's argument is the disappearance of revenue football and basketball from universities. |