Black will be played by Robert Zemsky, historian.
White will be played by Tim Curley, propagandist.
Dead All Over will be played by Michael Adams, president of the worst university in America.
Today’s meeting of the Knight Commission on university athletics opened with White, proud member of what he calls “the Penn State family,” where he’s Athletic Director.
White speaks:
College athletics is today the healthiest I’ve ever seen it. Everything’s looking great. Everyone here should be celebrating the positive values of university sports. We’ve learned we can be the great success we are and at the same time we can govern ourselves. We don’t need to be governed by outsiders. We’ve made incredible progress on all fronts. Enthusiasm and excitement and participation and profit is at an all-time high. Yes, escalating salaries stress the system. Yes, we continue to be challenged with our expenses. But these things are out of our control. Every one of these expenditures is necessary. We live in a market society, and we have to respond to market conditions.
Black speaks:
Trying to describe the place of athletics in the larger context of higher education is like trying to describe a burnt-out desert. You see, this discussion today — it isn’t going anywhere. We came here to talk about cost-containment, and it isn’t going anywhere. And that’s because any sense of values is missing.
Since you people don’t have any values, you put the marketplace up as the only thing that matters. That’s why you’re not ever going to reform at all. You’re part of the general loss of aura, loss of particularity, at our universities in America. Football on your campus is just like the NFL, you say, and, see, you’re proud of it. So what makes you a college? Absolutely nothing.
Used to be universities were supposed to be like churches — separate, special places, dedicated to higher things. They’re not special anymore. They’re just like any other business. So why tenure? Why tax exemptions? Look at Harvard and places like that. University endowments aren’t charitable donations; they’re hedge funds. University presidents make million dollar salaries, just like other CEOs.
It all tears at the fabric of the specialness of the university. You’ve all helped make that happen. Since you’ve been in business, things have gotten a whole lot worse. The university athletics engine will certainly stop running. But it will never reform itself. It’ll just run out of gas.
Dead All Over:
I resent this negativity. Why, at the University of Georgia we’ve got a heck of a program…
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Update: This post is now comment enabled.
May 13th, 2009 at 8:01AM
All discussions of cost containment in college athletics quickly turn stupid, because (a) the athletics department is treated as a profit center rather than a cost center, and (b)steps to cut costs therefore focus on their more "collegiate" aspects and leave the excesses untouched. Four-year eligibility (elimination of freshman teams)was a cost-saving measure, for example, and has had disastrous consequences.
May 17th, 2009 at 10:55AM
College athletics governing themselves is like Enron, World Com, Bernard Madoff, and miscellaneous brokerages, investment banks, and insurance companies regulating themselves. Abuses are guaranteed.
August 8th, 2012 at 10:22AM
[…] … one of the Penn State movers and shakers: Tim Curley. His remarks at a 2009 Knight Commission UD attended so struck her that she transcribed them here. […]
July 28th, 2013 at 6:10PM
[…] was 2009, and UD was so disgusted by what he said that she transcribed the gist of it and put it on her blog. Here it […]