Even UD wouldn’t go this far in describing big time university sports. I mean, there’s … Why can’t I think of anything? Maybe Murray Sperber’s right!
A Memphis paper interviews him about the recent unpleasantness there involving a basketball player at the University of Memphis who seems not to have taken his SAT. I mean, he didn’t forget to take it. Someone else took it for him.
He was a one-and-done student. This is a wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am kind of thing where an athlete, because of irrational rules, spends a year at a university before entering professional life. The university’s thrilled, of course — unlike the professional world, it doesn’t have to pay the player four hundred million dollars a year. It has to pay the player nothing. And the player gives it its most amazingest winningest season ever!!! Until the NCAA takes all the wins away because someone else took the student’s SAT so he could be admitted to the university.
“The NCAA really insists on this ‘student-athlete’ thing,” said Sperber, the author of “Beer and Circus: How Big-Time College Sports Is Crippling Undergraduate Education.” “And I assume the NCAA put pressure on (NBA commissioner) David Stern to institute the one-year policy. The NCAA ought to rethink the whole thing, but there’s so much pressure within the NCAA and from big-time coaches to keep it in place. A one-and-done player did get Calipari to a Final Four. But you have to wonder: Did it really help the University of Memphis at the end of the day?”
The negative impact of the past week on the school’s reputation cannot be measured, Sperber said. In recent days, the phrases “University of Memphis” and “major violations” got constant play throughout the media. Sperber said he feels certain there are Memphis fans who insist the ordeal is a small price to pay for a trip to the national title game, but the effect can be corrosive and lasting.
“I’m sure the Chronicle of Higher Education will report on this, and people in academic circles will say, ‘Oh, there’s Memphis again,'” Sperber said. “It just seems like a travesty forcing these players to go to college. And poor Memphis, it’s like a roller coaster. They got to the very top of the thing with the Final Four, and now that coaster is heading down and they may not even get to keep the banners. I guess the whole thing could have been avoided.”
June 1st, 2009 at 8:00PM
So Memphis "vacates the wins." Big freaking deal. Barring a Bobby Bowden case where people want him to die with the most wins, why does anyone really care about vacated wins? The thing about sports wins when you really care about a team is that the pleasure is 1) intense 2) transient 3) fun to brag to your friends about 4) experienced while drunk.
Anyway, my point: not one of those is affected in the slightest degree by retroactive vacation. University keeps the money, fans have enjoyed their moment, athlete goes on to the pros, coach signs contract for a gajillion dollars, NCAA wags finger. Da capo al fine.
June 2nd, 2009 at 7:42AM
Actually, the single most irrational area in all of American life is health care.
See Atul Gawande article in the latest New Yorker:
"When you look across the spectrum from Grand Junction to McAllen—and the almost threefold difference in the costs of care—you come to realize that we are witnessing a battle for the soul of American medicine. Somewhere in the United States at this moment, a patient with chest pain, or a tumor, or a cough is seeing a doctor. And the damning question we have to ask is whether the doctor is set up to meet the needs of the patient, first and foremost, or to maximize revenue."
Your other whuppin’ boys and girls, the docs, pharma, and the medical device industry – deserve a lot of credit of this situation.
Keep on whuppin’
June 2nd, 2009 at 7:42AM
Murray is kidding himself. Show me a prospective (non-athlete) student who decided not to go to University X because it got caught cheating.
June 2nd, 2009 at 7:49AM
Well, tp, I think he’s right that eventually, if your university becomes truly associated in the public mind with major levels of filth – sports-related or otherwise – it can indeed have an impact on the number of people who apply and who decide to go there. Fewer people apply every year to Southern Illinois University, possibly because word’s getting around that it’s run by a plagiarist and staffed by trustees put there by Blagojevich (just for starters). Of course Southern Illinois also wastes tons of money on sports. It’s an all-’round disaster. There are other schools like this. Word DOES get around. To the better students.
June 2nd, 2009 at 8:41AM
Actually, UD, SIU-E’s undergraduate applications have increased from about 4000 ten years ago to over 5500 in the last few years, and their freshman matriculants from under 1500 to over 1800. SIU-C’s freshman matriculants have been stable at around 2600 in recent years. Where they are hurting appears to be in transfers.
June 2nd, 2009 at 9:18AM
“The university’s enrollment peaked in 1991 with 24,869 students. Fewer than 21,000 enrolled in fall 2008, according to university records.”
I had this statistic in mind, tp, from an article about SIUC’s party school rep.
http://www.siude.com/news/party-school-hangover-1.1649459
I doubt it’s the party school thing in particular — as I say, I think it’s all the horrible news that keeps coming from the place. Athletics, administration, party stuff — all of it.
June 2nd, 2009 at 2:09PM
I suppose it’s possible that that the erosion on their 2nd & 3rd year classes has something to do with students being disgusted with the school and transferring, but then again, they may simply be dropping out. If you’ve ever seen the aftermath of the annual riots, I mean, parties, in Carbondale, you may suspect that there are some less than serious academic types there. The Illinois directionals are also waging all-out war against each other, and that is likely having an impact.