Ah yes my little kumquat we can dream…
[Let us create] a new minor league at the big-time institutions. These minor-league teams would retain the name of the college at the price of a subsidy to the institution. In this separated state, the free market would dictate… [C]ollegiate men’s and women’s sports would then be limited to true student-athletes, with more emphasis on admissions criteria, graduation rates, and study-friendly scheduling. College presidents would (gasp!) earn more than coaches…
… and all that perniciousness – or most of it – or hey, maybe none of it, given what’s up with professional sports… But somehow it wouldn’t rub off so badly on the university, cuz there’d be this separation, see…
Heard it all before, babe, and you gotta wonder why the idea not only hasn’t gained traction but will go nowhere forever. Let us consider the problem.
Point One: We all agree – most of us agree – most of us willing to be honest about it agree with the following:
I think that a university with a Division I sports program cannot, by definition, be considered “great.” [The writer even wonders, as his headline puts it, whether such schools can be considered “serious.”] In such a place too much time, energy, attention and resources are given to big-time entertainment that is essentially meaningless.
Meaningless? MEANingless? Are you INSANE?
Well now, calm down and think about the activity for a moment, especially in the context of a university. Does it strike you as super meaningful? Whether or not you win a game? How much and in what way you love your team?
Point Two: So there are two high-profile subcultures on many American campuses which generate insane amounts of perniciousness. Athletics is one. And the other?
Ja. Fraternities. As UD has often pointed out on this blog, there’s a beautiful synergy between the frat guys and the football guys. Together, they tend to run Div I schools, with everyone running scared of them and letting them trash everything in sight. Right? Okay, so here’s an idea: Let’s convert fraternities to farm teams. Fraternities are the minor league for the scuzzier reaches of America’s business world, just as Division I football and basketball are the minor leagues for the scuzzy professional leagues. So let’s get rid of fraternity perniciousness by working out a deal with Wall Street that we’ll house the guys while they polish their finance skills but they will be under the control of the business guys. Their universities will pay a subsidy in order to continue to be able to say that they have a fraternity system (this is very popular with applicants); the biz guys will be responsible for the lads.
Under this model, some misconduct … would persist, as would the risk of career-ending injuries for unpaid players. But these problems would continue at a lower level due to adult accountability beyond the cocoon of higher education.
The writer is talking about minor league farm teams at universities, but he could as easily be talking about outsourced frats.
Point Three: Sounds great. You get rid of a lot of campus shits while retaining the ability to say that you still have big-time sports and frats. Why won’t it fly?
Well, it’s a strange thing, but even though big-time sports and frats tend to be, from the point of view of a university, meaningless as well as pernicious (to use the words the guy I’m citing uses), people turn out to be very sentimental about their own traditions of pernicious meaninglessness. These entities are part of – no, for many people, these entities are, college. It’s like those lines from Tom Lehrer about the southland:
Be it ever so decadent
There’s no place like home.