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Wednesday, February 23, 2005
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FLASH FRENCH SCORES ' SPORTS NO BOON TO COLLEGE OR CHARACTER, PROF CLAIMS William Hermann The Arizona Republic Feb. 23, 2005 12:00 AM Most of us so take for granted the worth of the myriad of sports offered at our colleges and universities that we never stop to consider whether those institutions ought to be offering them in the first place. Arizona State University philosophy Professor Peter French has done plenty of hard thinking about college sports and has recently published a book that says some very provocative things about them. French says he isn't worried about angry ASU sports supporters like the Sun Angels storming his office or insulted coaches challenging him to a duel. "I admire and get along fine with (ASU Athletic Director) Gene Smith," French said. "What I say in the book is the truth, and if ASU coaches have some things to work on, then they should do it." What French says he does in Ethics and College Sports is "analyze what I view as some myths about intercollegiate sports." Among the "myths" French examines are the idea that sports build character and bring money to the schools. "That's just wrong," he said. French says he became interested in the ethical ramifications of intercollegiate sports after sponsoring a workshop on it at the University of South Florida in Tampa, where he taught philosophy before coming to ASU in 2000. "In 1998 I directed what I believe was the first-ever national conference on sports ethics," he said. "We discussed everything from preteen girl gymnasts to professional sports, and the event was an enormous success. It drew stories in the New York Times and pieces on National Public Radio and public television, too." Because of the success of the conference, French was asked by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers to do a book on the subject of the ethics of intercollegiate sports as part of the series Issues in Academic Ethics. "I thought about the topic for several years before getting down to work on the book - drove the publisher crazy," French said. "The main issues that clarified in my mind about college athletics were these: How does it fit within the mission of the university? What are the arguments in support of intercollegiate athletics being a part of that mission?" French's book takes a particularly tough look at the argument that intercollegiate athletics builds character. "They no more give one a stronger character than does a good biology class," he said. "So often there is intense, unthinking pressure to win at all costs, to win no matter what one must do or say. And coaches, the people who are most supposed to be building character, often exhibit the worst sort of example by their behavior. "Witness the kinds of terrible things a certain Indiana basketball coach would say to his players at halftime - horrible insults and abuse. It's a kind of behavior that is absolutely corrosive to character building. The antithesis of character building." French's book also takes a hard look at the notion that intercollegiate athletics are moneymakers for universities. "It's just a myth that sports make the colleges enormous amounts of money," he said. "In the book, we used the example of the University of Michigan, whose president wrote a book about intercollegiate athletics. He said at his school sports as a whole almost never made any money once all expenses were considered and that in the end expenditures exceeded revenues." French said four ASU Barrett Honors College students helped him research the book. "There is a vast body of writing on this subject, and I'd have had to spend the rest of my life researching it to get through all the sources," he said. He said students Matthew Estes, Eric Lind, Josie Jedick and David Madden "were invaluable in bringing this book about." "Josie was the captain of the varsity women's swim team, and her perspectives were invaluable," French said. French's credentials to write about ethics, philosophy professor that he is, obviously are impeccable. He laughs, however, when he talks about his athletic credentials. He played high school baseball and went out for the football team as a running back at Gettysburg College. "The team was lined up, and (the) PR person for athletics had us fill out cards with a bunch of questions, one of which asked for our nickname," French said. "I said I didn't have one, and he said running backs have to have nicknames." So French thought fast. "I came up with the nickname of 'Flash,' " French said. "So as Flash French I went out on the field and in the first game broke my foot. That was the end of my football career." ' |