Junto Boys

“AMATUER” ATHLETICS

A co-worker and I were talking this morning about how we couldn't remember an equivalent time of college coaching turnovers. Tyrone Willingham and Ron Zook were both coaching at schools that have won the National Title in the last 20 years and they were both fired before the end of the season. Willingham only missed the bowl game while Zook was made to stay and take his medicine for another 6 weeks. On top of that, South Carolina has hired their second consecutive high profile coach, the two men (Lou Holtz and Steve Spurrier) who won those National Championships at Notre Dame and Florida.

It looked at first like Florida was going to woo Spurrier themselves, especially with the mid-season firing of Zook. Spurrier never got the call. It didn't make sense until you realized that University of Florida President, Bernie Machen, was once the President of the University of Utah and there he hired the undefeated football coach, Urban Meyer.

When word got around that Florida was going to woo Urban Meyer, Notre Dame fired Willingham, because Urban Meyer was an assistant under Lou Holtz at Notre Dame and he has a clause in his contract that he can leave that post at any time to coach at Notre Dame.

Joe Paterno and Bobby Bowden are a dying breed. Seldom do college coaches at big programs last all that long anymore. The University of Miami has won National Championships under Jimmy Johnson, Dennis Erickson and Butch Davis and they all used it as a stepping stone to the NFL.

And its not just football. College Basketball coaches like Rick Patino and PJ Carlisimo have used their College success to get a job in the pros.

And its not just coaches. The lion share of college players are there with the hopes of playing in the pros. Most take softball classes even at the top universities and are segregated from the student body as a whole. They aren’t there for an education or career training unless that career is pro athletics. It’s no longer a bunch of guys getting accepted to college and going out for the team. In those days teams like Harvard and Yale could go undefeated. Nowadays college athletics are about money. The NCAA and the colleges make millions of dollars parading their mercenaries around the country.

College athletics is big business and big business means an infusion of money. The money has resulted in college players getting gifts and money for their efforts. The semester that Dude and I were living at UWF, a high school friend transferred to the school and was living across the hall. His first Semester was as a Defensive End in a Eastern school known for academics. They’ve never been competitive at football. He was handed more than $10,000 in cash by alumni to go there. He played the whole season, but blew off his classes and flunked out.

Shawn Kemp was a year behind me in high school in my Indiana days. He was headed to Kentucky to play after high school but couldn’t make the 700 on his SATs. It didn’t prevent someone in the University from giving him a vehicle. And although the local paper went to great lengths to sugar coat the fact, even they couldn’t keep the truth down forever. Kentucky was more than willing to let him sit out a year (the written rule for someone who doesn’t make the 700) but he got into some disciplinary problems, of which details Steve Whitaker could better recall than me, and went straight to the NBA instead.

I don’t blame either of these guys from taking the cash and prizes. The universities and alumni weren’t expecting them to be students. They were being hired as professional athletes with a wink to academics. The thing that irks me is that the NCAA will get high and mighty and penalize teams that hide the fact least effectively. These penalties are less about the nature of amateur sport and more about keeping the façade of amateur sports alive. Let’s face it. If you’re watching the game on national television, then 99 times out of 100 the people on the field or court are being paid, only at much lower amounts than acknowledged professionals. Maybe the Little League World Series would be an exception. I cannot think of another.

If these organizations weren’t being fronted by respected educational institutions they’d probably be in trouble for unfair labor practices. Where else can you make that much money from someone else’s labor without paying at least minimum wage? But I have no problem with these guys playing for free if that is what they want to do. But since they want to be paid and since people are already paying them and since the overall organization is making big money in the process, I don’t see how it’s fair to selectively penalize those schools who blow the cover of the rest.

You have to respect a guy like Joe Paterno that pushed for the 700 SAT score. He remembers the old days in which these games were regional celebrations and athletes were students as much as anything else. We’re just not there anymore. The typical student athlete 50 years ago looked like the average non athlete student at the same school. As the money flowed into the schools, the athletes more and more began to resemble the genetic mutants that can be spotted in the pros.

There are still some guys that get a decent education out of the thing or even a degree. Sometimes that degree can even lead to a good job. I met a former pro athlete that went to an Ivy League college, and he has a nice executive job. He’s probably smarter than most, but I’m sure it was his celebrity more than his brain that landed him the offer.

But most of these students are used up and spit out. You could say that it’s their own fault and I wouldn’t argue that they squandered the best opportunity life ever offered. But even if they did want an education, they are more than likely going to the very best school their transcripts will allow, meaning that they’re at the lower level of that school’s ability. For instance, an athlete could score in the top 25% nationally and get into the University of Michigan for athletics, but the college will be full of students who score in the top 5-10% nationwide. This particular player might be better than average nationally, but he’ll be doomed to struggle at a school like Michigan anyway. He won’t have the time to take the real challenging classes to get the best education, because he’ll need extra effort to keep up. He’ll be forced to take the softball classes in order to get the grades.

How much is an education worth at a top University? Why can’t it just be put into a dollar amount and given to the players on the up and up? Why force them to take this money and spend it on an education they might not want or might not be able to fully utilize? Why not just pay these guys whatever the alumni or schools want to pay them? Why must it be a black market?

The original purpose of college athletics was to fully round out a young man’s character. It was supposed to be an augmentation of the educational experience. Knute Rockne taught Chemistry at Notre Dame. How many of today’s college coaches even took Chemistry?

These coaches moving around are telling a bigger story than that reported by the media. College coaches no longer see themselves as academics or teachers. They’re in the business of professional athletics, and they freely move from the NCAA to the NFL or NBA. They get their million dollar plus salaries above the table and no one accuses them of ruining amateur athletics. But the fact that they can command that much money already tells you that their jobs are no longer about shaping America’s youngsters into better citizens. College coaches are there to win or leave.

Ronald Reagan’s football coach at Eureka could be arguably the most important college football coach of the 20th Century. Reagan always felt that his experience on that mediocre football team shaped him as much as anything else. He learned teamwork and leadership and the value hard work. These are all the things that amateur athletics once promised and delivered. These are things people talk about when arguing against paying athletes. The character qualities are probably still learned in the non-televised sports, but they have very little relation to what happened at the Ohio State – Michigan game.

I’m not lamenting the good old days, but saying that we should be honest about the nature of college athletics. This could start by letting the market dictate what players get for making their colleges rich. It would be fair to everyone and it would better teach children and adults the real nature of the market and its benefits.