Money Bowl

“Men in suits should not undo what boys in uniform have achieved.” Gary Alan Fine

I don’t follow college football or college sports in general. The annual Bowl season, yawn; March Madness, snooze. When it comes to the NCAA’s big money makers, football and basketball, I’m not sure the term “scholar-athlete” carries any meaning. Gobs of money are made from the talent and skill of athletes who receive no remuneration for their efforts and have no rights or voice in the games they play. Talk about a feudal system.

I think I lost interest in college football when the number of bowl games proliferated to the point they became a meaningless collection of corporate advertising opportunities. It seems ancient history when the Rose Bowl was simply the Rose Bowl; now it’s the (insert name of major corporate sponsor here) Rose Bowl. Or Sugar Bowl. Or Fiesta Bowl. Take your pick.

Big time college sports in general, and football in particular, spiraled out of control years ago, driven by the American public’s love and a sophisticated promotion machine run by the NCAA that transformed athletic programs at major universities into hugely profitable enterprises. As a result, coaches at athletic powerhouses became highly paid, iconic and untouchable figures. The likes of Woody Hayes, Bobby Knight and Jerry Tarkanian are allowed to make fools of themselves on the sidelines, berating opposing players and referees, throwing chairs, or screaming obscenities at their own players, almost always without sanction because these, and other big name coaches, bring championship hardware home, which equates to prestige and cash for their schools and programs.

In keeping with the American Way, winning justifies aberrant behavior. 

As I have a general bias against college sports, I didn’t follow the Penn State-Jerry Sandusky-Joe Paterno scandal very closely. I heard the lewd allegations on the morning news, watched video of Jerry Sandusky climbing in and out of a black SUV, and saw file footage of storied coach Joe Paterno leading his Nittany Lions to glory – all before he turned a blind eye and a deaf ear to the evil deeds being perpetrated in his own kingdom.

When Paterno died it was as if a head of state or the Pope had passed away, and for me the excessive media coverage of the funeral was emblematic of the outsized significance afforded college athletics. No question about it, Joe Paterno was a great football coach, but it’s not like he discovered the cure for HIV or led a social movement to guarantee civil rights for an oppressed minority or changed our conception of the universe; unfortunately, the American media doesn’t make much of an effort to place events and personalities in the proper perspective.

Former FBI Director Louis Freeh conducted an investigation on the cover-up and issued a report clearly indicting the adults involved for placing their own interests before those of young men. Earlier this week, the governing body of American college athletics, the NCAA, handed down its punishment. Most people focused immediately on the monetary aspect of the sanctions -- $60 million – but what captured my attention was threefold. First, the effort the NCAA made to protect its brand -- all that high-minded rhetoric by CEO Mark Emmert about athletics never again being allowed to overshadow academics. Seriously? Worshipping athletics at the expense of academics is exactly what fills university coffers with coin. Second, the sanction eliminating scholarships for athletes who were exiting nursery school when Jerry Sandusky was buggering boys in the Penn State locker room. Why slam the doors of opportunity on innocent kids? Punish the adults who were so intent on protecting their reputations, the good name of the university, and the money machine, but leave the innocent kids alone. Third, the NCAA’s sweeping decree erasing fourteen years of Penn State football history from the record books. Poof, in one fell swoop, all those games never happened, don’t count, and cannot be considered part of Joe Paterno’s legacy. As Gary Alan Fine noted in a New York Times editorial, George Orwell’s Ministry of Truth would approve.

Despite the NCAA’s actions, Penn State football will recover. Relatively speaking, $60 million is a drop in the bucket. The white men who run the NCAA empire will pat themselves on the back for swiftly disciplining a rogue athletic program, but until the too-big-to-fail nature of college athletics is rectified, little will change.

Until the day arrives when professors and graduate teaching assistants earn more than football or basketball coaches, the NCAA cannot claim with any credibility that academics are more important than athletics.