Entertainment vs Education

4-30-90

Perspective: Entertainment vs Education

It was a pretty good week for Cobber sports. The baseball team played pretty well, despite just splitting. The softball team demonstrated their tenacity, also despite just splitting. And the women's tennis team quietly won again.

But, amidst the final rush of squeezed-in, year-end sporting events here, we had another chance to remember that we in the athletic department were in the education business, not the entertainment business. We don't say that haughtily. But we do say it with a sense of our good fortune.

Concordia has its graduation this week. Graduation here, with all its sentimentality, has a tendency to remind us why we do what we do in our close-knit Cobberville community.

As we watch our senior athletes get ready for graduation ceremonies next Sunday it is fairly easy for most of us around the athletic department to look them in the eye and know we gave them what we promised.

When we recruited them four years ago we told them they would get a good education, a chance to take part in intercollegiate competition, and a chance to be part of a caring community. We didn't have to lie when we said it to them then and we don't have to avoid them in the halls now that they are seniors.

Taking part in college sports was to be part of their education, not a part-time job that would compete for the time they needed to be a good student. Some ended up as fine college athletes. An astounding percentage ended up being fine students who will graduate on time.

With no athletic scholarships to give, it was easy for us to tell them that they didn't owe us, as coaches, anything. They could quit when they were sick of it, or when they ran into the limits of their talent. If they stayed on the team they would have to work at being the best they could be. But they didn't work for us. They were paying the tuition and we were working for them.

Some succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. Some found failure in athletics when they least expected it. But, all in all, most of those we coached learned a lot along the way. They made us proud and warmed our hearts.

Many coaches and athletic administrators across the country are not so fortunate. They are seriously struggling with the nature of the relationship they have with their athletes. Are their athletes employees or students? The distinction matters a great deal.

Especially at state-supported institutions, there is pressure for athletic departments to pay their own way.

That forces athletic administrators to look at which sports are bringing in the revenue and which sports are a financial drag.

"Pay your own way" at these institutions inevitably means that the athletic endeavors of the teams that represent the school on the playing field are not considered integral to the educational mission of the institution. Team members are nominally-paid performers (because of an elaborate wage-fixing scheme) who are licensed to use the school's name.

Once that conceptual boundary is breached (education being decoupled from athletics) athletic departments have little choice but to embark on a course which makes them just another offering in the entertainment industry.

Taxpayers are not thrilled about paying for deficits in athletic departments. There are a host of obscure programs that exist at every university which, given a line-item veto, taxpayers would never vote to fund. But athletics, with its high visibility, is different.

Taxpayers pay attention when their dollars are used to cover athletic department deficits.

An institution dependant on taxpayer support is not in a great position to make an argument that, for instance, funding a golf team or a swimming team, at a per-student cost nearly equal to tuition, is a vital educational program. Such programs are not essential for recruitment at a state-supported institution. And the tuition those athletes pay, assuming they are not on scholarship, barely covers the cost of the program, let alone the other educational programs the student uses.

Athletic administrators who now confess, like it or not, to being firmly in the entertainment business went to the same graduate schools as Cobber administrators and coaches. They learned, if they didn't know already, that participation in sports can be a maturing cauldron that allows a young person that spark of synthesis which brings meaning to his or her entire educational experience.

But, unable to make a credible argument that athletic teams are indeed an educational offering at their state schools, those administrators are forced to trim all but the profitable sports and go begging to booster clubs, which, by their nature, care more about winning than learning.

Those administrators want to remain educators but end up being business managers for minor-league teams. Those coaches want to remain teachers, but end up being ticket promoters who can not afford to let loyalty to their athletes interfere with fielding a winning team. They are stuck.

Not many people around Cobberville know or really care what our ticket revenue is. With free passes available for all faculty and students, suffice it to say that we coaches don't bring it up in our contract negotiations.

It's nice if our Cobber teams are entertaining and draw a good crowd once in a while. But Cobber coaches are far more apt to be called on the carpet for failing to teach sound values than for failing to field a team with high entertainment value.

This might all sound a bit quaint and even self-serving.

We know we may well be the dinosaurs of a college coaching profession that sees itself less and less as a group of educators. But most of us here at Cobberville are willing to see where our antiquated ways take us.

Congratulations to our seniors. We are proud of all you have done. And thankful that you let us have a part in helping you do it. Take care.

These pages are maintained by Jerry Pyle pyle@cord.edu . These articles are copyrighted © and may not be published or reproduced without the express permission of Jerry Pyle.

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