The Telander Issues

11-6-89

Perspective: The Telander Issues

It was a pretty good week for Cobber sports. Not because of our athletic prowess, which we managed to keep under wraps, but because we were in a position to be gracious in the face of our defeats.

Cobber coaches and athletes are fortunate enough to operate in a structure which encourages what virtue is here to come through. Not being "big-time" makes retaining our civility and sense of proportion easier.

A recent Sports Illustrated article attacking the fundamental lie of big-time college sports and the dangers of educational institutions losing sight of their mission gave some of us a few more reasons to appreciate being "small-time."

The October 2nd piece by Rick Telander quickly became another conversation-starter in the ongoing debate over the role of big-time sports in the academic environment.

Telander focused on what he calls the "One hundred yard lie," the fable that big-time college sports exists to benefit the students who participate and the sponsoring universities.

The reality is, of course, that our major universities are running minor-league sports franchises that have institutional imperatives of their own. Those franchises' goals and methods are nearly always at odds with the goals of their sponsoring university. Rather than being an integrated program within the overall educational objectives of the school, big-time athletic programs often regard their sponsoring universities as little more than a bunch of meddling eggheads who don't understand their true role as scenery props at "showtime."

Big-time college sports exists to entertain and is driven by pursuit of the entertainment dollar. In many cases, interest in the players as student/athletes, employees, or even human beings gets expressed only to the extent that such acts might enhance the program's revenue potential. Win games, ticket sales go up.

The fundamental problem is not in the character of coaches or those who run athletic departments. Most are fine and honorable people. Rather, the institutional incentives they face nearly always pull them toward compromising their school's academic mission and principles.

The grinding financial pressure to fill stadiums can reduce otherwise-decent people into narrow-minded babblers. After Telander's article came out, Bo Schembechler, the University of Michigan football coach and athletic director, was asked to respond.

Schembechler's measured response to Telander's article was, "Telander is a loser. He's always been a loser.

And I don't have to respond to anything that loser says."

Thoughtful guy, that Bo. Makes you proud to call him a colleague as an educator.

Young athletes learn early about this system that oozes with insincerity. "I got an idea, guys. Why don't we position ourselves in the high school recruiting market as a big-time program that really cares about the academic progress of our athletes. We'll get the kids who can read the playbook, and the Moms really like that kind of talk at recruiting visits."

If Arthur Miller had been born later, Willie Lohman would have been an aging Division I football or basketball recruiter.

The blind pursuit of the entertainment dollar is what led coaches to make "full-rides" a year-to-year thing rather than the four-year contract they used to be. Now if they lie to a kid and it turns out the kid, in fact, can't help them win, to hell with him. Scholarship revoked. "By the way, kid, you can only play for someone else when we say you can, or by sitting out a year of your athletic career."

And, if the coach quits to take another job, the kid who came to play for him or her can't transfer. "We feel our athletes came to this university because of our outstanding academic offerings ..." To let them transfer when the coach transfers would be to admit the lie of these pompous statements.

The greed for entertainment dollars, and an audacious unwillingness to share it with those who help earn it, is what keeps scholarship schools so brazenly involved in a wage-fixing scheme regarding athletic talent. Any artist or entertainer in the country, or, for that matter, any writer or minister or carpenter, can sell his or her services to the highest bidder. It's the law of the land - unless you are a college-age athlete. If you are, you can legally get no more than room, board, books and tuition, regardless of your economic value to your employer, the athletic department.

"C'mon kid, where's your school spirit?" says the $500,000 per year coach. Kids who hire lawyers, to get an objective appraisal of their chances of a professional career, lose their scholarships and are threatened with criminal charges for having hired "agents." This kind of thinking comes from the same people who tell you that treating athletes like dirt helps them grow up to be well-rounded mature adults.

These colleges are being used as fronts for a wholly unrelated economic enterprise. The proposition that they are integral to the educational mission of a college is a lie.

Until the lie is abandoned and universities with big-time programs admit they are running minor league sports franchises, with athletes who may or may not be students, the mess will continue. Those programs need to be uncoupled from their sponsoring university. The universities could return to their central mission, which is to educate, not entertain. The teams could live on through a looser affiliation with the university.

(There is nothing wrong with universities owning minor-league sports franchises. It would certainly be more noble than, say, their ownership of stock tied to South Africa.)

The employees of the team could go to school in their off hours if that's what they want. The players could be paid their fair market value as entertainers which, for most athletes, would be about the value of current scholarships.

Whatever emerges, there will always be a place for the Concordias. Here, despite how painful our defeats might be, it's still just a game.

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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