Campus divestment: sports

Steven Johnston

Neal A. Maxwell Chair in Political Theory, Public Policy, and Public Service, University of Utah

In July Bill Connolly published a manifesto entitled “Toward an Eco-Egalitarian University.” I would like to complement his call for educational reinvention and resistance to the “neoliberal machine” by addressing selected aspects of the sports-violence-money-media-entertainment complex that governs and plagues so many of America’s colleges and universities.  There are a number of issues here.

1) Major men’s college football and basketball programs serve primarily as minor league training academies for the NFL and NBA. This self-selected subservient role, highly profitable to some schools, financially problematic to many more, comes at the expense of the academic and moral integrity of the institutions implicated. As recent events at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill indicate, schools will not hesitate to corrupt their basic academic functioning, including manufacturing imaginary courses and bogus grades, to keep mercenary athletes eligible and turnstiles rotating.

A UNC-Chapel Hill student athlete's paper.

2) These programs generate tens of billions of dollars in revenues for themselves and other dominant corporate players (broadcasters, apparel companies, the auto and beer industries, etc.) in the neoliberal capitalist arena while exploiting the non-union labor of (mostly) teenagers.  Thousands of students on athletic scholarships, so-called student athletes, are effectively the fulltime employees of colleges and universities who control their lives and can dismiss them at will.

3) Football and basketball coaches are often the highest paid employees at their institutions with compensation packages—totaling millions—exceeding even the most lavishly paid college and university presidents. This warped financial structure informs students, who incur unsustainable debt to pursue the American dream, and professors, who may never be able to afford retirement, of their value in the so-called academic world.

Source: nytimes.com.

4) Running a football program means, by definition, that colleges and universities are co-conspirators in a corrupt enterprise that sacrifices the short- and long-term health and well-being of its participants. Morally, if not legally, this amounts to felony assault and battery. Players may or may not be removed from games even when they are obviously damaged from routine plays. Statistically, the vast majority of college football players will never play at the professional level, which means they are sacrificing themselves for, at best, an illusion.

5) Major sports programs are commonly linked to a culture of privilege and entitlement, which includes violence against women, a seriously underreported phenomenon, as the Florida State examples demonstrate. It might be convenient to presume that this is the isolated conduct of a few malefactors with a disposition to violence they brought with them to college, though it’s perhaps just as likely that they cultivated and extended the pleasures of domination and violence the sport teaches them and celebrates.

6) When football players at Northwestern initiated a unionization drive in order to protect themselves and their interests against their employer, the university, aided and abetted by the head coach, and concerned about possible repercussions to its bottom line, waged a concerted campaign to defeat them. To my knowledge, not one college or university president spoke in favor of the players’ autonomy and self-determination. Rather, they were determined to keep them in their properly subjected position.

Still, let us suppose, against the evidence, that Trustees and Presidents are serious when they talk about student athletes and seek to really fold sports into the intellectual life of a college or university. Well, here are some things they would do with respect to basketball.

For programs it will mean:

1. no athletic scholarships will be granted;
2. practices will be conducted and games will be played in only one semester; they will no longer encompass both fall and spring;
3. regular season schedules will be limited to 20 games, roughly 1 and 1/2 per week;
4. conferences will be realigned so that no road trip covers more than 200 miles and no flight lasts longer than 2 hours;
5. no post-season conference tournaments are to be allowed; they are designed not for competition in a conference race but the gratuitous generation of revenue;
6. the NCAA tournament will be reduced to 32 teams, which means the tournament can be completed in just over one week, minimizing the disruption to the end of the semester and final exams;
7. no coach will be paid—from any and all sources—more than the median salary of an associate professor. Comparisons to CEOs notwithstanding, a coach contributes nothing to the university as a university; a coach is merely parasitic upon student-athletes.

For students it will mean:

1. no morning practices before the first scheduled on-campus class;
2. no practicing on weekends, when there generally are no classes; this is the time to study and rest;
3. if students are expected to put in roughly five to six hours of work outside class per week, per course, basketball players will be allowed to practice no more than five to six hours per week; after all, they are not employee-athletes;
4. should student-athletes leave before graduating to pursue a professional career, they will redirect 10% of the value of any NBA or European league contract they sign to their alma mater’s general scholarship fund.

As for football, it is to be abolished—now. There is too much evidence that brain damage is a routine, predictable part of the sport to sanction its continuation. Colleges and universities can lead a nationwide campaign for the abolition of football, a commitment to which can be made a condition of (continued) employment for all top-level university officials. NCAA member institutions form one key link in a long chain of injury, abuse, and exploitation. Irreparable brain injury does not begin in college—or even high school. It begins when young children playfootball for the first time as pre-teenagers. Pop Warner starts with the Tiny-Mite division for ages 5 to 7 with a weight range of 35 to 75 pounds. It has 6 other divisions that extend to age 14 and noweight limit.The brain, always vulnerable to concussion from any head-on collision, is especially vulnerable during the early stages of its development. Parents who allow, let alone encourage their children to play football are arguably guilty of abuse. (Soccer parents may be guilty, too). Either way, colleges and universities cannot participate in a sporting culture and structure that inspires and implicitly rewards the systematic maltreatment of children. These young boys (and girls, too) are also students and they should not be repeatedly and irreversibly harmed before they can matriculate to the many colleges and universities waiting to welcome them. We in academia can best plan for this day by reining in the horrors of American sports that have either a limited place (at best) or no place at all on our campuses. Some might find these proposals utopian, but, following Bill Connolly, I would say that not only is this partly the point; the recommendations also reflect a catalytic, life-affirming utopianism as opposed to the self-destructive, death-laden utopianism of the neoliberal machine that aspires to consume the academic world.

Baseball, Leisure, and Chocolate Chip Cookies

John Buell is a columnist for The Progressive Populist and a faculty adjunct at Cochise College. His most recent book, Politics, Religion, and Culture in an Anxious Age, will be published by Palgrave/Macmillan in August.

Periodically I fall asleep while watching a late night baseball game from the west coast. I have invested in a Major League Baseball package that allows me to choose almost any game every night, but by far the preferred choice is Dodger games. I am a fan of announcers as much as teams. And the former are more stable than the latter, which have become interchangeable parts on a money- driven merry-go-round. My choice of Dodger games owes nothing to Brooklyn or Los Angeles loyalty but rather to appreciation of and fascination with the voice of the Dodgers, Vin Scully.  

I have been especially attentive to Dodger games this season. Prior to the start of the season, Scully had announced that this would be his last as Dodger broadcaster. The other night, however, Scully surprised us, albeit with a characteristically soft-spoken announcement.

An admirer had a long tradition of sending him chocolate chip cookies, and this year her gift was accompanied by a note that the cookies were a bribe to entice him to return for another season. As I drifted off to sleep, I expected him to thank her and then explain why the time had come to hang up the microphone. His response, that he would return for his 63d season, both jolted me out of my sleep and led to some reflections on age and retirement. Even if he really loves those cookies, Scully is returning to the booth because he is healthy and loves his job. Many older Americans toil on also out of love for the office, even when they could easily afford to choose the golf course. Sadly, however, an increasing number, even in declining health, are forced to keep working due to America's inadequate social protections not out of love for their work; this is where we all as a society strike out.

Scully is both typical and atypical of his generation. As an announcer, he is without equal. For me he almost defines the genre. Unlike any other announcer today, Scully works alone, with no ex- player to provide the 'color' commentary. And hype is not his style. For him, no baseball game determines the future of western civilization. His commentary resembles a quiet, literate conversation with his listeners. The other day he congratulated both Japan and Huntington Beach for their long run in the Little League World Series. Both had played great ball, but only one could win. 'It's a game, after all.'

Scully reminds me of Ernie Harwell, long- time radio voice of the Detroit Tigers and a fixture of my youth. Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson has commented that the LA Dodgers 

boasted sports' greatest, most literate and entertaining broadcaster, Vin Scully. (I've long believed that kids who grew up listening to Scully got at least a 30-point bump on their verbal SAT.) Always the most spatially and governmentally scattered of cities --- there are 88 municipalities in Los Angeles County --- L.A. lacked most forms of common civic identity until half the town began listening to Scully.

Like Harwell's, Scully's commentary is peppered with stories about the players' lives and families. Recently during a scorching Sunday afternoon from Dodger Stadium, Scully regaled us with tales of how players used wet mattresses and cabbage under their hats to cool off in pre-airconditioning times. As with all modern commentators, he has a plethora of statistics upon which to draw, but he does not overwhelm the fan with numbers. I especially appreciate several features that seem unique to his broadcasts. When a runner lands on third, Scully will invariably inform us of the number of wild pitches the pitcher has committed over the season. And when pitchers bat he tell us what percentage of the time they have struck out, a figure that gives a better sense than mere batting average as to whether or not they are klutzes at the plate. My favorite Scully touch is a sixth inning feature, 'This Day in Dodger Baseball,' wherein he tells a story of an event or personality in the long history of the Dodgers, stories often drawn on his own conversations with the players.
  Longevity in the US has increased and seniors are working longer, both out of choice and necessity. Nonetheless, I bristle at the increasingly popular idea that because longevity has increased and many seniors are doing excellent work well into their eighties, it is no big deal if the Social Security retirement age were to be increased from 65 to 67.

I look around my own working class community with its fishermen, boat builders, carpenters. Despite talk of post-industrial society, much work remains physical and is literally back-breaking. (Such service professions as nursing carry enormous physical and emotional burdens.) And increases in longevity, as Dean Baker has pointed out, are heavily class- skewed. Upper class citizens have more control over their work environments, generally do less physically stressful work, and have better and more regular access to quality medical care. Increasing the retirement age is another attack on the wallets and the health of poor and working class citizens, often depriving them of the few years of retirement to which they can look forward.

  Baker also points out that any social security shortfalls, which are exaggerated to begin with, could be alleviated by removing the cap on earned income subject to social security taxation. Much as I like Vin Scully, I believe he and other well compensated professionals working long years at jobs they love should see all of their income taxed, just as is the case for my neighbors, most of whom have few choices about their work.

  In a broader sense, the issue of retirement raises profound questions about modern capitalism.At least as far back as the twenties, capitalism's most outspoken defenders promised a future of both material gains and more free time for all. And indeed, despite US capitalism's frequent failures to tap its full human and technological potential, worker productivity has greatly increased. Yet for a quarter century Americans have seen stagnant incomes, longer workloads and no opportunity to trade any wage gains for increases in leisure or earlier retirements.

Source: The New York Times, Sept 4, 2011

Preserving and lowering the social security retirement age and taxing all earned income would be a small step in the right direction. But for now I am pleased that Vince Scully will stay another year so that I can use my own leisure time to revisit and refashion my memories of the summer game.

Two, No, Make that One Cheer for Golf

Steven Johnston

University of South Florida

Patriotism is always on the lookout for new sources of support. Consider the United States in the late twentieth century. From the Vietnam War to the space shuttle Challenger, there’s no war patriotism can’t adopt or rehabilitate, no traumatic event it can’t use and convert into a heroic narrative or mawkish monument or memorial. This creativity is its genius. Don’t underestimate it. It’s even gotten its affective hooks into the otherwise staid game of golf. No resistance has been offered; if anything, golf has welcomed this usurpation.

On Father’s Day the United States Golf Association conducted the 111th version of the United States Open. NBC opened its Sunday coverage with some patriotic hoopla: children reciting the pledge of allegiance. Thanks to NBC’s editing, both “under God” and “indivisible” were cut. The reaction on social media was fast and furious and NBC prostrated itself on air. “We began our coverage of this final round just about three hours ago, and when we did it was our intent to begin the coverage of this U.S. Open championship with a feature that captured the patriotism of our national championship being held in our nation’s capital for the third time. Regrettably, a portion of the Pledge of Allegiance that was in that feature was edited out. It was not done to upset anyone, and we’d like to apologize to those of you who were offended by it.”

Apparently someone forgot to inform NBC of its broadcast location: Bethesda, Maryland. The Washington D.C. border and the nation’s capital are several miles away. More importantly, what does patriotism have to do with an individual pursuit like golf, even when it’s the United States Open? The eventual winner, Rory McIlroy, treated victory as the individual accomplishment it represents, pleased to be in the company of other great athletes and previous winners such as Jack Nicklaus, Tom Watson, Arnold Palmer, and Ben Hogan. It was all about “history and prestige” in the sport. McIlroy hails from Northern Ireland, but the national flag someone offered him shortly after he won did not interest him and he declined to wrap it around himself as he walked off the course.

NBC’s U.S. Open effort to affix patriotism to golf followed its coverage of last year’s Ryder Cup, a golf competition between teams from the United States and Europe. Despite boasting the best professionals and the most competitive weekly tour, the United States has won only four of the last thirteen competitions. This generates great biannual concern in golfing and sporting circles in the United States. The game may not have been invented here, but the United States has made golf its own sporting property.

The huge popularity of the Ryder Cup (one of the world’s most watched athletic events) represents not just a remarkable sporting and media reversal but a downright triumph. Starting in the mid-nineteen twenties, the United Sates and Great Britain staged the biannual competition for fifty years and no one really noticed. The United States won each contest, usually handily, save one, 1969, which was deemed an aberration, even an act of charity. For the 1979 competition, Europe replaced Great Britain and by 1983 golf had a genuinely competitive international sporting spectacle, with political passion and hard feelings to match.

Triggered by competition, more specifically, a potent foreign enemy bent on acquiring global dominance, the Ryder Cup became a patriotic phenomenon. Professional in the United States rose to meet the threat. Players now covet a spot on the team. Despite the rivalries on the PGA Tour, where players such as Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson, Ryder Cup stalwarts, openly disdain one another, American players express solidarity: they dress alike, practice together, socialize, and talk endlessly about the incomparable thrill of playing for their country, which, of course, they love. They never knew playing in the Ryder Cup could elicit such feeling. Remarkably, they are nothing if not sincere. Team uniforms (yes, golf uniforms) often involve red, white, and blue. Fans wave American flags en masse (at least when the event is held in the United States). Chants of USA! USA! USA! Or Europe! Europe! accompany victory. European patriotism may be in its infancy, but defeating a hated enemy, however artificially produced, resonates.

This is the stunning achievement of the Ryder Cup, for golf is an inherently individual pursuit. That is its attraction. It may be thought the sport of aristocrats, but it is played by many tens of millions of people around the world and its distance from the chauvinism of the Olympic Games, the World Cup, and other exercises in controlled national aggression recommend it. Golf was and is wonderfully isolating, even narcissistic, an exercise in self-overcoming. If you hate groups, this is the sport for you. Unlike team sports, your eventual success does not depend on teammates who may not be nearly as skilled as are you. It’s even anti-humanist. It’s you against a golf course.

The Ryder Cup makes professional golfers forget that they are, well, professional golfers, that is, selfish, pampered, overpaid, entitled, capitalist practitioners of a silly but fascinating game. Golf has no wider significance and this is its beauty. No more, perhaps, thanks to the Ryder Cup. Think of it as the pod-like power of patriotism. Golf still has a long way to go before it attains the cult status of football (what Americans call soccer). For one thing, golf measures success individually, by tournaments won (especially on the American tour), major championships in particular. Tiger Woods is chasing what was once thought to be (cliché alert) an unbreakable record: Jack Nicklaus’s total of eighteen major championships (a combination of the Masters, the United States Open, the British Open, and the PGA Championship). This has been Woods’s goal since he was a small child, shorter than a golf club in fact. He may or may not surpass Nicklaus, but at the end of his career, talk will center on how many tournaments and how many majors he won. His Ryder Cup record will be irrelevant. The same is true for Nicklaus. No one knows his Ryder Cup record. What’s more, no one cares—not yet anyway. Golf is simply not a team sport let alone a national team sport, despite the existence of organized competition in high school and college. A few may know that Tiger Woods won the NCAA individual men’s championship in 1996, but no one knows (or cares) how Stanford, his alma mater, fared. Golf, moreover, is rightly known for its sportsmanship and integrity. Players do not root against one another and they self-report rules violations that no one else could possibly detect. This can cost them both victories and huge sums of money, but self-policing is part and parcel of the game.

The contrast with football is dramatic. Football players will do anything to win, whether it’s within the rules or not. The most recent World Cup demonstrated this, much to the outrage and national heartbreak of Ireland and Ghana. The rules of football encourage cheating. What do you have to lose, after all, if you can score or stop a game-winning goal by deflecting it with your hands? You give your team a chance to keep playing and become a national hero for ingenuity. You are a patriot. Just ask Thierry Henry of France and Luis Suarez of Uruguay. Football fans, likewise, are apparently capable of anything should their team not win. Andrés Escobar of Colombia was murdered after his own goal resulted in Colombia’s elimination from the 1994 World Cup.

Can golf survive the Ryder Cup’s appropriation? Will a sport defined by agonism become informed by antagonism? The signs are troubling. In the 1999 Ryder Cup at The Country Club in Brookline, Massachusetts, the United States won a close match thanks in part to poor sportsmanship otherwise unheard of in golf. Justin Leonard sealed, ultimately, the Cup for the United States by sinking a long putt on the 17th hole of his match with José Maria Olazábal, after which players, their wives, and fans rushed the putting green and staged a wild celebration. The only problem is that the celebration depended on, even presumed, Olazábal missing his putt, not yet attempted and rendered virtually impossible following the disruptive celebration. You’d think they had just won a war. Imagine people storming an Olympic basketball court before a player had to make a free throw to tie the championship game with one second remaining and you get something of the point.

The United States, Europe, and much of the world may be facing grave economic and political threats, but let’s not abandon golf to the flag-waving know-nothings without a fight. We should respect what it represents: a generalized disdain for everything but its own self-obsessive excellence and the drive to turn our backs on life, in the name of fun and torment, for a little while. Pace Mark Twain, do not let patriotism spoil the joy of a good walk. It’s done enough already.