Sports
This is not a critique of the mission of academic schools versus state schools . . . both have their function, as long as universities stay true to their mission of preparing their athletes for a life outside of athletics (that’s problematic, but we’re being theoretical at this point in time). So, maybe Purdue takes an athletically brilliant but academically challenged wide receiver who wouldn’t be accepted at Notre Dame. Purdue has an academic reputation (engineering, agriculture, pharmacy, nursing); but they also have the responsibility to educate the masses, the same as any state school. Perhaps our wide receiver could make it through four years without ever reading Aristotle, or even knowing who Kant is; still, he would have to pass all his classes, if only to remain eligible, and to pass those classes he would have to learn something, even if it isn’t pure knowledge in the tradition of academic schools. At the end of his career, our wide receiver has prospered: first, he has the benefit of being the star of Joe Tiller’s potent variation of the West Coast offense. Second, since he had to pass his classes to stay eligible, he has an education.
Let’s take this same receiver and blow out his knee in his junior year: he may be able to come back, and maybe even regain his star status in the Purdue offense, but he will have lost the Marvin Harrison-type quickness that made him a major prospect when he was in high school. Unable to move on to the next level, his football career is finished. But, he has his education: all those math and statistics classes he was forced to pass come in handy when a Purdue booster (who also happens to own an insurance agency) comes to call, and hires him for his company. And, maybe fighting through those Faulkner papers (a writer he barely understands, much less cares about) comes in handy at the company Christmas party, when a scotch-fueled discussion of southern culture ends up with our football player dropping serious Faulkner knowledge, and a regional manager from the company (who knows and cares less about Faulkner than even our athlete) decides that, just maybe, this jock is actually a pretty smart guy, so he gives him his own agency, based on our jock’s potential. This, friends, is the ideal of the education of an athlete.
Our wide receiver would also be a true symbol of the university: he would be more than just a trained dog for the entertainment of the alumni, he would be a true student/athlete. He would have had to deal with a species of academic rigor, even if it was not the same type of academic rigor that he would have had to deal with at Notre Dame. Maybe he never read Homer or Milton . . . but on that count, he wouldn’t be different from most of his Purdue peers. The standards are set by the universities; all that is important is that athletes are called upon to meet these standards.
The university’s standards are its character. Changing the standards of the university changes the university’s character. In the end, my point is simply this: changing the character of a university for the benefit of athletics is wrong. And, more than wrong, it is exploitive, if athletes are not given the standard education that the university promises: athletes who are students only for the purpose of glorifying the university, and who do so without pay and with little advantage beyond their privileged school life, are little more than slaves for the reputation of the university.
Getting back to Notre Dame, the problem becomes clear: ND cannot create a slave class for the promotion of the university without inexorably changing the character of the university. Creating a class of athletes separate from the typical student body is exploitive, and, therefore, immoral. Some people claim that athletics serves as a type of affirmative action for some high school students . . . but this is a faulty type of affirmative action, an affirmative action that serves the university more than the students. If the exclusivity of Notre Dame is problematic, then deal with the problem on its own terms, without adding the spectre of exploitation to the mix.
If that makes it difficult for Notre Dame to compete in football, then so be it. It is better to compete honestly on straight-up terms than to try to fix the game to win a title. Paul Hornung be damned, if ND’s academic standards relegate it to football obscurity, then I welcome the obscurity. Notre Dame’s identity resides in its academic character, and it’s the academic character we need to protect, not the athletic tradition. Conversely, if we are going to attack homogeneity at Notre Dame, then athletics is the wrong forum for the discussion.
Maybe it’s time to get Notre Dame’s basketball program going, anyway: for God’s sake, the school is in Indiana, after all . . . recruiting would sure be a hell of a lot easier.
Anyway, the time is coming (probably within the next 10-15 years) when none of this will matter. The so-called “revenue producing” college sports are the same sports that are big business in America, and there is no way that these big-business sports will entrust their development to anyone concerned with anything other than their own well-being. Baseball already has a traditional farm-club system, so that any top-notch baseball player who is interested in baseball alone doesn’t even bother with college. The time is coming when the NBA and the NFL will also develop their own farm systems (the process has already started) to take the NCAA out of the player development business, no matter how much the NCAA wants to be part of that process (and collect the attendant cash). When that time comes, football and basketball players who choose to go to college will be choosing to be student athletes, rather than athletes preparing themselves for a pro career. When that time comes, universities who insist on their athletes being true student athletes will be ahead of the game, since the student athlete tradition has already been ingrained, and since academic standards (of all stripes) will be taken as a given, instead of being thought of as an obstacle. In a post-farm club world, Notre Dame would easily rise up to the top of college football again.
But, hey, this is all a moot point. Within a few years, Charlie Weiss will bring the program back to where it needs to be. Go Irish!
Bob Shiffler is a self-described “sports raconteur”. His frequent contributions to sports publications and sports talk radio are often done under different pseudonyms, “so as not to queer the odds” (his words again). He also claims to be right “as often as Bill Walton and Tim Green are wrong”, a claim we frankly find hard to believe.