Bucks
Big Time Sports Bowl Games
Dear Friends,
Good morning and Happy New Year. My dear friend Larry Grim from Perkasie recently penned an excellent Christmas greeting. “While 2008 was most unkind to the health and wealth of our nation and us,” he began, “We celebrate this season with joy, happiness and humor, thankful for many, many blessings. May your future be as bright as we see ours.”
I think he’s right. Most Americans have high hopes for Barrack Obama. Let us pray that his leadership will inspire our elected leaders to work together. But we’re all asking…how long will it take for America to bring our soldiers home from Afghanistan and Iraq? How long will it take to restore its international image? How long will it take for government and business leaders to restore faith in the economy?
So let’s look at the season for a moment.
As I sit here in the midst of the college football bowl games, I think about James Michener, one of Bucks County’s most famous authors. Thirty years ago, he wrote “Sports in America.” In it, Michener claimed that big time college sports are shams. Giant sized institutions depend upon athletes to entertain the student body and the alumni…and make a ton of money for colleges and universities whose sport programs are saleable to television interests.
Michener proposed that the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) should change its rules so athletes would be paid to play, and not clutter up the classroom. He was right 30 years ago and he’s right today.
The NCAA is an oxymoron. There’s nothing amateur about it and it’s hardly collegiate. The NCAA gives players six years to graduate, not four. Several years ago, it reported that only 48 percent of Division 1 A-football players and 43 percent of basketball players graduated within six years.
In January 2002, I wrote a column for the Morning Call. I had just seen “60 Minutes” and a Lesley Stahl segment about big time college sports. The message…College basketball and football have become the minor leagues of professional basketball and football teams…without any financial obligation.
One of the people whom Stahl interviewed said, “The NCAA is a sweatshop for not taking care of its athletes. The NCAA is a club of folks at the top. The NCAA is no longer some poor little operation. It’s bringing in billions and billions of dollars. Meanwhile, the vast majority of college athletes live under the poverty line because the NCAA don’t provide money for basics like food, clothing, and a social life.”
I couldn’t find the dollar payoff for colleges playing in the 32 bowl games for this season. It may be that the NCAA is ashamed to publish them. But I did discover last year’s totals. The 64 college football teams received $282 million for those 32 games. There was one bowl game that paid a “paltry” $250,000 to each college. But most were in the $750,000 range for each [college]. Eighteen bowl games paid over $1 million to each college team and ten colleges received $17 million!
Remember, these statistics were last year’s numbers.
There’s another societal point here. “Big time college sports programs and media hype do a disservice to inner city kids,” Michener wrote in “Sports in America.”
“Blinded by the dazzling temporary success of a few black stars, the ghetto boy dreams only of success in sports,” Michener opined. “His chances for ultimate stardom are not great.
“In the meantime, he’s destroyed whatever chances he had for becoming a good doctor, or engineer, or social expert,” Michener continued. “More black talent is aborted on the ghetto playground than can be calculated leaving the black community impoverished.
“Only 55 college seniors will land salaried berths in professional basketball,” Michener told us. “So all this emphasis about turning a seven-year old star into a gladiator in America’s version of the games in ancient Rome is terribly misplaced.”
I must confess that I watched my share of bowl games between Christmas and New Years. But while I was thoroughly entertained, I saw them through jaundiced eyes.
Most of those players are not getting an education. They’re just unpaid mercenaries. Why don’t college and university presidents tell the NCAA to be honest? We should pay these athletes to play…and keep them from cluttering up the classroom.
Then again, if you want to see the tail that’s wagging the dog, consider what colleges and universities pay their football coaches? Look what I found in “USA Today” two years ago (Nov. 16, 2006). “Million-dollar coaches move into the mainstream,” the headline observed. “The average pay for a college Division 1-A college football coach is $950,000 per year…that’s $79,000 a game.”
Forty-two colleges paid their football coaches more than $1 million each. In one case, the University of Iowa paid coach Kirk Ferentz over $4 million!
Who’s kidding whom?
Grumble, grumble.
Sincerely,
Charles Meredith