It’s time that we see the warped collegiate sports system for what it is and, then, do something about it. Replace it with honest learning.
“In many colleges, a boy (sic) can win 12 letters without learning how to write one,” Robert Maynard Hutchins, the University of Chicago’s president, wrote decades ago in The Saturday Evening Post. He went on to say that for a college to be successful on the field, and it must be something of a scoundrel beyond it.
Dr. Hutchins (courtesy, University of Chicago Archives)
So, in 1939, to “save the soul of the university,” Hutchins abolished the physical education major and the highly successful football program, which played in the Big Ten Conference. So convinced of football’s negative influence on an academic institution–and concerned that it might come back soon–Hutchins demolished the school’s 55,000-seat stadium and erected a library in its place.
What makes this story worthwhile to retell is that U Chicago isn’t just another school; it is one of the world’s best. It would be thirty years before the program that produced Alonso Stagg and the first winner of the Heisman Trophy would field another football team–and it would be a Division III team.
Watching sports under the shadow of COVID-19 causes me to reflect on Hutchins’ move. With the virus, we likely will forego college football this fall. I wonder if that would be such a bad happening? I know how the Power 5 schools crow about how football supports non-revenue teams. I’m also quite aware of the enormous salaries earned by major college football and basketball coaches. On many campuses, the head coach at the flagship state university is the highest-paid public employee in the state.
Let’s face it: Hutchins’ was prescient. He accurately predicted what the future would hold, and he had the authority and power to act. Hutchins was right, too. But he was also a lone voice.
Courtesy: NCAA
None of us is wise enough to know what the future may bring. However, I look forward to a fall without football. How so?
I look forward to watching how college students will manage a Saturday afternoon without filing to the stadium. I look forward to overpaid coaches learning how to survive without puffed-up salaries. I hope that I can look forward to having us place proper emphasis on learning, not playing to the phoniness of the NCAA and its oft-used phrase, student-athlete.
I think about all of that–and look forward to it, too–as I reflect on a recent the circumstance of a recent ACC Student-Athlete of the Year. He left school after only one year of college and then earned big money by being in a sports drink commercial. He just sipped the beverage, mind you, not speaking a word. I wonder how many credit hours that man earned during his second (and last) semester of college.
Perhaps…just perhaps…our culture will see the warped collegiate sports system for what it is–and then do something about it. What with? Replace it with honest learning.
Major college revenue sports need to be put in their proper place. And that, dear readers, is an academic truth.
