Was the Sandusky scandal inevitable in the rarefied world of athletic coaching?
Bookworm on Nov 15 2011 at 10:37 am | Filed under: Uncategorized
I always love it when I read a post that has me not only nodding in agreement with every paragraph, but delving into my own history and values to expand upon the points the post makes. Mike McDaniel, who blogs at State McDaniel Manor, has written one of those posts. (Full disclosure: Mike very kindly links to me in his post, but that’s not why I like what he’s written.)
Mike, who is a former police officer, a current teacher, and a lifetime athlete, looks at the unhealthy culture that too many American high schools, colleges and universities have built around athletics. Both Carlyle and Lord Acton would have understood that, by giving successful coaches demigod status, we have encouraged an environment in which even the sea-green incorruptible cannot withstand the pressure to become absolutely corrupt.
Related posts:
- Power corrupts
- A microcosm of socialism’s inevitable failure
- The inevitable result of identity politics
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On the other hand, the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton.
And perhaps the model to which we should all be aspiring is Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, who enjoyed power so absolute that no one on the planet today can even credibly dream about it, yet remained thoroughly uncorrupted – even in his common-place book, known for the last couple of centuries as “The Meditations.” I always thought maybe Acton forgot about him. Then again, it seems the ongoing human parade has only produced one of him, so maybe Acton gets a pass for his generalization.
Sports is a big deal because it provides funding. I don’t know what a division one, first-class football program brings in to the average big-name university these days, buts it’s millions. Pays for a lot of scholarships other than those given to the members of the team. I can’t speak to the absolute truth of it, but when I was an undergrad at Boston University it was often said that the then-new building that housed the – quite well-known and world-class – medical school was the gift of the hockey team, which annually brought in a great many bucks.
I am perhaps out of date here, I’ve indulged in zero up-to-date research, but there was a time when it was a common thought that Notre Dame did it right. They expected – demanded – that the football team went to class like everybody else, and routinely suspended even top players who paid insufficient attention to the job of learning. Learning was job one. Of course, in recent years, the Irish have suffered by this policy, they are no longer what they once were, and have a more difficult time recruiting, precisely because they do have high expectations of their student-athletes. When Fr. Hesburgh was running the university, he noted trenchantly that they weren’t called “athlete-students” for good reason. I don’t know how many of him there are these days, either. (And, as noted, this may not be the way it is there any more, either.
So it can be – or could be – done. Why it no longer seems to be is probably attributable to the gigantic dollars a major program brings in. The fact is, damn few schools finish in the black every year. If the football team can add $50 million to the rather shaky fiscal edifice most schools actually are, it’s damned difficult to resist.
Got no answers.
I’ve heard some mentions that this is an issue in Japan as well, except they just use rewards to bring in star players to specific high school teams. High school matches at the national level don’t bring in money. They just bring prestige. The Japanese are more than willing to pay for prestige.
I might be wrong on this, since I haven’t researched how high school matches are paid for and all that. Colleges should obey Socialist doctrine or be labeled as hypocrites. Any money they take in, should be given back to the state, 100%.
Hey, hypocrisy is only good for us right? How is that fair.