Sunday, December 02, 2007
I've been thinking about Jerry Sullivan's column on why college football should have a playoff structure, and it seems to me that he got it exactly wrong. College sports do not need to be more like professional sports-- college sports should be less like the pros.
Sullivan didn't go to Missouri because of its sports program--I'm guessing he went because it has a solid J-school. That is the point of college for the overwhelming percentage of students, even the ones that go to Notre Dame. Sullivan is proud of Missouri because he is proud of the work he did there, not because the school was Indoor Track and Field champion in 1965.
I think there is a tendency among sports fans to lose track of the fact that the athletes on the field on fall Saturdays are kids in their late teens and early 20s. They are, in other words, just out of high school, and the emphasis that is placed on activities that are, after all, merely diversions has has had the effect of sadly warping the world view of too many of these (mostly) boys. Women's sports have largely avoided this trap, to this point, and one effect of this has been that most women athletes seem to be a lot better adjusted people. For every Marion Jones you can think of there are dozens of male jocks who are famous for their sociopathy. Let's face it, O.J. Simpson is merely a particularly prominent example of of a type that we know all too well.
Let the kids be kids, I think, and let's try to keep in mind that the over-emphasis on sports in college tends to corrupt the very institutions which we should be looking to when we want to know what is best about ourselves. I believe that sports can and do teach valuable lessons about success in life, but they don't teach everything about what we need to know. Sports can and should teach about delayed gratification, and cooperation, and about the value of preparation. Sports teach us about valuing our bodies and our health. Unfortunately, too many college sports programs actually teach values that are antithetical to these qualities. "It ain't cheating unless you get caught." "Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing". This way of thinking is actually a grotesque distortion of the values that we think sports should be teaching.
Would a playoff system to determine a college football football national champion promote the positive things that sports offer, or further the corruption of the ideals we love sports for? It seems to me that the answer is fairly obvious. We are talking about a big money operation as it is. The NCAA has not exactly covered itself with honor when it comes to policing college sport-- even the professional leagues have a hard time doing this, as evidenced by the NBA officiating scandal, the forthcoming Mitchell Report in major league baseball, and similar controversies in any other sport you can name. Is creating a new set of big ticket games that are priced out of the range of students' pocketbooks really the answer? Of course it is not.
Beyond that, creating a playoff scheme would remove one of the chief charms of college football. As it happens we are coming to the end of one of the most entertaining college football seasons in memory. From week to week there has been the kind of pleasant tension that only comes from knowing that anything can happen, and probably will. EGA started grad school at Indiana this year, so I have been following the fortunes of the Hoosiers, an exciting ride with a great backstory. As I write this Indiana is on the bubble for a Bowl bid, which EGA tells me has the campus buzzing. It made this weekend's games that much more interesting to follow, too. Because Ohio State is back in the running to play on January 7, the possibility of Indiana receiving a bid is improved. Sorry, Jerry-- as much fun as a Mizzou- West Virgina match-up that might be, it was not enough to keep me from hoping to see Oklahoma beat your the Tigers. All over the country there are students and alumni and fans enjoying a thrill about the seasons the college team they support have had, and fans who watched games yesterday in the hope that a win or a loss by a school's team that they don't ordinarily follow might help a team that they do. The present system spreads that emotion around and is a good thing. Consolidating college football into a playoff system would diminish this, and although I suppose it might make the sport bigger, it would do so at the expense of the joy of a greater number of supporters.
And speaking of Ohio State, isn't that the exact thing that all of college football would turn into if the NCAA went to a playoff system for college football? I can't think that this would be a good thing-- Ohio State is a legitimate institution of higher learning with a reputation that resembles Mike Tyson's as a result of the way it runs its sports programs. That's a shame, not something to emulate.
Is college football-- or college sport-- a broken system? Yes, I think we have to agree that it is. Is professionalizing it the solution? No, I'd say that the professionalization of college sport is precisely the problem. We don't need a system to determine a national champion in college football-- that is placing the emphasis away from college, and that's the wrong place to put it.
Sullivan didn't go to Missouri because of its sports program--I'm guessing he went because it has a solid J-school. That is the point of college for the overwhelming percentage of students, even the ones that go to Notre Dame. Sullivan is proud of Missouri because he is proud of the work he did there, not because the school was Indoor Track and Field champion in 1965.
I think there is a tendency among sports fans to lose track of the fact that the athletes on the field on fall Saturdays are kids in their late teens and early 20s. They are, in other words, just out of high school, and the emphasis that is placed on activities that are, after all, merely diversions has has had the effect of sadly warping the world view of too many of these (mostly) boys. Women's sports have largely avoided this trap, to this point, and one effect of this has been that most women athletes seem to be a lot better adjusted people. For every Marion Jones you can think of there are dozens of male jocks who are famous for their sociopathy. Let's face it, O.J. Simpson is merely a particularly prominent example of of a type that we know all too well.
Let the kids be kids, I think, and let's try to keep in mind that the over-emphasis on sports in college tends to corrupt the very institutions which we should be looking to when we want to know what is best about ourselves. I believe that sports can and do teach valuable lessons about success in life, but they don't teach everything about what we need to know. Sports can and should teach about delayed gratification, and cooperation, and about the value of preparation. Sports teach us about valuing our bodies and our health. Unfortunately, too many college sports programs actually teach values that are antithetical to these qualities. "It ain't cheating unless you get caught." "Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing". This way of thinking is actually a grotesque distortion of the values that we think sports should be teaching.
Would a playoff system to determine a college football football national champion promote the positive things that sports offer, or further the corruption of the ideals we love sports for? It seems to me that the answer is fairly obvious. We are talking about a big money operation as it is. The NCAA has not exactly covered itself with honor when it comes to policing college sport-- even the professional leagues have a hard time doing this, as evidenced by the NBA officiating scandal, the forthcoming Mitchell Report in major league baseball, and similar controversies in any other sport you can name. Is creating a new set of big ticket games that are priced out of the range of students' pocketbooks really the answer? Of course it is not.
Beyond that, creating a playoff scheme would remove one of the chief charms of college football. As it happens we are coming to the end of one of the most entertaining college football seasons in memory. From week to week there has been the kind of pleasant tension that only comes from knowing that anything can happen, and probably will. EGA started grad school at Indiana this year, so I have been following the fortunes of the Hoosiers, an exciting ride with a great backstory. As I write this Indiana is on the bubble for a Bowl bid, which EGA tells me has the campus buzzing. It made this weekend's games that much more interesting to follow, too. Because Ohio State is back in the running to play on January 7, the possibility of Indiana receiving a bid is improved. Sorry, Jerry-- as much fun as a Mizzou- West Virgina match-up that might be, it was not enough to keep me from hoping to see Oklahoma beat your the Tigers. All over the country there are students and alumni and fans enjoying a thrill about the seasons the college team they support have had, and fans who watched games yesterday in the hope that a win or a loss by a school's team that they don't ordinarily follow might help a team that they do. The present system spreads that emotion around and is a good thing. Consolidating college football into a playoff system would diminish this, and although I suppose it might make the sport bigger, it would do so at the expense of the joy of a greater number of supporters.
And speaking of Ohio State, isn't that the exact thing that all of college football would turn into if the NCAA went to a playoff system for college football? I can't think that this would be a good thing-- Ohio State is a legitimate institution of higher learning with a reputation that resembles Mike Tyson's as a result of the way it runs its sports programs. That's a shame, not something to emulate.
Is college football-- or college sport-- a broken system? Yes, I think we have to agree that it is. Is professionalizing it the solution? No, I'd say that the professionalization of college sport is precisely the problem. We don't need a system to determine a national champion in college football-- that is placing the emphasis away from college, and that's the wrong place to put it.
// posted by Bill @ 12:46 PM 
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