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The basketball diaries (a greater heresy)

Let me be clear about this: I love basketball. I love sports. I started out, back in high school, as a sports writer. Though I have no discernible talent, am of absolutely average stature, and have never managed to wear a team jersey, I have given the game of basketball every finger on both hands (save my thumbs) at least once, broken or dislocated. This is a problem when one types for a living, but no matter. I quit after breaking (I think, doctors cost money) my right middle finger in Los Angeles, and then quit again after breaking my right little finger (I think, doctors cost money; and, anyway, who can tell what's broken and not until it's too late?) in an old man's game here in Morehead.

Not that I quit playing that day; I broke the finger 30 seconds into my first game back on wobbly legs, taped it up and went on. (Not macho; stubborn.) And came back the next week because I refused to go out having played THAT badly. Made a couple shots, felt better about myself. Really, I stopped playing because contact lenses no longer work for me and I don't have legitimate university ID to go back into the building and keep playing. And because I'm probably not so stupid as to wish to break yet another finger come deadline. Probably.

So I stayed up too late last night watching the North Carolina-USC game and mulling over Tubby Smith's wise decision to leave Kentucky for the University of Minnesota. (I thought, and said, midseason that something about his body language on the sidelines suggested he was ready to leave. Not to prove I was right, just to suggest that I understand a little bit of the wear and tear Kentucky fans put on their coaches. And, frankly, he was doomed here from the moment his son started at point guard. I'm sure Saul's a good kid and loyalty counts, but he wasn't quite good enough to start in the SEC.) And Randolph Morris's decision to leave Kentucky immediately for the New York Knicks, a quirk available to him since he announced for the draft a couple years back and went undrafted. $1.8 million free agent contact, who needs school?

I love college basketball, and pro football. Those are aesthetic preferences, not value judgments.

But in order to love college basketball -- college sports -- it is necessary to put aside serious misgivings.

What, for example, do highly competitive Division 1 college sports -- that is, football and basketball, in the main -- have to do with university life? How many students take those athletic scholarships with any desire to acquire an education? And what possible connection exists -- beyond alumni fundraising -- between these multi-million dollar sporting enterprises and academia? Particularly when the best players need only to stay academically eligible for one year before the NBA beckons?

My father, a retired college professor, sent me an AP clipping the Seattle Times headlined "Study shows 10 percent of Buckeyes got degrees." I quote: "Using the yardstick Graduation Success Rates -- which accounts for players who transfer to other schools and receive degrees, players entering from junior colleges and those who receive degrees more than six years after enrollment -- 50 percent of Oregon players, 19 percent of Eastern Kentucky players and 9 percent of Florida A&M players were graduated...Gonzaga players had a 22 percent FGR...Other programs with rather low FGRs were Tennessee (8 percent); UNLV (10 percent); Maryland (13 percent); Virginia Tech (17 percent); Louisville (22 percent); Georgia Tech, Kentucky and Oral Roberts (23 percent each); and Memphis and North Texas and Texas A&M-Corpus Christi (25 percent each)."

Those are all tournament qualifiers this year, which is how their numbers end up in the article. Most of the kids who aren't graduating aren't playing pro ball somewhere, and, without college degrees, they're probably not coaching. So what has been accomplished, and at what cost?

Why, moving on, are tax dollars spent building stadiums for pro sports? Because they draw business to the neighborhoods adjacent to the stadiums? Maybe, but that seems to have been largely disproved. Even if that were the case, is that the best set of economic incentives we can devise? Besides, nobody ever went broke selling an NFL or NBA franchise, not in a long time. Why are we in the business of subsidizing millionaires?

And given the amounts of money involved in high profile college football and basketball programs, and the restrictions played on the athletes who participate (that is, no summer jobs, etc.), by what possible ethical standard are they not paid? How many kids burn up knees, shoulders, and backs in high school or college chasing a dream? How many of them are permanently slowed or disabled without any kind of compensation? I don't know, and I'm not suggesting they are due some kind of hand-out. I'm just saying it's a high price to pay for chasing a dream.

Look at the money spent, at the graduation rates, at what happens to kids after they leave major university programs. And I know that no small number of them enter the coaching fraternity, or are absorbed into alumni business networks. But...this is college we're talking about. These are kids. And we are using them.

And I still love the game, and I still think Florida wins it all.

Posted by grant on March 24, 2007 8:44 AM | Permalink

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