Unbelievable. Now cheering for your football team is an exercise in racism. What about brushing your teeth? After all, the goal is to have pearly whites.
4
I can predict without fear of being wrong, at every college fielding a football team this year these three things will happen. An athlete-student will drop out of school at the end of the season without a degree in hand, a young man will sustain an injury in practice or a game that will hinder him throughout the rest of his life, and some fan will hold up his or her index finger and chant, regardless of game score or season record, "We're number one!" and mean it. And so it goes. Lives are hobbled or ruin and minds are turned to mush.
"a sports fan can come to understand himself as a particular sort of person — a Southerner, for example, or a “real man” — by adhering to certain rituals"
Can't you say this about a lot of things in our society that people follow, like theater, music and art. Those things all have their "rituals", which seem confusing to outsiders. What makes Hamilton any more enlightened entertainment than the Auburn-Alabama game? Other than the innate smugness of the theater patron?
Can't you say this about a lot of things in our society that people follow, like theater, music and art. Those things all have their "rituals", which seem confusing to outsiders. What makes Hamilton any more enlightened entertainment than the Auburn-Alabama game? Other than the innate smugness of the theater patron?
6
Wonderful essay!! Thank you, Mr Traver.
My only quibble: "ethically suspect" ???
Really?
My only quibble: "ethically suspect" ???
Really?
2
As a sports photographer I have attended many college football games. At no other event do you you see the extraordinary diversity of America. Young & old, rich & poor, black & white, men &women, couples & families & everything in between. They are all there, having a great time. Except one group, sadly members of the left are noticeable absent. Just my guess but I don't think adjunct Marxist Economics teachers are well represented on the sidelines. Have yet to see anyone from the Gender Studies Dept. rush the field & tear down the goal posts after the big win. And surprisingly no face painters from tenured professors who teach "Politicizing Beyoncé"...not one. Wonder why? Perhaps too busy churning out a cacophony of white papers for the upcoming NYU seminar:Psychology, Interaction, & Qualitative Approaches to a Cis Gender Economy ....yes? Hate to break it to the author of this ridiculous column nothing sinister happening in the confines of the stadium. Just millions of people having a fun on a Saturday afternoon. I wonder why this bothers this writer so much? Why does she want to destroy something that is joyful? Perhaps because happiness is self-contained & self-sufficient. Happy people have no time & no use for you. Happy people are free. So kill their joy in living. Unhappy people will come to you. They’ll need you. They’ll come for consolation, for support, for escape. Nature allows no vacuum. Empty man’s soul – and the space is yours to fill. Could that be it?
6
It is a good thing there is no gambling involved with college football because that would just open another can of ethical worms.
2
Seriously? Even without the creepy gladiator aspects, football fans need to get a life. The night before Christmas? And these are grownups?
What rot.
Is every sport and past time somehow bad on some level? Lordy. You'd think that anyone who simply enjoys watching football is somehow evil and that we should all accept some version of Catholic guilt simply for being a football fan. Racism is everywhere in America, and so, yes, it is also, I suppose, also present in college football. At the same time, in football, the best players play, the ones who aren't as good ride the bench, regardless of skin color. Contrary to the old days, they don't decide who plays quarterback based on race. It is, when you think about it, an absolute meritocracy, much moreso than off the field.
But no. The fans are white! That's also true in the NBA, where most players are black. It's dangerous! Sure, but the dangers are well known, and no one forces anyone to play. These poor black football players are being exploited! To an extent, that may be true, but they want to play football. There is nothing wrong or evil or bad in wanting to play football. The author comes off as some sort of paternalistic tsk-tsker who knows what's best for others and will not allow players to think for themselves.
Mr. Tarver should be congratulated on at least one thing: He's squeezed more hate-football vitriol into a small space than I've ever seen, covering the waterfront from financial exploitation to physical danger to, of course, racism. Mr. Tarver, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. I like watching football. There is no deeper meaning. Sorry.
Is every sport and past time somehow bad on some level? Lordy. You'd think that anyone who simply enjoys watching football is somehow evil and that we should all accept some version of Catholic guilt simply for being a football fan. Racism is everywhere in America, and so, yes, it is also, I suppose, also present in college football. At the same time, in football, the best players play, the ones who aren't as good ride the bench, regardless of skin color. Contrary to the old days, they don't decide who plays quarterback based on race. It is, when you think about it, an absolute meritocracy, much moreso than off the field.
But no. The fans are white! That's also true in the NBA, where most players are black. It's dangerous! Sure, but the dangers are well known, and no one forces anyone to play. These poor black football players are being exploited! To an extent, that may be true, but they want to play football. There is nothing wrong or evil or bad in wanting to play football. The author comes off as some sort of paternalistic tsk-tsker who knows what's best for others and will not allow players to think for themselves.
Mr. Tarver should be congratulated on at least one thing: He's squeezed more hate-football vitriol into a small space than I've ever seen, covering the waterfront from financial exploitation to physical danger to, of course, racism. Mr. Tarver, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. I like watching football. There is no deeper meaning. Sorry.
3
Folks, let's give it a rest. Does everything have to be about racism?
5
You are cheering for concessions and long term CTE.
1
We should make football, soccer, and boxing safe or ban them.
1
I enjoy watching football to avoid thinking about stuff like this. And I'm a professor.
2
I think American football is in real trouble.
I live in a town that literally can't find children to make the team.... they had to combine several grades and the HS is vaguely populated.
I live in a town that literally can't find children to make the team.... they had to combine several grades and the HS is vaguely populated.
Finally a sane voice rises above the fanatical lemming culture of football in America. It's sad that it takes an intellectual article to explicate something that should be so obvious to most. The only narrative I would add is the antiquated and sexist male entertainment we call "cheerleading." Imagine if we dressed young high school and college men up in these outfits and had them jump, jigglle, and dance in the same manner..would this still be embraced and referred to as "cheering?"
Wow. A lot to take in here. A few thoughts:
I'm trying to get over my addiction to football. It's a brutal sport.
I'm glad my kids didn't play. (It's a brutal sport.)
Nobody is forcing anyone, of any color, to bash into each other with overwhelming force without pay. It's their choice.
Equipment technology and evolved rules can forestall dangerous injuries? I'm not sure. I do know that today's players are a heck of a lot bigger, stronger and faster. You don't have to know even high school physics to figure out the impact of that.
I don't see our football mania going away anytime soon, though. I'm happy for any recompense past players can get for the brutal effects of a brutal game. The next generation will have no excuse. They've been warned.
I'm trying to get over my addiction to football. It's a brutal sport.
I'm glad my kids didn't play. (It's a brutal sport.)
Nobody is forcing anyone, of any color, to bash into each other with overwhelming force without pay. It's their choice.
Equipment technology and evolved rules can forestall dangerous injuries? I'm not sure. I do know that today's players are a heck of a lot bigger, stronger and faster. You don't have to know even high school physics to figure out the impact of that.
I don't see our football mania going away anytime soon, though. I'm happy for any recompense past players can get for the brutal effects of a brutal game. The next generation will have no excuse. They've been warned.
I'm European. From the home of some of the best colleges in the world. None of which are known for their football teams.
Please, America, stop athletic scholarships. The students who are admitted on those are usually sub-par when it comes to academics. I don't see how it helps the student or the college. There does seem to be plenty of evidence that athletes are the BMOC with a lot of rape charges against the athletes thrown out.
That's no way to educate young men or young women.
Please, America, stop athletic scholarships. The students who are admitted on those are usually sub-par when it comes to academics. I don't see how it helps the student or the college. There does seem to be plenty of evidence that athletes are the BMOC with a lot of rape charges against the athletes thrown out.
That's no way to educate young men or young women.
All sports are an abstraction on some level. Whether the Olympics or baseball, the difference matters very little. You could enumerate soccer or the Mayan ball game just as easily. To rephrase the question: What are we abstracting that makes us feel so passionately? The Dixiecrat undertones of Ole Miss football seems fairly obvious. Ask anyone from Boston; identity is certainly a factor too. However, I don't think you've hit the overarching theme of the narrative. Why play any sport at all?
There's something to the primordial impulse among humans to publicly display their athletic accomplishments. Whether the athlete is exploited or not doesn't matter. The human body is both a source of personal pride and an object of communal worship. The public purposes to which such accomplishments are channeled change with time and place but the character of the arrangement remains the same. We want to witness great and noble deeds even in the face of human frailty. Some answer the call. The tragedy is we don't reward them accordingly.
There's something to the primordial impulse among humans to publicly display their athletic accomplishments. Whether the athlete is exploited or not doesn't matter. The human body is both a source of personal pride and an object of communal worship. The public purposes to which such accomplishments are channeled change with time and place but the character of the arrangement remains the same. We want to witness great and noble deeds even in the face of human frailty. Some answer the call. The tragedy is we don't reward them accordingly.
1
There IS something more sinister hidden under the team colors of the NCAA, and the NFL/NBA. As the recent ESPN "auction" of black players by a white host served to crystallize, the reality is that they have all become the "New Plantation" for poor or undereducated black men. Just as in the past, big money interests payed for a black man's strong body, not his head. The NCAA/ and NFL/NBA work in the same way. They don't care if the players brains get smashed against each other, with most of them suffering from some form of CTE in the long run.
They are too busy making money off of their strong bodies. "And the players play a child's game in the end anyway." A child could do what these athletes do, they just need a grown man's body to do it is what they figure. "Why do they need their brains" the NFL/NBA/NCAA reasons. Everyone should wince the next time asked to watch a "game". What will actually be seen is the continued damaging exploitation of the poorly educated, largely made up of black males, many from broken homes. "But it's just entertainment!" is the common refrain.
They are too busy making money off of their strong bodies. "And the players play a child's game in the end anyway." A child could do what these athletes do, they just need a grown man's body to do it is what they figure. "Why do they need their brains" the NFL/NBA/NCAA reasons. Everyone should wince the next time asked to watch a "game". What will actually be seen is the continued damaging exploitation of the poorly educated, largely made up of black males, many from broken homes. "But it's just entertainment!" is the common refrain.
Some commentators have remarked how white Americans are vicariously getting their kicks watching black Americans in a gladiatorial contest. Okay. All you need to do is change black Americans to lower class Americans and you get our volunteer army. I’ve just read how the administration has decided to send more of our gladiators to Afghanistan. What’s the difference between the volunteer army and college football except that the army involves much greater risk? So who needs football?
1
I have an early version of Louis Armstrong playing Dixie with controlled and masterful exhuberance, that I dearly love.
I understand the odium it inspires in African-American people and very many good liberal folk. I sympathize with them.
But that is not fair to the song.
It is innocent.
So maybe what is needed is a ceremnony attended by leaders of ALL stripes declaring Dixie a national and world heritage treasure and wresting the song forever from its racist connotations.
Now THAT would be something to bring people together.
I understand the odium it inspires in African-American people and very many good liberal folk. I sympathize with them.
But that is not fair to the song.
It is innocent.
So maybe what is needed is a ceremnony attended by leaders of ALL stripes declaring Dixie a national and world heritage treasure and wresting the song forever from its racist connotations.
Now THAT would be something to bring people together.
1
Reading the study presented in the article where researchers,"analyzed more than a decade of juvenile court records in south Louisiana to demonstrate that judges imposed harsher penalties on black defendants in the weeks following upset losses by the L.S.U. football team," was shocking -- I can't believe there are racist judges in the Deep South. Pretty soon someone will try to tell me that neo-Nazis are masquerading as pro-worker populist nationalists.
1
The author wants you (the football fan) to know that she is better than you are.
1
The fact that there are sooooo many African-American players in both the amateur (college) and professional fields, but so very few black coaches says a lot.
1
Yikes!
Let's go Buckeyes.
Let's go Buckeyes.
1
I'm glad you have this to worry about. Must be nice having such miniscule problems.
11
I have yet to hear ANY university president open the books to show how much of this 'earned money' really reaches the classroom. Surely, there is one public university president who would like to share that information.
3
I am becoming a jaded liberal because of pieces like this. When we engineer problems from everyday life, everyday, we lose credibility. We are becoming obnoxious and boring at the same time. Some of us enjoy heated debates; some watch action movies where the protagonist destroys the enemy; and, some of us look forward to aggressive games, like football. Our species enjoys conflict as much as romance and comedy.
Whether you are able to accept it or not, we are animals- not far from our tumultuous, violent beginnings on the African plains. Perhaps we abstract our penchant for violence to games. I think that is a good thing.
To the author's point on the racism of football, feel free to observe any crowded stadium to judge for yourself. If no one is forced to play, who exactly needs to be saved? In fact, football seems to bring Americans together across racial divides perpetuated by liberals and conservatives alike.
Can we please get our feet on solid ground, especially during the Trump years? Direct your passions and angst toward something more productive than games. If I feel this way about the Left, and I know other liberals do too, how can we expect moderates and conservatives to shift toward our side in 2018?
Whether you are able to accept it or not, we are animals- not far from our tumultuous, violent beginnings on the African plains. Perhaps we abstract our penchant for violence to games. I think that is a good thing.
To the author's point on the racism of football, feel free to observe any crowded stadium to judge for yourself. If no one is forced to play, who exactly needs to be saved? In fact, football seems to bring Americans together across racial divides perpetuated by liberals and conservatives alike.
Can we please get our feet on solid ground, especially during the Trump years? Direct your passions and angst toward something more productive than games. If I feel this way about the Left, and I know other liberals do too, how can we expect moderates and conservatives to shift toward our side in 2018?
20
Well said. I stopped voting for Democrats because the party has shown itself to be far more concerned with the kind of rubbish expressed here than with the concerns of ordinary normal Americans.
1
There is racism implicit in media coverage of black football players: recently a prominent white radio host criticized Cam Newton as a scrambling quarterback who "didn't put the work in watching tape" that a pocket passer like Tom Brady does. It was the old: the black guy's good because he's athletic but lazy, the white guy's good because he's smart and works hard, even though he's slow.
For university football, it still provides thousands of young men scholarships. It's a risky sport, but so is skydiving and skiing and many others; they should know it's dangers before they ever put a helmet on. That's the responsibility of youth football, schools, and their parents. As an alumnus at a major school (U.c.l.a.), I would not support paying our coach more than the average professor's salary. But the last quote is bogus: I have attended and cheered at many univ. sporting events, not just football, and it was done out of love of the sport and the athlete's dedication. I did the same in high school and I was cheered on throughout my youth in various sports.
Sport is a beautiful, healthy thing. Even dangerous ones. It's how they're conducted that matters. Most university sports are great, life affirming opportunities for athletes. Football has been harmed by its own success. As for the inevitable racism behind it, that is not inherent in the sport.
For university football, it still provides thousands of young men scholarships. It's a risky sport, but so is skydiving and skiing and many others; they should know it's dangers before they ever put a helmet on. That's the responsibility of youth football, schools, and their parents. As an alumnus at a major school (U.c.l.a.), I would not support paying our coach more than the average professor's salary. But the last quote is bogus: I have attended and cheered at many univ. sporting events, not just football, and it was done out of love of the sport and the athlete's dedication. I did the same in high school and I was cheered on throughout my youth in various sports.
Sport is a beautiful, healthy thing. Even dangerous ones. It's how they're conducted that matters. Most university sports are great, life affirming opportunities for athletes. Football has been harmed by its own success. As for the inevitable racism behind it, that is not inherent in the sport.
3
The author focused on LSU in this opinion piece. Couple of interesting and perhaps relevant facts.
William Tecumseh Sherman was appointed as the LSU's first Superintendent in 1860. He resigned with the start of the Civil War but was supportive of the institution in the post war years. James Carville has suggested that the historic Parade Grounds be named for Sherman.
The other interesting fact is how LSU's mascot came to be the tiger. This is a quote from the first football coach who was also the Dean of Science on why the tiger was selected in 1894.
"It was the custom at that time, for some occult reason, to call football teams by the names of vicious animals; the Yale Bulldogs and the Princeton Tigers, for example. This is still the vogue. It struck me that purple and gold looked Tigerish enough and I suggested that we choose “Louisiana Tigers,” all in conference with the boys. The Louisiana Tigers had represented the state in Civil War and had been known for their hard fighting. This name was applied collectively to the New Orleans Zouaves, the Donaldsonville Cannoniers, and to a number of other Louisiana companies sent to Virginia, who seemed to have the faculty of getting into the hardest part of the fighting and staying there, most of them permanently. One company I knew of went in 200 strong; only 28 returned and many of these were wounded."
William Tecumseh Sherman was appointed as the LSU's first Superintendent in 1860. He resigned with the start of the Civil War but was supportive of the institution in the post war years. James Carville has suggested that the historic Parade Grounds be named for Sherman.
The other interesting fact is how LSU's mascot came to be the tiger. This is a quote from the first football coach who was also the Dean of Science on why the tiger was selected in 1894.
"It was the custom at that time, for some occult reason, to call football teams by the names of vicious animals; the Yale Bulldogs and the Princeton Tigers, for example. This is still the vogue. It struck me that purple and gold looked Tigerish enough and I suggested that we choose “Louisiana Tigers,” all in conference with the boys. The Louisiana Tigers had represented the state in Civil War and had been known for their hard fighting. This name was applied collectively to the New Orleans Zouaves, the Donaldsonville Cannoniers, and to a number of other Louisiana companies sent to Virginia, who seemed to have the faculty of getting into the hardest part of the fighting and staying there, most of them permanently. One company I knew of went in 200 strong; only 28 returned and many of these were wounded."
I essentially stopped watching and following college football a few years ago. I am unable to ignore the hypocrisy it takes as a medical doctor to enjoy these young men sacrificing their health for the team and the propaganda machines present at every university and the major sports networks like ESPN. The economics are ridiculous, and these young men are essentially brainwashed into thinking they are winning in the end. It is not combat. It is a game. It is not worth tearing your knee up or the far more certain injuries to one's brain when you use your body as a weapon. Somehow, even though more people realize the dangers and the ethical dilemmas, the sport gets even more popular and makes even more money. What will it take to change this equation? I think we will see it sooner than later as research into brain injuries and sports continues.
11
For all this analysis centered on the supposed goal of football fans to use and consume "their" athletes, I am moved to ask: do none of the players play the game because they enjoy doing so? Did they have no choice in the matter?
For all the apparent concern over players, the player perspective is conspicuously absent from this article.
Truly, it's difficult to fully bemoan the players' situation when they have as much choice in the matter as the rest of us. These are 18-year-old+ men. If they do not want to play football for free (which it isn't necessarily - there are scholarships) or because of the health risks, then they don't have to. Why must we impose our collective racial guilt as fans on the risk/reward choices of the players? If the sport dies out because no one will play it, then so be it. But in the meantime, must we really flagellate ourselves for watching people voluntarily play a game enjoyed by all, just because racist people exist? (Could we then enjoy *any* activity? Everything in America has a history steeped in racism, sexism, or some other evil.)
Some of us want the players to earn wages, will cheer on a good player of any race, and are appalled at this scapegoating phenomenon. Yet the "we" of your article sounds rather more suspiciously like a prejudiced "you people," failing to accept that any fans could be different from those of 1960s Ole Miss. Moreover, merely disallowing ourselves from enjoying a game will not correct a single injustice.
For all the apparent concern over players, the player perspective is conspicuously absent from this article.
Truly, it's difficult to fully bemoan the players' situation when they have as much choice in the matter as the rest of us. These are 18-year-old+ men. If they do not want to play football for free (which it isn't necessarily - there are scholarships) or because of the health risks, then they don't have to. Why must we impose our collective racial guilt as fans on the risk/reward choices of the players? If the sport dies out because no one will play it, then so be it. But in the meantime, must we really flagellate ourselves for watching people voluntarily play a game enjoyed by all, just because racist people exist? (Could we then enjoy *any* activity? Everything in America has a history steeped in racism, sexism, or some other evil.)
Some of us want the players to earn wages, will cheer on a good player of any race, and are appalled at this scapegoating phenomenon. Yet the "we" of your article sounds rather more suspiciously like a prejudiced "you people," failing to accept that any fans could be different from those of 1960s Ole Miss. Moreover, merely disallowing ourselves from enjoying a game will not correct a single injustice.
5
My question, which Mr. Tarver addresses only in passing is, "Where is our federal government in this debate?" We have individuals as young as 17 being exposed to risks which would not only get an ordinary employer shut down, they would likely face fines and possibly criminal charges. Our history is replete with examples of the federal government stepping in to protect workers from unsafe and unfair working conditions. We have outlawed sports that inflict injuries or death to animals; but we're not willing to provide those same protections to athletes?
2
Group identity for being an American, a Christian, and a fan tend to be more of a conservative trait.
I would be interested in the percentages of political party for fans who exhibit the subjectivization mentioned.
Being in the South, I see the love of college football parallels the love of military and religion.
And while I know lots of liberal sports fans, I do see a difference in the fandom, the identification with clothing and license plates, etc. in conservatives.
Of course this is my observation and not scientific data.
I would be interested in the percentages of political party for fans who exhibit the subjectivization mentioned.
Being in the South, I see the love of college football parallels the love of military and religion.
And while I know lots of liberal sports fans, I do see a difference in the fandom, the identification with clothing and license plates, etc. in conservatives.
Of course this is my observation and not scientific data.
2
Great essay, but an overlooked additional problem lies with the fan. I see men (and some women) who live for the game to the exclusion of their studies (if in college), their families or other relationships and pastimes. I view this as an opportunity cost for the individual and a brain drain for the nation. If a fraction of the time spent on football were devoted to more productive activities, including taking care of their families, or paying attention to political antics, our country would be far better off. Football is directly related to the dumbing down of Americans.
3
Aside from the violence, injuries, and corruption in professional football (why does the NFL have tax exempt status when it rakes in the dough), my problem is with the extreme excess with which Americans are devoted to sport (football, basketball, baseball, etc.) while choosing to shun other more intellectual pursuits. If a fraction of the collective amount of time that Americans spend watching and talking about sports was spent in learning something useful to the success of their lives, the American population would be unrecognizable in its brilliance. Sport has a place, but it shouldn't be promoted to the extent it is. When I see cashiers in the grocery store going on and on about one team versus another, and I ask them who is the prime minister of Canada, and they answer Winston Churchill, I know how dumbed down our country has become.
10
I could look up the Prime Minister of Canada via Google, but even I know that Winston Churchill has been dead for about 50 years.
Sadly, a strong football team actually helps enrollment. THAT is the problem.
2
College football is a republican sport.
3
I was at a dry cleaners in Dallas when a guy, looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger, tall, buff, very muscular and wearing a dark blue inscrutable "Terminator eye band" walked in. He did not smile, slid in like he owned the place (White men do that a lot)...and only when I addressed him did he bother to remove his glass and speak to me. He was wearing a T shirt that read "Jesuit Football". I thought it was funny, so I asked him what it was, or what it meant. He tried to explain what Jesuit meant. I said, several times, "I know what Jesuit means. What does 'Jesuit Football' mean?" He said that he was a teacher at a Jesuit school and it was their football team's t-shirt.
I wondered if the man really knew the values of the Jesuits. Here is a brief definition. "Jesuits are members of the Society of Jesus (S.J.), a Roman Catholic order of religious men, founded by St. Ignatius of Loyola, noted for its educational, missionary, and charitable works, once regarded by many as the principal agent of the Counter-Reformation, and later a leading force in modernizing the church".
When Jerry Lewis brilliantly shows how a system of autocrats and fascists turn adult men into infants and goofy idiots (Errand Boy, Nutty Professor, etc)...you realize everything in the White man's world is up for grabs, distortion, exploitation and ruthless profiteering.
Jesuit Football indeed! The Whole Culture.
I wondered if the man really knew the values of the Jesuits. Here is a brief definition. "Jesuits are members of the Society of Jesus (S.J.), a Roman Catholic order of religious men, founded by St. Ignatius of Loyola, noted for its educational, missionary, and charitable works, once regarded by many as the principal agent of the Counter-Reformation, and later a leading force in modernizing the church".
When Jerry Lewis brilliantly shows how a system of autocrats and fascists turn adult men into infants and goofy idiots (Errand Boy, Nutty Professor, etc)...you realize everything in the White man's world is up for grabs, distortion, exploitation and ruthless profiteering.
Jesuit Football indeed! The Whole Culture.
6
You need to lighten up...
2
I became a football fan over 50 years ago and fanatically followed the Giants and Penn State, which would become my alma mater. Since he brain damage revelations and the Sandusky-Paterno scandal, football literally makes me sick to my stomach. The irony is that millions of middle and upper middle class parents, who forbid their sons to play football, heartily watch the sons of minority and lower class parents bash their brains out every week. We need to find something else to do on the weekends.
16
Don't like Tarver? Don't watch, you're in no position to make decisions for others.
Go away.
Go away.
5
Someone once said "The pioneers take the arrows". Blacks playing football in the early days, especially in the SEC,were not always cheered. According to an article in the Lexington Herald-Leader, my late husband was the first Negro to try out for the University of Kentucky football team in 1964. He didn't make the team. He said it was because they were trying to kill him. I always thought that was just sour grapes and because he had a anger management problem. In 1967 Nat Northington and Greg Page made the team. However, Greg was injured during a team drill practice. He was paralyzed from the neck down and died 38 days later. He never got to play for UK. It was called a freak accident. And no one could prove it otherwise. Nat did play for UK but transferred to Western Kentucky University at the end of the season. My husband may not have been good enough to make the team but I do believe his teammates were trying to disable him.
6
Another whole negative aspect of football is the psychological structure. We invent an activity that has only one purpose: to allow the players intimidate, dominate, and ultimately "beat" their rival. And they (and their fans, friends, and family) bestow rewards of all sorts simply for their successful aggression. (Rewards- fame, gifts, scholarships, sex, special privileges, the list goes on and on) Normal parents try to teach children NOT to pursue pointless aggression against others as part of becoming mature adults. Logic would suggest that participation in football would produce aggressive tendencies and unusual thoughts of self-entitlement. How many team related rapes are in the news? One could draw many parallels between the lure, aggression, and rewards of being on a football team with those of being in a street gang. And nowhere is there any hint of the value of producing something good, either physical or artistic.
3
Oh man. I would love to stroll through the Ole Miss (and 'bama, and LSU) tailgating parties wearing my Black Lives Matter T-shirt.
(I'm a white female, the reaction would be bad enough but one heckuva lot worse, If I were black.)
(I'm a white female, the reaction would be bad enough but one heckuva lot worse, If I were black.)
4
How many people today remember that the primary purpose of a university used to be to educate its students, not to produce championship football teams?
15
The irony being that those black athletes could virtually overnight put an end to incessant attempts at voter suppression in many states where college football is deified. A college without African American athletes isn't winning anything in basketball, football, and other sports. When I read of states continuing attempts to enact Jim Crow type legislation and then I read about some of the most coveted African-American high school recruits announcing "I've decided to attend the University of Dixie to further my athletic career" the cognitive disconnect I experience is a real head scratcher. And the voter suppression is just the tip of a truly deep iceberg. They have so much potential political power and they don't utilize it.
9
"A college without African American athletes isn't winning anything in basketball, football, and other sports"
Hmmm, now, if someone promulgated a similar argument about comparing academic achievement of schools with & without African Americans, the outrage and moral indignation would be DEAFENING.
We had better start identifying and counteracting these blatant hypocritical attitudes held by many on the subject of race in this country. You can't have it both ways : either race is a determining factor governing ALL endeavors, or it is a governing factor for NO endeavors. Picking and choosing which exploits one's race advantageously influences is not going to pass muster.
Hmmm, now, if someone promulgated a similar argument about comparing academic achievement of schools with & without African Americans, the outrage and moral indignation would be DEAFENING.
We had better start identifying and counteracting these blatant hypocritical attitudes held by many on the subject of race in this country. You can't have it both ways : either race is a determining factor governing ALL endeavors, or it is a governing factor for NO endeavors. Picking and choosing which exploits one's race advantageously influences is not going to pass muster.
1
Inquiring minds of the SEC want to know if Dr. Tarver still roots for the Tigers.
1
In New Jersey, the highest paid state employee is Rutgers football coach,followed by the basketball coach...more than the dean ,any professor, the head of the state police,even our corpulent governor...
3
1) Crazy about football? Speak for yourself. College or pro, it's a corporation, and one as self-serving and greedy as any other. Yes, all players probably should be paid, but out in the real world rather than associated with a taxpayer-subsidized college. Take it off-campus! 2) Tying EVERYTHING past, present and future to racism is becoming nauseous and counter-productive. But it sure gives "writers" something to write about, eh? Nor do I want to hear this type of incessant drum-beating about the past and apparently never-ending abuse of MY kind (female) or MY kind (elderly).
1
Spot-on correct, Professor, on every point that you've made here. Hat tip.
5
I hope the author and all of his followers remember the end of college football is the end of every women's athletic scholarship, coach, training facility, travel to competitions, etc. You kill college football, all of women's athletics goes with it.
6
Title IX...and all correlating male sports. Maybe the college world will realize that both male and female sports can survive without football, and that the harm of capitalistic sports in college far outweighs the benefit for relatively few.
3
Sounds like a hostage negotiation...
1
Nice hostage threat- "you take one step closer to my college football and the womens' sports get it!" Well I for one would be willing to test the premise to see if you're right. I doubt you are but even if you are it's worth it.
The marriage of sports and the university does not exist in England, France, Germany, Japan and other industrialized countries. Ours is a plantation system that exploits young people for the profit of the administration and coaches.
College football has a gladiator aspect, incites a fervor, has a heritage, great pageantry, and spectacularly mounted television coverage. There's also millions gambled on games each week. It's easy to understand its popularity.
College football is a diversion, an entertainment, a big moneymaker, but it really does nothing to raise the standard of living of the American populace.
There are many unseemly aspects to the enterprise of college football. I understand why a young African American would want to matriculate to a SEC school to play football. It's an education, but more importantly it raises the probability of playing in the NFL where the minimum salary is $465,000 per year.
You see huge crowds of white people cheering the African Americans who ply their trade for Alabama and Auburn; the same crowds who elect people like Donald Trump and Jeff Sessions, the same sorts of people who induced Adolf Hitler to label athletes as "America's black auxiliary."
And that's what college football is: an auxiliary that should have nothing more than a nominal attachment to the university.
Given the chances of serious injury, a college scholarship is not commensurate for the players, especially considering football is a full-time job.
College football has a gladiator aspect, incites a fervor, has a heritage, great pageantry, and spectacularly mounted television coverage. There's also millions gambled on games each week. It's easy to understand its popularity.
College football is a diversion, an entertainment, a big moneymaker, but it really does nothing to raise the standard of living of the American populace.
There are many unseemly aspects to the enterprise of college football. I understand why a young African American would want to matriculate to a SEC school to play football. It's an education, but more importantly it raises the probability of playing in the NFL where the minimum salary is $465,000 per year.
You see huge crowds of white people cheering the African Americans who ply their trade for Alabama and Auburn; the same crowds who elect people like Donald Trump and Jeff Sessions, the same sorts of people who induced Adolf Hitler to label athletes as "America's black auxiliary."
And that's what college football is: an auxiliary that should have nothing more than a nominal attachment to the university.
Given the chances of serious injury, a college scholarship is not commensurate for the players, especially considering football is a full-time job.
7
Erin Tarver failed to mention the gorilla in the collegiate football and basketball rooms: gambling. For someone so critical of college sports, you'd think he'd mention the most corrosive element.
2
There is no point in this article. It's just rambling complaining.
5
The football field is probably among the safest places in the country for black males to congregate together in the presence of white police without much fear of confrontation. Indeed its one of the few places ( including the basketball courts) where black men do receive respect for their talents from their white counterpart students on campus. So long as black athletes confine themselves themselves "to serving" their respective universities and not asking for civil treatment after the game, white college America is happy.
For the college communities, the scene is pretty much the same, though the safety factor goes down for black students once they leave the campus. This is part of the institutionalized racism that white America lives in denial about, north, south,east and west. Ditto this situation for black male pro athletes.
It would be a stretch to believe it would happen, but if black athletes organized around the treatment of "their" people throughout the country, they could probably have a significant impact on how African Americans are treated daily in our society.
Imagine a fall Saturday or Sunday where black athletes decided "not to play" or outright strike to protest how their community was being treated in America.The resultant apoplexy might give white Amerika pause to take a better look at itself.
But maybe not.
For the college communities, the scene is pretty much the same, though the safety factor goes down for black students once they leave the campus. This is part of the institutionalized racism that white America lives in denial about, north, south,east and west. Ditto this situation for black male pro athletes.
It would be a stretch to believe it would happen, but if black athletes organized around the treatment of "their" people throughout the country, they could probably have a significant impact on how African Americans are treated daily in our society.
Imagine a fall Saturday or Sunday where black athletes decided "not to play" or outright strike to protest how their community was being treated in America.The resultant apoplexy might give white Amerika pause to take a better look at itself.
But maybe not.
5
How can anyone be an advocate of racial equality and qualify law enforcement as "white police". Please examine the minority breakdown of the officers from the Freddie Gray, Eric Garner and Sandra Bland encounters. With the extent of hypocrisy of attitudes on race held by commentators here, it's not at all surprising that this country is steaming full ahead towards major civil unrest.
1
So-called "elite football" at all levels is over wrought with infantile emotions and values that mask robotic conformity with an emphasis on teamwork and team loyalty. Thow in the fact that at the college and pro levels it's played disproportionately by African American men who continue to suffer immeasurably in the society generally, and it's clear the game is mostly a symptom of societal rot. By the way, it's also not good for the brain.
4
I don't know if anyone else has made this comment but:
The American obsession with college sports is a phenomenon utterly unknown outside the USA. The idea of a university spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year on games seems completely ridiculous to the students, professors and benefactors of the great universities of the rest of the world.
Oxford and Cambridge have a little rowing race every year, and the British public like to watch it on TV. Beyond that, university sports in places like Oxbridge, the Sorbonne, Copenhagen, Utrecht, Gothenberg, Tokyo, etc... are no more than pleasant little pastimes. Our extravagant gladiatorial spectacles are seen as a sure sign that the USA is a culture in decline.
The American obsession with college sports is a phenomenon utterly unknown outside the USA. The idea of a university spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year on games seems completely ridiculous to the students, professors and benefactors of the great universities of the rest of the world.
Oxford and Cambridge have a little rowing race every year, and the British public like to watch it on TV. Beyond that, university sports in places like Oxbridge, the Sorbonne, Copenhagen, Utrecht, Gothenberg, Tokyo, etc... are no more than pleasant little pastimes. Our extravagant gladiatorial spectacles are seen as a sure sign that the USA is a culture in decline.
5
People like you when you win, and dislike you when you lose—it’s as simple as that. When you win, everything else is overlooked, ignored, forgiven; when you lose, you find out how they really feel about you. From superhuman to human.
A bit of over analysis. I am a graduate of the University of Alabama. A fan of the Alabama Crimson Tide though I graduated almost 40 years ago during the Age of Bear Bryant. Why I remain a fan is quite simple. It was an activity of youth, it is a tradition and is a constant reminder of youthful more happy days. With Trump in the White House, a reminder of better happier days makes me more ready than usual for the seasons to turn, the traditions to renew, and the fires of youth relit.
2
Having lived abroad, including the "mother country", the inventor of both English and football, that is real football I have trouble accepting the very term football. As Hugh, that reader from Eugene, OR suggests call this most American of pastimes should be called Roman Circus , or again to steal its name from a different endeavor simply Circus.
The American pastime? What happened to baseball ? Too slow, boring, hardly any blood, injuries not of the life-threatening the oh-so-charitable, oh-so-"Christians" average Joes very much cherish. And average Janes too, let's not forget them, the mothers, sisters and spouses of America. "Football widows" has become a passé term.
I would like not even go into the politics, but this is not partisan politics "it is the culture stupid". Makes me remember that around the last world cup that jock Ann Coulter, a hero of the crazies, one of the pioneers of the alt-right before the term even existed -by alt meaning altered state-. For lack of a better issue, she ranted about the record ratings for the quadrennial global event among US TV viewers as proof of the malign influence of migrants.
The vampire-looking and vampire-thinking "conservative" "pundit". Both between quotes. Naturally, one of the first enrollees in the T campaign.
The American pastime? What happened to baseball ? Too slow, boring, hardly any blood, injuries not of the life-threatening the oh-so-charitable, oh-so-"Christians" average Joes very much cherish. And average Janes too, let's not forget them, the mothers, sisters and spouses of America. "Football widows" has become a passé term.
I would like not even go into the politics, but this is not partisan politics "it is the culture stupid". Makes me remember that around the last world cup that jock Ann Coulter, a hero of the crazies, one of the pioneers of the alt-right before the term even existed -by alt meaning altered state-. For lack of a better issue, she ranted about the record ratings for the quadrennial global event among US TV viewers as proof of the malign influence of migrants.
The vampire-looking and vampire-thinking "conservative" "pundit". Both between quotes. Naturally, one of the first enrollees in the T campaign.
1
This piece is incisive and sadly informative. The analogy of the sports field and slavery is apt here. Black men toiling in the fields for little or no compensation for the benefit and entertainment of the majority white population. The cultural sense of ownership of these athletes is too analogous to blacks being held as chattel to be dismissed. Sports provided blacks an opportunity to be seen favorably by the public, as long as they stayed in 'their place.' The militaristic aspect of football is also important, as mentioned, to provide a sense of raw masculine power vanquishing rival communities in mini-wars. The college football system is a derivative of the plantation system. O.J. Simpson was probably the first college athlete to be marketed in an 'All American' light rather than just as a primitive savage. Many of the criticisms of college football also hold for the NFL. Often, blacks are maligned for being compensated well. America seems to hate a black man who is free to seek opportunity and financial success as freely as whites do in any other industry. I remember the coining of the term "Reggie White money" which sounded derisive at the time. The entire football industry should be shaking given the disclosure of CTE and it's eventual impact on recruitment on future generations. However, and most egregiously, the black balling of Colin Kaepernick says to all black aspiring college football players; step out of your place and you won't be here for long!
13
Wow, you must think black young are stupid to voluntarily play football.
1
Let's be blunt about what people (not me) are cheering. Violence, potential brain damage, the possibility of long-term disability, and individuals who we call students-athletes, some of whom are much more the latter than the former.
6
I don't wish to detract from the very important points being made here, but as a current student at the University of Mississippi, I'd like to applaud my university's attempts at removing Confederate symbols from campus and our gameday experience. The history of the school is surely problematic, but "Dixie" is no longer played, the Mississippi flag (which still contains the stars and bars) is no longer flown, and Colonel Reb has long since been suspended. The Confederate statues still stand, but many of us still at the University seek to move it forward into a new and more welcoming era. There's much work to be done, but progress *is* being made- even if we have more ground to cover than others.
5
I love College Football but think it's days are numbered as we know it. Not a fan of SEC football which is a plantation system.
The best single thing that could be done to improve graduation rates is to ban Athletic Scholarships and tighten academic eligibility. The argument that players getting a tuition scholarship are not paid is farcical. Price out 4 years of tuition at any major University.
The best single thing that could be done to improve graduation rates is to ban Athletic Scholarships and tighten academic eligibility. The argument that players getting a tuition scholarship are not paid is farcical. Price out 4 years of tuition at any major University.
2
The writer looks for all sorts of so-called "evidence" that those of us who appreciate the game are somehow neanderthals and hidden racists. I played the sport, quite well, and have always enjoyed the teamwork it requires to do it well. Football teamwork is more complex and has more artistry, when compared with basketball, baseball and soccer (all of which I also played and enjoyed). I see, now, the damage it does and that worries me. However, I don't treat people differently by color of their skin based on winning or losing. That assertion, I think, is absurd. As for Kapernick, anyone who damages a brand in business, generally, doesn't last long. The NFL is a business and he does perpetual damage to it by his unwillingness or inability to articulate his grievance or the standards he is holding society to. What standard is he using that will cause him to stand? He doesn't have one, other than his own perception. What is the connection between his grievance and the symbol of the country? There isn't any, frankly. He also divides a team, which requires teamwork to be successful. Do you think the locker rooms he has participated in agree with him? I have 5 relatives buried in Arlington National Cemetery, who sacrificed their lives for this country. Warts and all, it remains my country. When has Kapernick ever sacrificed like that? I wouldn't want such a divisive, and wrong, figure in my locker room.
4
What about the serious neural damage being done to virtually all football players?
Why should anyone cheer a sport that is literally destroying the lives of the players?
Here's what Boomer Esiason says:
"If I died tomorrow and my brain was taken and researched and I was found to have CTE, which most likely I have," Esiason said Monday morning on WFAN's "Boomer and Carton." "Because I think all football players probably have it, the way I read the way I see it.
"But we don't know all the answers."
Esiason’s comments come two weeks after a study on Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) showed that nearly every former NFL’s player’s brain examined during research revealed evidence of the degenerative brain disease.
So have a little "fun" watching young men in the process of being destroyed?
Why should anyone cheer a sport that is literally destroying the lives of the players?
Here's what Boomer Esiason says:
"If I died tomorrow and my brain was taken and researched and I was found to have CTE, which most likely I have," Esiason said Monday morning on WFAN's "Boomer and Carton." "Because I think all football players probably have it, the way I read the way I see it.
"But we don't know all the answers."
Esiason’s comments come two weeks after a study on Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) showed that nearly every former NFL’s player’s brain examined during research revealed evidence of the degenerative brain disease.
So have a little "fun" watching young men in the process of being destroyed?
6
I'm a college professor, as well, Assistant Professor Erin C. Tarver. I don't need to look within when watching college football Assistant Professor Tarver. I root for the kids on the field.
This piece could have been strengthened by including the views/philosophy of some African Americans. It might have been interesting hearing the views of a few black football players as well. You have a photo of Auburn for this story. Heisman winner Bo Jackson would have added some depth to the piece. Plus, he's easy to find, he's on the sidelines whenever Auburn plays.
This piece could have been strengthened by including the views/philosophy of some African Americans. It might have been interesting hearing the views of a few black football players as well. You have a photo of Auburn for this story. Heisman winner Bo Jackson would have added some depth to the piece. Plus, he's easy to find, he's on the sidelines whenever Auburn plays.
3
Bo Jackson, the Greatest American Athlete of all time.
Erin,
You make fair points of the downside, but you don't discuss the other side of the ledger. Like most things involving the human psyche, motivations are complex and rarely easily silo-d. That humans seek community is not surprising, and i doubt that most sports fans are racist (though if you were looking for those that are Louisiana would probably be a great place to start). Where would your rather teach Erin - Emory, or a school with a rich athletics heritage like Duke (in the South) or Harvard, Michigan (great football and philosophy) or Stanford? Like most things, everything in moderation - if a fan is a true fanatic, she had probably gone overboard..
You make fair points of the downside, but you don't discuss the other side of the ledger. Like most things involving the human psyche, motivations are complex and rarely easily silo-d. That humans seek community is not surprising, and i doubt that most sports fans are racist (though if you were looking for those that are Louisiana would probably be a great place to start). Where would your rather teach Erin - Emory, or a school with a rich athletics heritage like Duke (in the South) or Harvard, Michigan (great football and philosophy) or Stanford? Like most things, everything in moderation - if a fan is a true fanatic, she had probably gone overboard..
3
Since the article mostly discusses LSU and Ole Miss, why the picture of Auburn and why not Alabama?
But on topic, it is galling that the same people who fill these stadiums are the same who oppose tax increases to improve education and other social measures in the South. Because, “that RV tank ain’t going to fill itself.”
BTW, Auburn has a cheer/fight song sung to the tune of the Battle Hymn of the Republic. How's that for co-opting the victor?
But on topic, it is galling that the same people who fill these stadiums are the same who oppose tax increases to improve education and other social measures in the South. Because, “that RV tank ain’t going to fill itself.”
BTW, Auburn has a cheer/fight song sung to the tune of the Battle Hymn of the Republic. How's that for co-opting the victor?
2
There is so much racism tied up with the Democratic Party that I demand it be abandoned, never to rise again. This bothers me because I have always registered as a Dem, but the entire slavery culture of the Confederacy was Democrat.
We have now gone from the KKK - founded by Democrats - dressing up to hide their faces to Antifa hired by Democrats to go around with their heads covered while terrorizing innocent people and throwing Molotov cocktails.
There is simply too much criminality and racism in the Democratic Party for it to be allowed to even use that name any more.
We have now gone from the KKK - founded by Democrats - dressing up to hide their faces to Antifa hired by Democrats to go around with their heads covered while terrorizing innocent people and throwing Molotov cocktails.
There is simply too much criminality and racism in the Democratic Party for it to be allowed to even use that name any more.
4
Thanks for the message from the Bizzarro world Superman
U of Alabama compensation 2013
Football player $0
President $725,000
Football coach $5,000,000
End of story
Football player $0
President $725,000
Football coach $5,000,000
End of story
10
Um, no
Football player $25,336 (in state) or $41,816 (out of state) - cost of attendance
Football player $25,336 (in state) or $41,816 (out of state) - cost of attendance
4
Re Kenneth Irvine:
Correction of your facts.
Football Player- Tuition $26,950 per year.
Correction of your facts.
Football Player- Tuition $26,950 per year.
If you wanted to keep African American (and other minorities) oppressed, you couldn't come up with a better system than the NFL and NBA. Millions of kids spend countless hours on the playing field and in the gym starting in junior high and high school. These are hours not spent studying. If they work hard enough at their sport they get into a college program. Here again, the emphasis is on playing ball - not studying. Out the many thousands that make it into a college only a relative handful win the lottery - a career as a pro. The rest soon realize that they don't have the skills to get a "real" job.
9
So, being a sports fan makes me a... racist? Seriously? It's a bit weird that the Times is so anti-sports. I guess it's hard to look at a system where hard work, talent and physical attributes largely determine the outcome of an event. Too bad we can't have a government-appointed panel to even out the sides of every game so that the outcome is always a tie. After all, equality-of-outcome is all the rage in liberal America.
I know that the idea that there may actually be winners and losers in life is mortifying to the editorial staff of the Gray Lady, but can't we just watch a game and enjoy it without having to worry whether our viewership counts as a micro-agression?
I know that the idea that there may actually be winners and losers in life is mortifying to the editorial staff of the Gray Lady, but can't we just watch a game and enjoy it without having to worry whether our viewership counts as a micro-agression?
11
Sports fans, ask yourselves about the use of and the popularity of the verb "own"
in contemporary sports commentary.
in contemporary sports commentary.
2
If the author actually cared about the answer, then we'd have see this op-ed in Sports Illustrated with perhaps fewer citations from early 20th century Harvard essays. But no. We have it here, accomplishing nothing but some pearl-clutching. If you want change, you must pivot away from the choir.
1
As other readers have observed, more and more parents are keeping their children from playing football. I haven't seen empirical evidence that the proportion of poor black children playing football is getting larger, but one has to wonder, will the college and pro ranks will eventually be full of players who had no alternatives?
Big-time college sports offers a distorted view of our society. I don't feel like giving them any more of my money.
Big-time college sports offers a distorted view of our society. I don't feel like giving them any more of my money.
6
When a few top universities that field Division I FBS teams demonstrate the courage to stand up to their alums and announce the cessation of their football program, then the sport as we know it will end. It cannot come soon enough, for all the reasons Prof Tarver lists.
3
College football reinforces our tribalism. It is a brutal game and is a substitute for war even though the obvious and not so obvious injuries are real. The main purpose of football is to intimidate and injure your opponent and the fans love it. One has only to look at what UFC has provided for the blood lust of the population and they call it a sport.
3
I disagree about exploitation. College Football is -voluntary-. It has been known for decades that the basics of College Football is you will play under incredibly restrictive rules in which the player well knows they will not share in the enourmous revenue streams that coaches, NCAA officials, and other univerisity officials will enjoy. Any player also today, knows that by playing football they have extremely high probability of having life long medical issues. I personally consider college athletics to be some of the most immoral operations in the United States, but it also the easiest to avoid....simply don't sign up.
3
As I finish the loan applications so my non-athlete son can enroll for the coming university semester, I have a hard time feeling sorry for student athletes. Tuition IS their compensation.
4
But so many black athletes ONLY get into college by virtue of their athletic skills that we appear racist calling for that to stop.
Hopefully, your son doesn't waste his student years, partying them away in a Fraternity, or other heavy social "grouping" events. He actually has the time to be an academic student, and he is doing just that. These football players do not have that time, for example. The set-up is quite cruel. These 100% athletes should be in the minor league "on the street", and probably making much more money than "tuition".---- They can't be students, 100% present and involved in classroom work.
3
Last week it was an op-ed about the racism inherent in the mortgage deduction. This week, it's the racism expressed from the stadium seat. I was going to watch the eclipse but that might be Druid cultural appropriation, or something mostly whites do, or maybe the glasses were made in third world sweatshops, or a topic studied by largely white academic, or...
14
I wouldn't want to denigrate the central point here, that it's easy to read in too much optimism from white fans' acceptance of black college athletes. But I would say a point of mitigation is that it's better than nothing. Often, star players are interviewed and become local and regional celebrities and lo and behold white fans see the young man (and, in sports other than football, young woman) as a person. It might be the only black person they "know." This is hardly true exclusively of the South, and in the Midwest, where college football is as big in many places, probably even more so. But yes, college sports, not just football, and not just at the most high-profile level, is highly exploitive. Coaches own these kids. There's really no such thing as "voluntary" off-season workouts; coaches know who shows up and who doesn't. And sure, an athletics grant-in-aid is way to finance college, but if an athlete crosses a coach, goodbye scholarship, goodbye college, and athletes often are steered, sometimes not so gently, into majors not their choosing and kept from getting the full benefit of academic opportunities. I do feel greasy following my alma mater's team -- a major-conference program with a respectable won-loss record most seasons and, most thankfully, no major NCAA sanctions -- but not as much as watching the far more violent and misogynist NFL. I'm not sure I can keep following, though, as evidence mounts of the brain damage any level of football can do.
2
College and pro sports make money by allowing child-like adult to play children's games to entertained the child-minded masses for the benefit of the rich.
And unlike gladiators, death from disability occurs far off the playing field, long after the player has left. So we don't have to know or care about this.
And unlike gladiators, death from disability occurs far off the playing field, long after the player has left. So we don't have to know or care about this.
3
Whatever its merits, the article views fandom from a white-centric perspective.
Are whites the only sports fans?
Are whites the only sports fans?
7
Excellent point - they aren't
1
Rascism isn't the half of it. Exploiting the dreams of young men who otherwise could not attend college either for economic or educational reasons and leaving them with no education and, in some cases, crippling injuries that manifest years later.
2
When you talk about the profitability of football programs at FBS schools, you also have to consider that when the football team does well on the field, applications to the school increase and so do financial contributions from alumni. It is still true at many schools that the football money that comes in from all sources (tickets, TV, merchandising, etc.) goes a long way toward paying for much of the cost of non-revenue sports. And, by the way, nobody puts a gun to these athletes' heads to force them to play football. They are giving their football services in exchange for a college education or for training to become a professional player. I will not lose any sleep over the players not sharing in the riches.
2
When the players leave the field and the fans leave the stadium real life begins. The adjustment for the players, long term, is often more painful than the hits taken on the field. The fans, on the other hand, likely experience only short-term exhilaration or disappointment.
1
With college football season coming on, I am torn between fond memories--of games in the old classic bowl stadium at the University of Minnesota when they first had black players--and concerns such as discussed here. Sandy Stevens, Judge Dickson, Allan Page, Bobby Bell, Carl Eller and Jay Sharpe played in the late '50s and early'60s, some of the first black players in the Big Ten. They ended one year rated number one, as did a few Gopher teams in the '30s when Bronko Nagurski, a Ukrainian from Canada, was the big star. Bell and Eller were NFL stars, as was Page, who later became a state supreme court justice. I don't think Dickson ever became a judge.
Now it is hard to catch that football fever. We know too much. About injuries and about players being exploited, essentially being hired mostly for free, decked out like gladiators, inflicting lasting punishment on each other's brains while they are in institutions of learning. And there is the racial or racism aspect.
It's about time we grew up and faced facts. And stopped taking football so seriously, maybe locating a copy of the old book by humorist Max Shulman about the University of Minnesota back when football players were Finns with names like Eino Ffliikkiinnenn, communists roamed the campus, and the direction north had not yet been discovered.
Now it is hard to catch that football fever. We know too much. About injuries and about players being exploited, essentially being hired mostly for free, decked out like gladiators, inflicting lasting punishment on each other's brains while they are in institutions of learning. And there is the racial or racism aspect.
It's about time we grew up and faced facts. And stopped taking football so seriously, maybe locating a copy of the old book by humorist Max Shulman about the University of Minnesota back when football players were Finns with names like Eino Ffliikkiinnenn, communists roamed the campus, and the direction north had not yet been discovered.
1
The book is "Barefoot Boy With Cheek.'
In the segregated past, college athletics were one way for minority athletes to excel and prosper by giving them a path to professional sports. In the conservative dominated world where the rich are the princes of our republic and everyone's liberty depends upon their wealth, college athletics are a way for minority athletes to excel and prosper despite their underfunded school systems which cannot prepare most of their students for college. Now the problem with this arrangement is no longer the problem of schools seeking more financial support via athletics but legislators' conviction that a moneyed elite but not an educated citizenry is the means to economic growth and prosperity for all -- so they ensure that children in poorer communities are poorly educated and cannot qualify for college educations. You want to end the exploitation of athletes by colleges, then fund them with tax dollars and make sure that all K-12 students receive good educations which enable them to go onto college in proportions no different from those from affluent school districts.
2
Philosophy is defined as "the study of knowledge,reality, and existence".
Professor Tarver considers college football scholarship winners as "exploited" and abused as thousands of fans cheer them weekly as they receive a free college education which may be worth millions in future earnings,whether in sports or other professions.
The "reality" is that most Americans can only dream of being"exploited" with those rewards.
Professor Tarver considers college football scholarship winners as "exploited" and abused as thousands of fans cheer them weekly as they receive a free college education which may be worth millions in future earnings,whether in sports or other professions.
The "reality" is that most Americans can only dream of being"exploited" with those rewards.
3
The free education they supposedly get is worthless in a lot of cases. That's because at the super competitive levels, these students don't actually have time to study. They are expected to be full-time athletes. If they are getting such a great deal, then why not give them the choice of being paid money instead of a scholarship?
3
The free education they supposedly get is worthless in a lot of cases.
=================
Not really. My son-in-law started at guard for four years for a championship Pac-12 football team. He got a degree in planning and is now an executive with a large construction firm.
That said, I believe it would be fully appropriate for student athletes to be paid a small stipend in addition to their scholarship and expenses. Many if not most graduate fellowships do that.
=================
Not really. My son-in-law started at guard for four years for a championship Pac-12 football team. He got a degree in planning and is now an executive with a large construction firm.
That said, I believe it would be fully appropriate for student athletes to be paid a small stipend in addition to their scholarship and expenses. Many if not most graduate fellowships do that.
1
well it s very simple. college football is a symptom or an example of what the U.S.A. has become. what s really important is now not important. colleges are for higher education and enlightenment not football. America is similar the inequitable gulf now between the rich and poor , health care etc.
Wow, the readers of the Times will believe anything they read in the Times no matter how ridiculous.
1
Funny, a lot of us honestly just enjoy the game. Some of us are even liberals.
13
Not allowed to enjoy yourself, you must feel guilty
Great article. The way these young athletes are exploited is shameful. College players should be allowed to be paid.
1
The story is told of a prospective President of the University of Nebraska having dinner with the trustees. At one point the candidate asked "To whom does the director of athletics report?" A silence fell over the room as if someone had let one off. Finally a trustee spoke up. "Sir, the football program at the University of Nebraska belongs to the people of the state of Nebraska." That taught the candidate.
3
Rather feeble comment.
Fellow just wanted to know who his prospective reports were in the organization chart. Every U of Nebraska employee reports to some sort of supervisor, a department chair, a dean, a vice president. Not every professor in Lincoln belongs to the people of the state of Nebraska.
Fellow just wanted to know who his prospective reports were in the organization chart. Every U of Nebraska employee reports to some sort of supervisor, a department chair, a dean, a vice president. Not every professor in Lincoln belongs to the people of the state of Nebraska.
If you wanted to go fishing, why not just go fishing, kind of like you did in this column. But you didn't catch anything
9
Lefties are always worried that someone somewhere may be improperly enjoying something.
18
Fortunately, playing college football is voluntary and not mandatory.The writer portrays it as abusive and miserable while most young Americans can only dream that they might have the opportunity to play.
A college scholarship is another wish that most Americans,who struggle to finance college, can only dream of.
This philosophy writer needs to be enlightened to the realities of most Americans.
A college football player who wastes his free college
education damages only himself.
A college scholarship is another wish that most Americans,who struggle to finance college, can only dream of.
This philosophy writer needs to be enlightened to the realities of most Americans.
A college football player who wastes his free college
education damages only himself.
7
How this article can be written without intertwining the root of white football fandom to the dehumanization of Native Americans as mascots is itself racist. You cannot write a comprehensive opinion on anti-blackness within sports without studying and acknowledging the insidious racism and glorious US pride of murdering Indigenous people of this country and then glorifying that conquest by using their skin as mascots in blood sport. It's as American as apple pie. The southern states, like every inch of US soil, was first birthed by Native slavery, torture, murder to steal land. So anti-blackness is inherent in this sport because of the anti-indigeneity history of it.
5
Let's all go to Groupon, buy a DNA test and move back to our ancestral homes.
2
A column on college football by a writer who hates the sport who teaches at a University that doesn't play it...why am I not surprised. The one activity that brings together millions of fans of all classes, races, genders, and political views & she not only hates it she see something sinister! Wow. Is she upset because football is a masculine sport played by men? Hard to say the article is all over the place. As a Sports Photographer who knows many people in college football let me say this article is absurd on every level. This writer cherry picks all that is bad , makes absurd unproven observations,& can't bring herself to say anything positive. Most of these fans are working-class voters the very people the left purports to be their will on earth. But they hate to the very core everything they love, enjoy or find sacred....especially college football. So-called progressives have been mocking & lecturing working class people for decades. You are bad for eating factory-farmed meat, owning a gun, & driving an SUV. You are bad for speaking the language of micro-aggressions & patriarchy & cultural appropriation. And now you are terrible people for loving college football. Are you kidding me? This is part of much of a larger trend of denigrating everything in working-class culture. This plays perfectly into the narrative that leftist academics are pompous fanatics. Dems will not win over working-class swing voters if they persist in ridiculing college football ...that's nuts.
14
Or, to paraphrase Hillary, "Deplorables" like football, ergo, football is bad.
3
The things liberals obsess about. Good grief.
14
Wow! A liberal grand slam. First world issue. Liberal ideology. Coastal sensibility. Elitist snobbery.
4
Please do not confuse this writer with (all) liberals. Most of 'us' liberals are continuing to keep our eyes on the prize (job creation and growth, civil liberties and civil rights, environmental protection, etc.) and are distracted by this type of ejaculate.
1
This article sounds as if the author has issues she isn't willing to be forthcoming about.
2
The issues involved in college football are dramatically more complex than this article lets on. There are many reasons people enjoy college football so intensely. For many, myself included, it comes from a childhood of bonding with family and friends over the team I follow. That feeling of connection stays with you and can shoot endorphins into your brain reminding you of simpler times and close relationships. And even as an adult sports, including football, bring people together in positive ways. Has football become too brutal? I'd say yes, especially in the NFL, which is so brutal I can barely wath it. Should college players receive more than a scholarship and a stipend for the hours and hours of commitment it takes to play? Yes, let's work on that. Does football get some kids into college that would never go otherwise, and thereby expose some underprivileged kids from tiny towns to a bigger world? Absolutely. Do some of them wash out and fail? Sure. But to act like college football is modern day slavery is intellectually lazy. I wonder if Mr. Tarver spends time in the rural southern cities where many college football players grow up, mentoring them and educating them. Schools in most of those places are a joke; for many of these kids sports are their only chance to get out. Let's fix the schools and give them other legitimate pathways to success, but throwing away the one pathway they have to college just to assuage our white guilt seems wrong.
21
It us much more than intellectually lazy. It is contorted intellectual gymnastics.
1
Thanks, Matt! This is a fantastic post! The NCAA does not allow college athletes to be compensated beyond scholarships and that is SHAMEFUL! In a world where Kobe Bryant gets to play for the USA in the Olympics, college athletes who put their health and bodies on the line for nationally televised games reaping millions of dollars should be PAID!!! Football (and other sports) gives a lot of kids who couldn't otherwise afford it a shot at a higher education and being part of something larger than themselves. But it has to be FAIR. Elite athletes who suffer career-ending injuries in college have to be compensated financially. Otherwise it's a form of slavery. I love my team but I would gladly participate in a boycott on behalf of the college athletes. Roll Tide!
Someone should have chosen a photograph that fits Ms. Tarver's narrative better. A depiction of members of the African-American and Caucasian communities sitting side-by-side and cheering as one for 'their' Auburn Tigers lends statements like, "we should not be so sure that white fans' willingness to support black atheletes on the gridiron entails genuine acceptance of racial equality" an air of hyperbole and works to visually undercut one of her main criticisms of college football.
Like all human institutions, college football has its ills--some of them intolerable and utterly unacceptable, see Baylor and Penn State. But perhaps we can look to the root causes of these ills as a more appropriate use of our time and energies rather than making college football a strawman for all of America's (ok, really just the South's) flaws.
Like all human institutions, college football has its ills--some of them intolerable and utterly unacceptable, see Baylor and Penn State. But perhaps we can look to the root causes of these ills as a more appropriate use of our time and energies rather than making college football a strawman for all of America's (ok, really just the South's) flaws.
14
Big time college sports is utterly corrupt. These elite athletes are exploited for the benefit of ESPN, NIke, Anheuser Busch, millionaire coaches and the pro leagues. The vast majority of schools wallow in millions of dollars of athletic department debt due to football and basketball programs that fraudulently promise to cover not only their own costs, but also the expenses of the "non- revenue generating " sports and beyond that miraculously return a dividend to the school for the benefit of academics.
Meanwhile, the graduation rates for athletes in football and basketball are abysmal despite adoring tutors and hollowed out courses. The demands on big time football and basketball players are overwhelming even for the most academically gifted athlete. There's little sanctity in the contract of a free education in exchange for your labor.
Nationwide, mindless "boosters" extol the virtues of their athletes and promote the racist stereotype that the path to success for minorities runs through the locker room rather than the classroom. The NCAA is the only twenty first century enterprise that relies on both the exploitation of its workers and degrading stereotypes. It's grotesque. Let the NFL and NBA develop their own players.
Meanwhile, the graduation rates for athletes in football and basketball are abysmal despite adoring tutors and hollowed out courses. The demands on big time football and basketball players are overwhelming even for the most academically gifted athlete. There's little sanctity in the contract of a free education in exchange for your labor.
Nationwide, mindless "boosters" extol the virtues of their athletes and promote the racist stereotype that the path to success for minorities runs through the locker room rather than the classroom. The NCAA is the only twenty first century enterprise that relies on both the exploitation of its workers and degrading stereotypes. It's grotesque. Let the NFL and NBA develop their own players.
8
In his great novel "Invisible Man", Ralph Ellison has a secret note his name-free protagonist finally opens, a note he thought was a reference based on his excellent record as a boxer in the South: it reads "Keep this nigger boy running."
Football, and track and basketball, have been slipping that note to all of us for half a century after that novel, and the few more decades that black college athletes were permitted on any fields. Keep THEM, the "other", the "boys" running. You know, the way we let dogs off in the off-leash areas or racing after the fake bunny at greyhound races. Cheer him on, shower him with gifts - and just keep him far from power, equal access to everything good, and, most of all, your lily-white daughters and other signs of white domination, right?
The chant says "Dance, boy, you gotta natural sense of rhythm". College sports are no more sporting than the bands of slavers' sailors who made black slaves dance and sing on deck, shackled, whiling away the days on the Middle Passage. Pay is better now, certainly for the few who into NBA and NFL after school. But what would equality cost the white fans and coaches?
Football, and track and basketball, have been slipping that note to all of us for half a century after that novel, and the few more decades that black college athletes were permitted on any fields. Keep THEM, the "other", the "boys" running. You know, the way we let dogs off in the off-leash areas or racing after the fake bunny at greyhound races. Cheer him on, shower him with gifts - and just keep him far from power, equal access to everything good, and, most of all, your lily-white daughters and other signs of white domination, right?
The chant says "Dance, boy, you gotta natural sense of rhythm". College sports are no more sporting than the bands of slavers' sailors who made black slaves dance and sing on deck, shackled, whiling away the days on the Middle Passage. Pay is better now, certainly for the few who into NBA and NFL after school. But what would equality cost the white fans and coaches?
2
There is no doubt that especially before the Civil Rights laws, colleges with popular athletic teams have exploited athletes and while offering them athletic scholarships but often left them without the educational benefits nor the future careers in professional sports that the athletes expected for their efforts. Especially in poor minority communities the reputations of colleges with such programs has been very mixed. The occasional high school, college, and professional star athlete still stands out as proof of athletics being a way out of the poverty and limited opportunities common in such communities but also there are the many who tried and did not succeed, and have felt misused by the colleges. There was an obligation on the part of the college to see to it that their college athletes did receive the education which would have given them a hedge against never making it as a pro, but few ever bothered to try. It should be a requirement for all NCAA institutions to assure that all students recruited for their intermural athletics teams have as much chance of graduating as the rest of their student bodies, even if it means tutoring every one of them through all four years to a bachelors degree.
Football is dangerous but at least, at some universities, the players receive full ride scholarships, get to perform in front of big crowds and appear on television. Young people will always test their mettle through participation in challenging and sometimes dangerous activities. Compared to the young people competing in dangerous sports, usually club, sports, on campus like rodeo, rugby, ski racing, cycling, ice hockey, etc., the college football players have it pretty good. Ships are safe in port but that is not what they are built for!
2
College football is the NFL's free minor league program. The NFL is starting its death spiral due to arrogance, obfuscation and downright manipulation. Talented college athletes will figure out that playing in the NFL can be a death sentence. The owners have been trying to cover up the seriousness of the dangers much like the tobacco industry. The overt racism (a la Kaeprnqick) is alive and well in their small little club. People are starting to figure it out.
1
I admit that for many years I was a big college football fan (I am a UCLA alum). In recent years, not as much.
It was not just the discovery of CTE and the terrible damage it does to the brains of football players. I also saw in some people I know how their egos became so wrapped up in the success of their favorite college team that it turned them into people I would rather not be around.
The success of their teams became their personal achievement, as if they were the ones on the field of play scoring the winning touchdown as time expired, rather than a 50 year old overweight and out-of-shape alum who hasn't done any physical exercise in 20 years.
These type of fans also become vicious and nasty in attacking the fans of their team's rivals. A long time friend of mine gets so wound up in his devotion to his alma mater's football team that his hatred of its main rival is almost scary to witness.
And finally, as the article states, college football players are exploited for the benefit of the schools they play for and the the media empires that make tons of money broadcasting the games. What is sad is that the vast majority of college football players will never make it to the pros and even 80% of the ones who play professionally will be broke or in serious financial trouble within 5 years of their retirement from the NFL, along with the risk of developing debilitating injuries including CTE.
It was not just the discovery of CTE and the terrible damage it does to the brains of football players. I also saw in some people I know how their egos became so wrapped up in the success of their favorite college team that it turned them into people I would rather not be around.
The success of their teams became their personal achievement, as if they were the ones on the field of play scoring the winning touchdown as time expired, rather than a 50 year old overweight and out-of-shape alum who hasn't done any physical exercise in 20 years.
These type of fans also become vicious and nasty in attacking the fans of their team's rivals. A long time friend of mine gets so wound up in his devotion to his alma mater's football team that his hatred of its main rival is almost scary to witness.
And finally, as the article states, college football players are exploited for the benefit of the schools they play for and the the media empires that make tons of money broadcasting the games. What is sad is that the vast majority of college football players will never make it to the pros and even 80% of the ones who play professionally will be broke or in serious financial trouble within 5 years of their retirement from the NFL, along with the risk of developing debilitating injuries including CTE.
5
If a business paid employees an average of 1.5 million a year and 70% of the employees were white, would that be racist?
9
I used to be a huge fan, but with each passing year college football continues to devolve into the NFL Lite. Billions have been spent on a facilities arms race, more and more advertising and sponsorship has encroached on the gameday experience, and increased media coverage has exposed the cheating and criminal scandals that were always there, but more in the shadows.
Knowing what we do now about concussions, realizing the players are risking their health, seems to make it less enjoyable. Universities and the NCAA need to do a better job improving safety, even if the lack of violent collisions makes the game less dramatic.
Regarding black athletes, however, I am of the opinion that college sports (not just football) are a great thing overall. How many thousands of people have been able to attend college because of athletic scholarships? Olympic sports like track & field, wrestling, and swimming don't usually offer full scholarships, but as any parent knows, every bit helps. It's not just minorities, but poor people of all races. That is an ultimate good.
Knowing what we do now about concussions, realizing the players are risking their health, seems to make it less enjoyable. Universities and the NCAA need to do a better job improving safety, even if the lack of violent collisions makes the game less dramatic.
Regarding black athletes, however, I am of the opinion that college sports (not just football) are a great thing overall. How many thousands of people have been able to attend college because of athletic scholarships? Olympic sports like track & field, wrestling, and swimming don't usually offer full scholarships, but as any parent knows, every bit helps. It's not just minorities, but poor people of all races. That is an ultimate good.
4
Let's not reduce every human endeavor to its racist implications. We on the left lose our credibility when we attempt to reverse engineer every injustice into a racial morality play. My guess is that the brains of dead athletes being studied are neither black or white.
Racism in America is real-as is the persistent inability of black leadership and culture to foster the core values needed to overcome racist hurdles. We all have a part in this, and all must be part of the solution. Victimization narrative yields only dependency and resentment amongst all parties. We must atone for the sins of our fathers, but we need to recognize that it will only happen if we innovate and collectively accept our share of responsibility for its persistence.
Racism in America is real-as is the persistent inability of black leadership and culture to foster the core values needed to overcome racist hurdles. We all have a part in this, and all must be part of the solution. Victimization narrative yields only dependency and resentment amongst all parties. We must atone for the sins of our fathers, but we need to recognize that it will only happen if we innovate and collectively accept our share of responsibility for its persistence.
9
I remember vividly my first experience in the United States, some thirty years ago. I was invited to the homecoming game of UNC versus UVA. To my stunned surprise there was not one white on the football field, and not one Afro American in the stands. I believe the game finished in a tie, 18-18.
LIke many things College football brings out the best and worst of people. Its all great fun and exciting, but at the same time the message of machoism, and winning at any price are very, very clear. In a society where college sports so florish and yet where 50% of the population does not read one book in a year, there is something, deeply, deeply, wrong. Donald Trump's arrival on scene is just the canary in the mineshaft.
LIke many things College football brings out the best and worst of people. Its all great fun and exciting, but at the same time the message of machoism, and winning at any price are very, very clear. In a society where college sports so florish and yet where 50% of the population does not read one book in a year, there is something, deeply, deeply, wrong. Donald Trump's arrival on scene is just the canary in the mineshaft.
3
Oh, Please. 90 percent of New York Times readers can't tell a 4-3 defense from a post route, and the rest are supposed to beware the "sinister" impulses that lurk at the heart of the game? I'm disappointed that the author missed the Big Story of the Week, as reported in the LA Times--USC is apparently racist because the equine mascot shares a name with Robert E. Lee's horse! I have a sneaking suspicion that this column was ghostwritten by the Republican National Committee. Or The Onion.
10
Next, let's do a column on why humor should be eliminated from modern society (it often hurts people's feelings). And, of course, sex (don't get me started).
I say this as a liberal, well-educated, coastal elite. I see why large swaths of the country can't stand us.
I say this as a liberal, well-educated, coastal elite. I see why large swaths of the country can't stand us.
22
Wow, I love football. I never thought much of the color of the players and how it relates to the overt racism of US Society as a whole. We all have bias and hopefully we try to overcome them but please can't we just enjoy football? Black kids don't have to play and either do white kids. It is still there choice. And if the majority of players are black, does that mean no white people should be allowed to attend the games? Who is really the racist then? Please go watch a football game.
23
No, they really don't have a choice. For a vast number of black Division 1 players, the 'scholarship' is their only access to a degree. They get injured, they get kicked out of school as well.
1
or take a walk, a run, ride a bicycle -- even read a book. (That would be a novelty.)
but we also cheer the "stock market"- which rises when workers are laid off and paid less and the environment is despoiled.
4
Is there no entertainment left that we are allowed to enjoy without guilt or criticism?
19
"College players go uncompensated by rule". How is this true? A "scholarship", by definition, means that they get a free education. Something that the rest of us are paying dearly for. Is that not compensation? If an athlete chooses not to take advantage of this, that is up to him/her. But to say that one is playing for free? I don't think so. A degree is plenty of compensation. When your body has given out on you, remember that and be grateful for it.
9
I am all for finding and denouncing racism whenever it occurs, but please, let's not go out of our way to look for it where it is mostly non-existant.
If college football is racist because many of its players are African Americans and many of its coaches are whites, then so is the US Army.
This does not mean that we should not look for ways to minimize the danger of the sport, or to encourage its players to graduate with a marketable degree as many do not make it to the NFL, or even pay them as many are advocating, but looking for racism in every little nook and cranny of our society does not help the cause of the players, it diminishes it.
If college football is racist because many of its players are African Americans and many of its coaches are whites, then so is the US Army.
This does not mean that we should not look for ways to minimize the danger of the sport, or to encourage its players to graduate with a marketable degree as many do not make it to the NFL, or even pay them as many are advocating, but looking for racism in every little nook and cranny of our society does not help the cause of the players, it diminishes it.
6
"Moreover, many contemporary white fans’ responses to players of color — when those players express political views (like Colin Kaepernick), behave in ways that make them uncomfortable (like Richard Sherman) or make mistakes (as Tyrann Mathieu did when he lost his eligibility at Louisiana State University for testing positive for marijuana) — are telling. Many are content to identify with black football players for as long as they are useful on the field," I suppose you interviewed "many white fans" to make this blanket statement?
6
White football fans are racist, Rich. And we pray at night to statues of Robert E. Lee;
6
Sometimes one well-written sentence manages to encapsulate an issue.
"(M)any white fans’ treatment of black athletes suggests that the most accurate first-person plural for their relation is not “we” so much as “ours” — a relation of commodity rather than community" is just such a sentence.
"(M)any white fans’ treatment of black athletes suggests that the most accurate first-person plural for their relation is not “we” so much as “ours” — a relation of commodity rather than community" is just such a sentence.
1
The three most important elements in college football.
1. Coach makes money. At major programs it's millions.
2. Kids make zero. Coach lives off their athletic indentured servitude, mandated by the NCAA, and takes money that should be going to the players.
3. Kids get CTE. Coach doesn't.
Anything else we need to know about what is so totally wrong about this picture?
I don't watch NFL games and I haven't for years. Can't stand the glorified violence where players give one another concussions for my "entertainment." I haven't watched a college game in decades. But must also state I don't support any college sport by watching it because the kids don't get paid.
It's a travesty.
The whole system is a national disgrace.
1. Coach makes money. At major programs it's millions.
2. Kids make zero. Coach lives off their athletic indentured servitude, mandated by the NCAA, and takes money that should be going to the players.
3. Kids get CTE. Coach doesn't.
Anything else we need to know about what is so totally wrong about this picture?
I don't watch NFL games and I haven't for years. Can't stand the glorified violence where players give one another concussions for my "entertainment." I haven't watched a college game in decades. But must also state I don't support any college sport by watching it because the kids don't get paid.
It's a travesty.
The whole system is a national disgrace.
3
So, access to a college based on athletic ability for a kid who wouldn't otherwise qualify strictly on academics isn't valuable? Add the scholarship dollars that likewise, the athlete would not find based if on his academic record and the players are compensated fairly. Just because it doesn't show up on a 1040 doesn't mean they're working for free.
1
Question 1? No. This is nothing more than an unpaid J-O-B.
The "scholarship" dollars? You're kidding, right?
As for being "fairly compensated?" Wow.
It doesn't show up on a 1040 because it has all gone to "Coach." It shows up on his 1040.
Believe me.
The "scholarship" dollars? You're kidding, right?
As for being "fairly compensated?" Wow.
It doesn't show up on a 1040 because it has all gone to "Coach." It shows up on his 1040.
Believe me.
Football (and basketball) is so pervasively corrosive and corrupt, most people I know don't sent their kids to Division One universities. Period.
I recently took an admissions tour of Ole Miss with a small group of New England teenagers, and they found the sports facilities, as well as the constant references to sports, unnerving. We ended the tour at the main quad where the tailgating rituals take place, and they were shocked.
Schools like that will not make their short list.
I recently took an admissions tour of Ole Miss with a small group of New England teenagers, and they found the sports facilities, as well as the constant references to sports, unnerving. We ended the tour at the main quad where the tailgating rituals take place, and they were shocked.
Schools like that will not make their short list.
1
I was a benchwarmer in three high school sports at Father Lopez Catholic High School in Daytona Beach.
Not long ago, I ran into a friend two years ahead of me at Lopez.
He had been a star; I had been used as a tackling dummy for him and others.
My friend is ailing; he just got a hip replacement and one shoulder is banged up.
I am doing fine.
Young athletes talented enough to play at the college and professional levels need to know that they will not be young forever. They should be reading and studying hard and preparing themselves for life. Too few do.
FWIW, my friend could have played at the college level, but he won an academic scholarship to Hampton. Later he earned a law degree from the University of Michigan.
REF, here's to you.
Not long ago, I ran into a friend two years ahead of me at Lopez.
He had been a star; I had been used as a tackling dummy for him and others.
My friend is ailing; he just got a hip replacement and one shoulder is banged up.
I am doing fine.
Young athletes talented enough to play at the college and professional levels need to know that they will not be young forever. They should be reading and studying hard and preparing themselves for life. Too few do.
FWIW, my friend could have played at the college level, but he won an academic scholarship to Hampton. Later he earned a law degree from the University of Michigan.
REF, here's to you.
1
Two-thirds of the top public universities are power 5 football schools. Easterners don't much understand the role of large state universities throughout the country. These universities are primarily funded by tax revenues. They are a point of pride for state residents, alumni or not. They earn high revenues and incur high expenses. Professors at these universities have won about 100 Nobel Prizes. Students at these schools have won about 300 Rhodes Scholarships (including 14 by LSU students). These schools aspire to excellence as a matter of state pride. They include both the elite and the more ordinary, serving the broad spectrum of the people..College football is a point of pride and a financial priority. But these schools are academic first, because they serve tens of thousands who are pursuing a degree, first and foremost.
2
But that doesn't fit the coastal thought pattern which is essentially, you should do what I would do in any given situation.
1
I'm not surprised by anything in this article. Especially the black juvenile defendants. The more we are cognizant or our implicit racial animus the better. The more we honestly talk about power, as in no one gives up power without a fight, the better off we'll be. Why are there so few women CEO's, because men will not give up real power without a fight. Whites won't give up real power without some more soul searching and more of a fight. Trump is almost a natural last gasp of a bygone era. Obama unleashed forces of hatred and Trump capitalized and continue to inflame those forces. Every colonialist has been racist to some extent to their subjects. The EU is no different. It's about time we're starting to have real conversations about race, about what are the expressions or racism. It's not to make everything political, it's more to make people aware where other people are coming from.
15
At the end or the beginning, however you want to look at it, of the causal chain, is the individual. We stick with our groups because we believe that they are more likely to accept, help, and even defend us if push comes to shove, literally or figuratively. It's all about me, right? Ego survival.
Loving others as yourself, as Freud, that pessimist, said, is nigh impossible. Turn the other cheek? Ha-ha-ha. Maybe once in an eclipsed sun.
Loving others as yourself, as Freud, that pessimist, said, is nigh impossible. Turn the other cheek? Ha-ha-ha. Maybe once in an eclipsed sun.
Is it just me that sees the irony? When the camera pans the fans at a college or pro football/basketball game I wonder where the black faces are. Then when I look at the field or floor most of these marvelous athletes are black.
17
Bread and circuses.
Ruling class feeling bored and guilty.
Bring on the diversive entertainment, please.
And keep it coming 24/7/365: cable TV, Internet, iphones.
Ruling class feeling bored and guilty.
Bring on the diversive entertainment, please.
And keep it coming 24/7/365: cable TV, Internet, iphones.
Of course in the picture of Auburn football that accompanies the article, it looks to me like the fans (those whose race you can identify) are pretty close to their proportion in the population at large.
What are we really cheering? In my case, I'm cheering for my daughter, who found a ready-made community on campus and a set of friends who may last her a lifetime as a member of the pep band at a Big 10 college. And I'm cheering for crisp fall afternoons in which we gather with a set of cherished pals and catch up on the past year while we tailgate, a decades-long tradition. And I'm cheering for several hundred athletes, in many cases African-Americans, who'll get a much better chance to reach 21 with a decent college degree than America was going to give them otherwise. And I'll remember when people were cheering for me -- a former college athlete who turned my experience on campus into a very successful career that was all I dreamed of.
What won't I be cheering for? Tedious academics in the synthetic cocoons of their privileged, antiseptic lives who can turn every aspect of American existence into a symbol of hate or intolerance or whatever other targets are on the agenda at a given time.
What won't I be cheering for? Tedious academics in the synthetic cocoons of their privileged, antiseptic lives who can turn every aspect of American existence into a symbol of hate or intolerance or whatever other targets are on the agenda at a given time.
16
Ditto for my daughters who participated in marching band in both HS and college, and who found most of their friends in the band.
1
American football?
I have always had mixed feelings about it. I've always thought soccer, "true" football, to be the better sport--a better combination of planning and improvisation, freedom rather than the regimentation of American football, not to mention does soccer seem to favor a type of body, the average, found among all races and ethnic groups, therefore soccer seems the perfect sport for a racially and ethnically diverse society--but the pressure placed on Americans to admire football, that it's rough and tumble, the man's sport, etc. has been such that even I'm not sure my resentment toward football is based on sense or just the fact that I'm a scrawny guy only 5' 10' picking on a sport he never really had a chance to succeed at...
On one hand football is super tough, militaristic, probably helpful in promoting the more regimental and brutal aspects of American life, but on the other hand it seems not the best sport for racial and ethnic integration and promotion of the improvisational and more complex aspects of social, cultural, business, artistic and scientific life. Basketball and hockey are similar to soccer, but probably only soccer can bring America into a true balance, have America with a sporting foundation on which the rest of society can be based.
Probably though it would be best to observe soccer in relationship to other political/economic orders around the world, compare to football in the U.S., and arrive at sound scientific conclusion.
I have always had mixed feelings about it. I've always thought soccer, "true" football, to be the better sport--a better combination of planning and improvisation, freedom rather than the regimentation of American football, not to mention does soccer seem to favor a type of body, the average, found among all races and ethnic groups, therefore soccer seems the perfect sport for a racially and ethnically diverse society--but the pressure placed on Americans to admire football, that it's rough and tumble, the man's sport, etc. has been such that even I'm not sure my resentment toward football is based on sense or just the fact that I'm a scrawny guy only 5' 10' picking on a sport he never really had a chance to succeed at...
On one hand football is super tough, militaristic, probably helpful in promoting the more regimental and brutal aspects of American life, but on the other hand it seems not the best sport for racial and ethnic integration and promotion of the improvisational and more complex aspects of social, cultural, business, artistic and scientific life. Basketball and hockey are similar to soccer, but probably only soccer can bring America into a true balance, have America with a sporting foundation on which the rest of society can be based.
Probably though it would be best to observe soccer in relationship to other political/economic orders around the world, compare to football in the U.S., and arrive at sound scientific conclusion.
Colleges and universities should concentrate on educating and graduating students and not being the minor league for the NFL. When athletes with little chance of graduating due to not being prepared for college academics are allowed to play out their eligibility they are little more than indentured servants. How many college football players are drafted into the NFL? Damn few compared to the number of players in colleges.. Big business should not be able to make gazillions of dollars on the backs of indentured servants.
1
Remind me to never watch a football game with Erin C. Tarver,
8
Another pontificating, subjectifying, unhinged from reality, joyless, what's wrong with America piece....Ho hum.
11
I wonder how the blacks guy who play the game and coach it feel about football? Does their opinion matter at all? How racist not to include their views. They'd probably say 'man say I love football' and don't look at it in terms of color or the other sensitive issues listed in this commentary. Don't like the game? Don't watch it. Or don't play it. How come no one writes about the insanity or dangers of auto racing? It's mostly southern white guys so who cares? Is that how it works? How racist.
1
For years I used to live for the beginning of football season. No longer. It has become what I call "stop-and-go ball. Timeouts for everything, the time for huddles. Booooring! For an hour of playing time (which takes three hours) the ball is in play for an average of 10 to 12 minutes. As a spectator sport I have become enamored of soccer, where one doesn't have to be a physical freak to play, the ball is in constant motion as are the players. The coaches don't stop to tell the players what to do, they let them do what they know to do, unlike our basketball and football players and coaches. I am 80 years old and am so over football watching, except for my local high school. Soccer will replace our style of football, but not in my lifetime, and I say good riddance.
I graduated in the 80's from an SEC school with multiple Heisman winners and multiple National Championships. I love watching my team with my buddies. We always go out to watch the games. We engage and celebrate with guys, girls, whites, blacks, Hispanics, Asians,.... All strangers. We are all fans with one common love. I know of no other thing than college football that has this effect on people. I could met a stranger in an airport and talk for an hour about the upcoming college football season. It doesn't matter their gender, their race, or political affiliation. You my friend got this one wrong.
56
Music.
Well, could both views be correct?
Remember the elephant and the seven blind men, each touching a different part of the elephant yet thinking their description was correct and the others to be wrong.
Remember the elephant and the seven blind men, each touching a different part of the elephant yet thinking their description was correct and the others to be wrong.
What else could you be talking about?
As soon as we encounter a deferential reference to "philosopher Michel Foucault", we know that we could be spending our time more productively doing something else.
7
Not to mention the toxic masculinity associated with sports fandom, which the author touches on. Straight men in this country, generally not allowed to display emotion, seem programmed from birth to only talk about sports. Have you tried going out to lunch with a group of straight men? More often than not it's mostly a barrage of sports statistics, mind numbingly boring, and more than a little sad.
1
"toxic masculinity" unreal that this gets published. But this is the point of your comment, and the article. There are those on the Left who desire to end American masculinity. They see it as a threat to their cultural marxist agenda.
5
Then don't go out to lunch with them. The world isn't supposed to be place filled with people you'd like to socialize with. It takes all kinds and as long as you aren't forced to follow sports, your comment is much ado.
I beg to differ. I'm married to one of those 'straight white men', who happens to love sports. Is he a jock? By no means, he's a short little guy, shorter than me, but he loves sports. When he talks about sports, all the stats, the players, the coaches, he's engaged and interesting. You don't find it interesting, ergo it must be an awful, boring, sad, etc. That's your problem, not his. He was born and bred in New York City, a nice Jewish boy that loves sports. What makes you the expert on masculinity? Someone die and left you the spot? Get over yourself.
I went to LSU, and went back last fall to do some lectures and watched my first game in Tiger Stadium in 50 years almost to the day. The tailgating was a jaw dropping experience for me. The president of the Alumni Association told me people queued up in their RVs on Thursdays at noon before a game, and I saw really big screen TVs, monster barbeque grills, sofas and even a king sized bed in the mix. I have not been much of a sports fan since college, but it was certainly emotion to share the game with 103,000+ of my closest friends for the evening.
Reading this column today was jolting because of a conversation I had with my sons last evening. It started with a discussion about how little people seemed to know about science, politics, history, geography - nearly everything. Then came the excellent point: Ask these same people who cannot name the three branches of government, count the number of Supreme Court justices, point to North Korea on a map, know what an ion is, the starting lineup of their favorite college or pro team, rushing yards by player, or the top ten most popular singers or actors, and you will get all the information in a gush.
Football, more than any other sport, embodies what Americans want: macho, bravado, crushing defeats, inspiring victories and champions: the players as heroes and the coaches as generals. Sure, I admit it's fun; it's just not important.
That seems to encapsulate society today, and the South is not unique in that aspect.
Reading this column today was jolting because of a conversation I had with my sons last evening. It started with a discussion about how little people seemed to know about science, politics, history, geography - nearly everything. Then came the excellent point: Ask these same people who cannot name the three branches of government, count the number of Supreme Court justices, point to North Korea on a map, know what an ion is, the starting lineup of their favorite college or pro team, rushing yards by player, or the top ten most popular singers or actors, and you will get all the information in a gush.
Football, more than any other sport, embodies what Americans want: macho, bravado, crushing defeats, inspiring victories and champions: the players as heroes and the coaches as generals. Sure, I admit it's fun; it's just not important.
That seems to encapsulate society today, and the South is not unique in that aspect.
4
There ought to be a limitation on the number of "air quotes" any article can contain.
4
The limit should be zero. Particularly in the NYT.
University is for Academics. Football does not belong at the University. Students who get caught-up with these extra-curricular type activities should not expect to get the top jobs in the workplace hierarchy. The best schools focus on academics, they don't spend money, time, attention, resources on sports.... and their insurance bills are not as expensive because they don't have students with concussions etcetera. The #1 School in the World is "All Academic". Note: Headhunters from corporations look to see how students choose to spend their time. Watching Football at the Stadium and coordinating parties and weekends around these playground games, is a negative. ---- People want to know how to get the top jobs.... just giving some headhunting information today. As I would, any student who arrives at All Academic. (ranked above Harvard). Education is Power. Report Cards count. Ph.D is not a dirty word.
1
I don't think that's true. Someone who spends all their time just studying is a one-sided person. People are multi-dimensional and have many things to be interested in. Sports are good for people, they learn to get along with others, work together, take criticism better (from the coach or other players). Other extra curricular activities can show how well organized a person is, or what else is important in their life, such as charities, etc. I'm not much of a fan of college football, I think they should at least pay the players, but a person who just spends time studying is not always going to be the top person for the job.
Not every job fits your white collar, cubicle dwelling, high brow, monogrammed, academic model.
College football is like an organized religion in this country. It has its hierarchy, minsters and faithful believers. It has its rituals, traditions and like a church it is a tax free big business. Like a religion that fails to address bigotry, exploitation and predatory behavior the focus is not on the well being of its followers and participants. It is big business designed to make millions, nothing more.
1
"It is big business designed to make millions, nothing more.".... You contradict yourself. If lots of people did not enjoy watching football as a form of entertainment, it would not make any money at all.
1
Trying to draw some social significance from college football is a bit like trying to explain empathy with a Trump speech. They're both too shallow for the task.
The author fails to mention that watching football is the second-greatest pleasure experienced by men, and less frequently by women, on this Earth.
It's almost as good as watching baseball.
It's almost as good as watching baseball.
3
Erin Tarver is a professor, a feminist and a Safe Space training facilitator at Emory's Oxford Campus in Georgia. All of this helps puts her article into context for me.
6
College football has its warts for sure but it provides a diversion from dysfunctional self serving elected officials, climate change, meeting your monthly personal and professional overhead costs, nuclear war, terrorism, infrastructure collapse and complex human relationships. You pick a team and root for them either in person observing all the customs and traditions, or by screaming at your TV set. The issue of Louisiana judges being harsh right after a LSU loss is an issue for their state bar association to review. On judgement day if I am judged unworthy because of my love for football i will accept my fate.
3
Once my alma mater became mired in a never-ending athletic/academic scandal, I lost all interest in college and professional sport.
The brain injuries, the exploitation (just pay the college athletic performers, already and stop the pretense of a degree), the avalanche of cash showered upon centers of jocksniffing, er, excellence while the academic community goes wanting, the taxpayer-funded stadiums, the drug & alcohol/domestic violence/bankruptcy woes of NFL players, did I mention the exploitation? and the thinly-veiled college plantation racism of black players performing for largely white fans for free have all combined to make me ashamed I ever watched any of it.
Athletic entertainment-jocksniffing- puts tons of money in a scant few pockets and picks many, many more. It pretends to matter, when it really doesn't matter at all except in our own stunted views of cultural identity and self-worth. The football version causes brain injury, f'goodness' sake.
Are we not entertained by all this seamy underbelly of faux masculinity? Why yes! Yes we are.
Disgraceful.
The brain injuries, the exploitation (just pay the college athletic performers, already and stop the pretense of a degree), the avalanche of cash showered upon centers of jocksniffing, er, excellence while the academic community goes wanting, the taxpayer-funded stadiums, the drug & alcohol/domestic violence/bankruptcy woes of NFL players, did I mention the exploitation? and the thinly-veiled college plantation racism of black players performing for largely white fans for free have all combined to make me ashamed I ever watched any of it.
Athletic entertainment-jocksniffing- puts tons of money in a scant few pockets and picks many, many more. It pretends to matter, when it really doesn't matter at all except in our own stunted views of cultural identity and self-worth. The football version causes brain injury, f'goodness' sake.
Are we not entertained by all this seamy underbelly of faux masculinity? Why yes! Yes we are.
Disgraceful.
1
Racism, CTE etc. I wonder why these "student/athletes" still opt to play the game given these realities? Further, since this a a black man's game played for the enjoyment of whites would these, primarily urban and poor blacks, be better off not playing the sport and left to their own devices. If you say, well 99% of them do no make a living from this sport after their colleges days (e.g., NFL) and return to whence they came- well that's fair. What if the universities, and the high schools before them, make sure these kids get an education why not make sure that they really do get an education in high school (make sure they graduate with a 12th grade level of education, which must be verified by independent 3rd party source) or the can't be granted a college FB scholarship and next, the colleges make sure they graduate (regardless of game-ending injuries) with certifiable degrees (again 3rd party verifications) or the school loses future scholarships....or something with a meaningful penalty. I love college FB but am appalled by these salaries paid to coaches and staff. The universities must be required to educate these athletes and not just throw then back to the streets.
1
Outstanding essay! Should be mandatory reading for everyone who loves sports and cares about race. Tarver should win an award, or two, for this.
Consider what will be going on in Las Vegas on Saturday! The ultimate blood sport.
Hey, have a brew, relax, enjoy the game and stop overanalyzing. Play ball!
3
Thank you for this article that expresses well some concerns I have had for a long time, and a few I had not thought of before. The photo accompanying the piece is from Auburn University, where I have worked for decades. I grew up in Alabama and came to Auburn as a student the year it was racially integrated. Over the last several years, I have been alternately amused and annoyed by the anachronism of a stadium full of mostly white fans cheering their football team, which is of course mostly African-American. I have wondered how many of the fans would cross the street if they saw one or more players coming toward them without their race-concealing uniforms and helmets. I agree that as long as players are quiet and do not express a political opinion in their words or actions, fans are not bothered by any cognitive dissonance. I sometimes wonder if players are bothered at all by performing for a stadium full of people the vast majority of which voted for the current president? If they are, I have not heard or seen any evidence. They are likely discouraged from any such expression for a variety of reasons. One comment which was selected as NY Times pick essentially says "Why can't we just have fun?" My response is that at least we should have that fun with our eyes open and realize the costs, physical and psychological, that those providing the fun are carrying.
It's "bread and circuses" for the masses, but in a situation where the is an ample supply of bread. Investment and return on investment will increasingly favor circuses.
1
Human beings are a force of nature and therefore violent and competitive by nature. Football and other sports serve as a cathartic release for these instincts, channeling the energy into a relatively controlled and safe outlets. Trying to suppress these human instincts is incredibly naive and dangerous and will lead much greater conflict and decay in other areas of society. Football has long been a unifying, shared experience that brought all Americans together. I'm fear that the collapse of the sport will mirror the collapse of the nation.
1
Excellent essay. Mr. Tarver lucidly explores and reveals the racism that is bred so deeply in our country and takes it one step further when talking about fandom and how it effects our psyche.
1
That's Ms Tarver. She's a woman. You might need to check your own set of assumptions and their effects on your psyche.
1
Apology to Ms Tarver. As to Andrew-I am heartened to see some one being so sensitive to people's assumptions.
As I am unclear on what solution is being offered essay, I will offer a solution. Let's end college athletics and athletic scholarships. Clearly, a free education is no longer adequate compensation for all of the work these players put in. So let's end sports entirely and just focus on the mission of college, education.
10
There is no solution offered. The basic premise is football = southern = bad. The New York Times has long championed the destruction of southern culture.
4
Great idea!!! Oh..wait....filthy rich corporate types, as well as their corporations, got to be filthy rich by promoting college sports. Do you suppose they are going to be cool with giving up that income?
I think not.
I think not.
well said.
Some research and the news it generates is too profound to have the instant impact they should engender. The recent studies of football-related brain injury must stop all educators in their tracks. As people dedicated to the well-being of the young men and women entrusted to their care, educators can't let football continue as it is in educational institutions. Despite the money and tradition, schools must move away from a sport that measurably damages the youths they ostensibly serve. Flag football should replace the real thing ASAP in all middle and high schools. Real colleges and universities need to do the same. No amount of tackling training or helmet re-design will reverse what we have learned about repetitive impacts on brains. The football defenders can point to concussions in soccer, but that is not a defense; those exceptional events don't compare to the "every play" damage inflicted on football players. Yes, this is a free country and football can and will find its devotees, but once again, high school, college and university educators will need to explain how they choose to sacrifice young brains for the marketing of their institutions. They and their boards of trustees will need to confront this issue sooner rather than later.
5
Although Mr. Tarver makes some very interesting points about football and why it's so all-encompassing, I believe that he has missed the most salient reason for it's unprecedented popularity: it is the sport that most accurately simulates war, and hence Americans can vicariously participate in war from their comfortable living room couches, while the players are brutalized for our entertainment.
4
Alabama will win the college football national championship as long as Nick Saban is there anyway. Hope may spring eternal, but unless one is either a top Southeastern Conference school or Ohio State, that hope is futile.
1
A college football coach should not make more than a Philosophy or English professor.
Scrap the athletic programs and their "scholarship" awards. Let the athletes go to farm leagues straight out of high school. Focus our colleges and universities on scholars and scholarship.
Scrap the athletic programs and their "scholarship" awards. Let the athletes go to farm leagues straight out of high school. Focus our colleges and universities on scholars and scholarship.
5
While we're at it, can we get rid of college theater and music. Let the artists go straight to Broadway or join a band.
And can we get rid of college newspapers and radio stations while we're at it.
The Debate Club? Gone.
Focus our colleges and universities on scholars and scholarship.
And can we get rid of college newspapers and radio stations while we're at it.
The Debate Club? Gone.
Focus our colleges and universities on scholars and scholarship.
Just an outstanding article. A simple explanation for the fevered pitch, the excitement of college football (I graduated from Notre Dame): If the team wins, then I win. My team is a winner. And that must mean that I am also a winner. Bragging rights nicely wrapped as a present for the college football fan.
But, the mounting and convincing evidence of brain damage is surely enough to encourage parents to steer their sons away from football. But the reality is the game will continue to be played as vast amounts of money are flowing to media companies, advertisers and coaches. Meanwhile, do not let your sons grow up to be football players. Brain damage is not worth any of the perceived rewards.
But, the mounting and convincing evidence of brain damage is surely enough to encourage parents to steer their sons away from football. But the reality is the game will continue to be played as vast amounts of money are flowing to media companies, advertisers and coaches. Meanwhile, do not let your sons grow up to be football players. Brain damage is not worth any of the perceived rewards.
9
I see your point, but not all fans fit this mold. I went to a small liberal arts school with barely a football team. My husband went to a big football school (in the SEC). I love watching the games every Saturday. When we were younger I enjoyed meeting other southern fans at our local NYC bar, and once we had our first child we had friends over for the games. I don't know much about recruitment; I know about game day food, ritual drinks, strategy, team spirit, and enjoying something my husband introduced me to. I've even found in managing my team at work that I often feel like a football coach.
Anyway, just the thoughts of a fan who loves the game and loves the rituals, who respects the players for their talents and team work.
Anyway, just the thoughts of a fan who loves the game and loves the rituals, who respects the players for their talents and team work.
4
I have had the same feelings that Mr. Tarver has vis-a-vis college football. Like others, I've asked myself the same questions as we've learned more about head injuries, racism, sexual assault, and exploitation.
There is much about the sport that should and could be fixed. Can it be fixed enough? I don't know.
I am particularly saddened by the racism. Our election made it painfully clear that black athletes on university teams have done little to erase racism or the nostalgia among Trump voters for a racist world.
Is the explanation for my participation Foucaltian subjectivization?--that is, "submitting myself to a set of behavioral regulations, and by doing so, acquiring a sense of my own identity?"
In my case, it isn't. I simply loved to play the game. The word love is not an exaggeration. Even given the health outcomes that we all know about, I would still have played on a university team if I had had the opportunity.
Yes, the sport attracted and encouraged individuals who relished violence on and off the field. That problem and others were, however, in my own experience often the outcome of a particularly miserable sort of coach.
As a player I liked football in the same way that I also liked tennis and math. I stopped playing when my parents asked me to. That same year, a black all-American tailback on my high school team broke his neck during a game.
He never played football again. My own big-time football school did not rescind his athletic scholarship.
There is much about the sport that should and could be fixed. Can it be fixed enough? I don't know.
I am particularly saddened by the racism. Our election made it painfully clear that black athletes on university teams have done little to erase racism or the nostalgia among Trump voters for a racist world.
Is the explanation for my participation Foucaltian subjectivization?--that is, "submitting myself to a set of behavioral regulations, and by doing so, acquiring a sense of my own identity?"
In my case, it isn't. I simply loved to play the game. The word love is not an exaggeration. Even given the health outcomes that we all know about, I would still have played on a university team if I had had the opportunity.
Yes, the sport attracted and encouraged individuals who relished violence on and off the field. That problem and others were, however, in my own experience often the outcome of a particularly miserable sort of coach.
As a player I liked football in the same way that I also liked tennis and math. I stopped playing when my parents asked me to. That same year, a black all-American tailback on my high school team broke his neck during a game.
He never played football again. My own big-time football school did not rescind his athletic scholarship.
6
A very deep essay, unlike so much that we see on this blog. It touches on subjects that are not usually dealt with in philosophy such as team sports, and fan behaviour, yet, as the author points out, they turn out to be highly relevant for philosophy. We tend to forget that a strong sense of identity and sharp lines of inclusion/exclusion are always present in a moral system. Philosophers who explore ethics and meta-ethics would do well to read the work of the late Nobel Prize winning economist Elinor Ostrom. Her magnum opus was called "Governing The Commons" and it basically lays out all the conditions necessary for a moral system to get off the ground.
3
Well, some of the comments confirm that the right wing thinks that it has a proprietary interest in football, more so than the players on the field or the institutions that field them. Combining talk of football with a discussion of racism and the purpose of universities is a sure way to push all the buttons of the right wing.....all that missing to bring a right wing meltdown is suggesting that statutes of CSA generals be replaced with monuments to basketball.
2
College football, adored with passion by millions. Wait a minute, isn't that a bastion of bourgeois Americans and their cohort, the Deplorables? Thus comes the cry from a professor of feminist philosophy: "To the ramparts! This must not stand!".
Let me speculate that when Professor Tarver's students take one of her exams, that unless they regurgitate back to her all the doctinaire anti-white and anti-male nonsense promoted in this piece, they have no hope of a passing grade. Thus are the brains of the next generation coerced into mush.
Let me speculate that when Professor Tarver's students take one of her exams, that unless they regurgitate back to her all the doctinaire anti-white and anti-male nonsense promoted in this piece, they have no hope of a passing grade. Thus are the brains of the next generation coerced into mush.
5
Let me guess, Erin C. Tarver is a woman from the Northeast.
2
As she states, she grew up in Louisiana.
And to think, Mr. Tarver, you get paid to write this stuff! Life is good, no?
3
Mr. Tarver is not Mr. Tarver - other than misidentifying the gender of the writer - well done.
Emory University has always been self-conscious about being the only major University in the south without a football team so it's no surprise the author chose college football to write this concern troll hit piece.
Emory, you may recall, faced a campus-wide crisis when someone wrote 'Make America Great Again' in chalk before the election- to give you an idea of how sensitive they are.
Emory, you may recall, faced a campus-wide crisis when someone wrote 'Make America Great Again' in chalk before the election- to give you an idea of how sensitive they are.
5
Even without that pesky problem with concussions and crippling injuries, American football is a ridiculous sport. College football teams have 125 players on average, including 85 scholarship players, to play a game that allows them to put only 11 players on the field at a time. Most college players never play on Saturday; they are just on the squad to give the first- and second-team offenses and defenses someone to scrimmage against in practice. Professional football teams get by with 53-man rosters because they can bring in new players to replace injured players. The game is so physically punishing that teams play only 10 to 12 one-hour games per year, but few players get six hours of playing time a year. American football has evolved into a game that cannot be played by players of average size. NFL linemen average 300 pounds and have to wear knee braces so they can waddle onto the field. (The top U.S. soccer player, Landon Donovan, is 5 feet, 8 inches and weighs 158 pounds.) No one plays American football for fun. When people play football for fun, they play touch football. But people play soccer for fun. If the United States dropped football in favor of soccer, Americans would quickly become as enthusiastic about soccer as they are now about football.
1
I am a football fan myself but I'm often surprised by the outrage and sense of victimhood by many fans whenever they are presented with fair criticisms of the sport. If you are uncomfortable with the facts then you should reconsider your supposed love of the sport.
6
Criticism of their sport is generally veiled criticism of their culture.
1
I've never understood the whole college football thing. Everyone I know who's really into it is fat and middle aged. Why would you want to be part of that community. And the way they yell at the tv, it's just weird.
1
Really? Don't know any of them and we love college ball.
1
I don't think the co-eds at University of Florida are fat and middle aged.
1
I've never understood the need for 95 varieties of cheese but I would NEVER call people out for standing in long lines at Zabar's on a Sunday morning. To each his own. Live and let live.
So college football fans are racist?
2
Are there any other sins today besides racism?
2
None as bad in America.
1
Now I'm complicit in racism for loving my alma mater's football team? You're a real buzzkill, Times.
6
When are we going to get a thoughtful, gut-wrenching expose on the horrors of trendy hipsters who waste billions on over-priced coffee served by bonded baristas as they chatter over "things that really matter, with words that must be said, can analysis be worthwhile, is the theater really dead?"
I watch football with my friends many of them African American, and yes all are welcome in my home and I in theirs. We tip a few back, yet keep our eyes fixed for the magic moment when time, chance, and talent produces the transcendent. In a life that for most is just one damned thing after another, a glimpse of the divine is welcome.
I watch football with my friends many of them African American, and yes all are welcome in my home and I in theirs. We tip a few back, yet keep our eyes fixed for the magic moment when time, chance, and talent produces the transcendent. In a life that for most is just one damned thing after another, a glimpse of the divine is welcome.
8
Well, if you bother to read the pieces with at least a partly open mind you will find that their mentions of race are in fact not gratuitous at all.
3
Let's not forget we live in a country where 1/3 of adults are obese, cops get away with the murdering of young black men, and many people (who have never had concussions in their life) report high levels of anxiety, depression, and job dissatisfaction.
In this context, a small percentage of the country getting paid (either directly or indirectly) to play a game they enjoy more than life itself can hardly be a bad thing.
If I had the talent and ability I would 100% be out there with them. Unfortunately, I will have to live vicariously.
In this context, a small percentage of the country getting paid (either directly or indirectly) to play a game they enjoy more than life itself can hardly be a bad thing.
If I had the talent and ability I would 100% be out there with them. Unfortunately, I will have to live vicariously.
1
Despite the liberal's desire to see the downfall of football, the sport is never going away.
2
A deep introspection into the mind of America. While my freshman son revels in "frosh weekend" at USC, and with the start of football season on everyone's mind, the nation hopes for a little needed distraction. Trump has worn us down and college football promises to pump us up. But here, Dr. Tarver turns our hopes for gladiator season, of Trojans and Spartans and Tigers and Lions, up on its head. Perhaps racism in America is far more deeply imbedded than anyone can possibly imagine. After we exorcize ourselves of the easy things, like racial slurs and confederate statues, does it really go deeper than that? Is there Must we give up our most beloved of our weekend distractions? There must be another way out.
An interesting article and one that deserves some thought about racism and sports. I am sure there are plenty of college football fans who cheer to heck for a black athlete on the field, and would call the cops if they saw them walking in their neighborhood or worse, equating racial equality with cheering on an athlete fails many tests. On the other hand, the study equating sentences for black juveniles and LSU losses may be a classic correlation versus causation, the article didn't say if they studied comparable sentences for white juveniles and of there was a change. Penty of studies use single axis comparisons and they fail, because they are trying to prove a point.
Likewise, was Colin Kapernick singled out for his protest (or for his Afro, which some have suggested), more so than white athletes doing the same thing? It very well could be, the problem here is we don't have a comparison. Someone tried to use the example of sexual assault and domestic violence, that black players were treated more harshly then white ones, but the reality is that players of all kinds were covered up for, Josh Brown on the NY Giants and Jameis Winston in college both were covered for (and shall we ever forget Jerry Sandusky?). You have to be careful about comparing apples to apples in these kinds of things, correlate like to like (and I am not doubting blacks often get the worst of it, just commenting that the article needs further thought to the scope of such discrepencies).
Likewise, was Colin Kapernick singled out for his protest (or for his Afro, which some have suggested), more so than white athletes doing the same thing? It very well could be, the problem here is we don't have a comparison. Someone tried to use the example of sexual assault and domestic violence, that black players were treated more harshly then white ones, but the reality is that players of all kinds were covered up for, Josh Brown on the NY Giants and Jameis Winston in college both were covered for (and shall we ever forget Jerry Sandusky?). You have to be careful about comparing apples to apples in these kinds of things, correlate like to like (and I am not doubting blacks often get the worst of it, just commenting that the article needs further thought to the scope of such discrepencies).
1
Maybe a little research would have made your argument more compelling. The reason athletics have become big business for colleges is Title Nine, the federal dictum that requires "equality" in treatment of men and women athletes even though sports for women are a drain on university funds. The way to pay for it is to make football and basketball as popular as possible with famous coaches, luxurious facilities, and all kinds of secret bribes to obtain the "best" athletes. Are black athletes being used? Of course they are. But so are white athletes. It's da wimmins who done it.
1
What would college football be without Lee Corso's mascot head prediction and the mid-August liberal editorial on the evils of college football. Go Hokies!
5
THE ARTICLE Is in a sense Neroistic--fiddling while brains are bashed into mush. Brain studies have found that middle and high school kids who play tackle football sustain the same changes in brain tissue as retired pro football players who go on to develop CTE, or chronic traumatic encephalopathy--a Greekified way of saying that the kids, as well as the adults, develop chronic disease in their brains due to the traumatic shocks involved in smashing into each other. I believe that tackle football should be outlawed along with violent forms of other sports such as soccer (the world's most popular sport). I also think that it will be eliminated first with school age children, because exposing them to traumatic brain injury as a sanctioned school activity is physical and medical abuse aided and abetted by both caregivers and school administration and staff that permit underage children to engage in activities that can predictably result in the destruction of their brains and hence their minds. Groan away folks, but it's a NO BRAINER to outlaw tackle football and aggressive soccer for underage children. The brain injury that occurs knows no ethnic or racial boundaries. But if it kills brain cells and destroys minds, clearly it is NOT a healthful way to rise up out of poverty. Eventually a school will lose a multi-million dollar law suit brought by kids who die or are permanently injured by tackle football or aggressive soccer. Schools are self-insuring and afford football.
3
I'm cheering on my Wolverines, along with 115,000+ other fans in the stadium.
My (northern) experience has shown college football unifies and dissolve barriers, far more than it divides. As Bo would say, it *is* about "the team, the team, the team." Go Blue.
My (northern) experience has shown college football unifies and dissolve barriers, far more than it divides. As Bo would say, it *is* about "the team, the team, the team." Go Blue.
1
I totally ignore the NFL, since it has emphasized the corporate profits, rather than the real fans who sat in the End Zone in the summer, and the snow during the winter. Nowadays, ticket prices are skyrocketing in order to provides all of the creature comforts, as if you were at home watching, from your couch. DUH!
College sports are going the same way, as ticket prices (again) approach the stratosphere, to insure bigger and better collisions. And scholarships are being awarded to Middle Schoolers.
And now, there are high school stadiums, costing $70 million, and a few high school teams have more coaches than pro teams.
And then, of course, there are the head injuries.
Tell me, if a kid gets really, really wracked-up, who would pay for a lifetime of health care?
https://thetruthoncommonsense.com
College sports are going the same way, as ticket prices (again) approach the stratosphere, to insure bigger and better collisions. And scholarships are being awarded to Middle Schoolers.
And now, there are high school stadiums, costing $70 million, and a few high school teams have more coaches than pro teams.
And then, of course, there are the head injuries.
Tell me, if a kid gets really, really wracked-up, who would pay for a lifetime of health care?
https://thetruthoncommonsense.com
3
An objective observer tires of the claim players go "uncompensated by rule." What a fallacious and erroneous trope. Players at Duke, for example, are privileged with a scholarship and aid package worth north of a quarter million dollars, not to mention the long term value of a degree.
I worked in a research lab as an undergraduate. I was smart and precocious, and I flatter myself to think my ideas furthered high level scientific endeavor. I loved it, but I was paid a princely sum of $5 dollars an hour, with no scholarship, books, per diem, meals, clothes, travel, or ANY other benefits. I also had to clean the urine sample containers, among other prestigious tasks.
Some perspective, please.
I worked in a research lab as an undergraduate. I was smart and precocious, and I flatter myself to think my ideas furthered high level scientific endeavor. I loved it, but I was paid a princely sum of $5 dollars an hour, with no scholarship, books, per diem, meals, clothes, travel, or ANY other benefits. I also had to clean the urine sample containers, among other prestigious tasks.
Some perspective, please.
3
Why is anyone playing football? Why are people still going to the coliseum to watch people pummel each other into oblivion? Get out of the house and away from the stadiums and take a hike. Take a hike with your family and friends. Commune, and breathe clean air ( while we still have it ).
1
Somehow I manage to do both. It is quite amazing.
3
An excellent piece addressing questions about which I've long wondered.
While he does not delve into the racial implications very much, I also highly recommend Steve Almond's book, "Against Football: One Fan's Reluctant Manifesto." Well worth reading.
http://amzn.to/2vXd7aX
While he does not delve into the racial implications very much, I also highly recommend Steve Almond's book, "Against Football: One Fan's Reluctant Manifesto." Well worth reading.
http://amzn.to/2vXd7aX
The teams should mirror the student body in demographics. When this changed, so did the importance of an education.
College football repugnant on many levels. The abuses detailed here, sure, making sure it remains a plantation economy. look at the effect on the students who don't care about it. Each senior official serves basically at the pleasure of the athletic director. At university of Colorado awhile back, recruiting violations involving pimping (sorry don't recall the nice word for that, used when there's not cash involved) and rape brought the athletic director and the univ Presideent to a confrontation.
A resignation ensued. The president of course.
A resignation ensued. The president of course.
The good news is that in the post-structural, un-subjectivized utopia that will replace the white supremacist horrors of the relic Amerika, we won't have activities like football, or sports of any kind, or competition of any kind, to impede the progress of democracy.
Can't hardly wait.
Can't hardly wait.
"The extraordinary reach of football into fans’ lives makes perfect sense when we see it for what it is: the most popular mechanism in contemporary America for cultivating a sense of self that is rooted in a community." Sometimes the community that is celebrated is different from "real men" or "Southern men" as when black players display their support for black lives matter during the national anthem, or when they come out as gay. Does anyone remember that Professor Alan Dundes when at UC Berkeley got death threats for his article, "Into the End Zone for a Touchdown" that explored homo-eroticism in football? Moving away from football, remember the Black Power Salute at the '68 Olympics? I still get moved thinking about it.
1
Football causes chronic traumatic encephalopathy - the sport is no longer acceptable. End of story.
2
That stuff about the judges is really a little scary.
2
The writer alleges it so it must be true, right?
"The Times alleges that college football is racist because the sport is violent and mostly white fans “gloat” over the “sacrifice” of mostly black players." What a crock. The whiny lemmings on the Left want to turn everything into a race issue. I love to watch football, college more than NFL games. I remember the excitement of being in the stadium at Penn state watching big college football teams. I never cared whether a player was white or black nor did I enjoy bone-crushing tackles. I enjoyed the good run and the good pass. What is true is that I personally identified with whether my team won or lost. It was like a personal statement of me. But so what? If you want to complain about something, complain about cage fighting
1
Yes, football at all levels is exploitative and dangerous. But I suspect players from impoverished minority families recognize these facts, too. So why play? Perhaps, in addition to the joy of using their great physical abilities, they knowingly sacrifice their personal well-being in order to help lift their families out of the torment of poverty and deadly, life-long social oppression that comes with it.
College football is a microcosm of whom we are. It is human commoditization, a simple parsing of what one or what we perceive that person or group does best. Who does it serve, this divide and conquer approach, the ephemeral ecstasy of these Saturday games. It is scorn or worse for those who don't conform in Saturday games and provincial comradery. No one seems concerned about the largess of expense lavished on these establishments as many starve for the necessities of a dignified life.
1
The author appears to be a "cup half-empty" kind of person. And he forgets that a major recipient of all the money are the universities themselves, who, after all, control rights to all money-related matters, like who else may share the proceeds (TV, sponsors, etc.). On a positive note, football money pays for other college sports that do not generate profits.
College sports have been very positive for thousands of black athletes in many sports, who today receive very valuable scholarships and many opportunities that derive from going to college.
Having said that, sports have become a monster for children of all backgrounds and ages, because many parents thirst for the fame and fortune they perceive may be in store for their children.
Compare modern sports with what us old folks knew as children: now, year-long seasons; coaches too highly paid--millions, really?; too much adult supervision and direction for young kids; traveling grade school leagues; frothing-at-the-mouth parents at athletic events. There is far too much pressure to succeed, but evidently that is what many people want.
Money, not racism, is the corrupting influence in college sports.
College sports have been very positive for thousands of black athletes in many sports, who today receive very valuable scholarships and many opportunities that derive from going to college.
Having said that, sports have become a monster for children of all backgrounds and ages, because many parents thirst for the fame and fortune they perceive may be in store for their children.
Compare modern sports with what us old folks knew as children: now, year-long seasons; coaches too highly paid--millions, really?; too much adult supervision and direction for young kids; traveling grade school leagues; frothing-at-the-mouth parents at athletic events. There is far too much pressure to succeed, but evidently that is what many people want.
Money, not racism, is the corrupting influence in college sports.
3
The elephant in the room is that college football is a free farm system for the NFL. This is never mentioned when any reforms are bandied about. And why isn't there a link between all that TV money for college football and tuition costs?
3
While this article makes many very good comments on the state of college football today, racism is very small in this arena. Almost nobody cares about your race when you are scoring TD's and winning games. Now of course in the past racism was a large factor especially in the south, today vanishing small. And of course my school (Florida) does not get subsidies from academics, there is no such thing as "profit" (rather a non profit surplus) and football supports almost all of the other sports which is valuable to those students.
2
I've had season tickets to the home football games at USMA West Point for the last 15 years. The author should come to one sometime.
At West Point (like Annapolis and the Air Force Academy), football players go through the same basic training and have to attend the same classes as the rest of the student body. When they graduate (as almost all of them do), they have a 4-yr degree in engineering, and are commissioned second lieutenants in the Army.
There are plenty of blacks on these teams, at every position including quarterback. They ARE part of the West Point community, and part of the "Long Gray Line." They do not play football hoping to become part of the NFL, because they have a 5 year active duty commitment in front of them when they graduate. They also do not attend West Point to become professional football players; they attend to become leaders of soldiers.
West Point often plays teams which it has little chance of beating. There are no 300-lb linemen at West Point; they'd never pass their annual physical fitness testing. But there are speedsters, and really smart students, and they don't make foolish mistakes on the field, and they don't ever give up. Hence, they win more games than they should.
Want to see real college football? Join me at Michie Stadium in September.
At West Point (like Annapolis and the Air Force Academy), football players go through the same basic training and have to attend the same classes as the rest of the student body. When they graduate (as almost all of them do), they have a 4-yr degree in engineering, and are commissioned second lieutenants in the Army.
There are plenty of blacks on these teams, at every position including quarterback. They ARE part of the West Point community, and part of the "Long Gray Line." They do not play football hoping to become part of the NFL, because they have a 5 year active duty commitment in front of them when they graduate. They also do not attend West Point to become professional football players; they attend to become leaders of soldiers.
West Point often plays teams which it has little chance of beating. There are no 300-lb linemen at West Point; they'd never pass their annual physical fitness testing. But there are speedsters, and really smart students, and they don't make foolish mistakes on the field, and they don't ever give up. Hence, they win more games than they should.
Want to see real college football? Join me at Michie Stadium in September.
5
I too have season football tickets at West Point since graduation in 1978. I fully endorse the comments above!
I think that how college football is conducted reflects the college community and the people who make up the fans of the teams, the game is neutral.
The exploitation of athletes amounts to the institutions taking advantage of young men without means to afford college and even without the academic preparation to excel as athletes and perhaps become professionals and to attract both fans and donors. It's a risky bet for the athletes because any serious injury or failure to become professional players means not much future without having enjoyed the educational opportunities offered by the colleges. The ethical thing to do is to assure that athletes succeed in the schools academically no worse than the students over all.
The identification of the sport with bigger social issues like identification with the confederacy or as a character building crucible, is just extraneous stuff that people hang on it, and that really amounts to freedom of expression more than anything else.
The injuries and how to limit them better should be society's primary interest when it comes to football. College athletes should not be ending their careers crippled for life or with brain injuries which will become manifest in a decade or two.
The exploitation of athletes amounts to the institutions taking advantage of young men without means to afford college and even without the academic preparation to excel as athletes and perhaps become professionals and to attract both fans and donors. It's a risky bet for the athletes because any serious injury or failure to become professional players means not much future without having enjoyed the educational opportunities offered by the colleges. The ethical thing to do is to assure that athletes succeed in the schools academically no worse than the students over all.
The identification of the sport with bigger social issues like identification with the confederacy or as a character building crucible, is just extraneous stuff that people hang on it, and that really amounts to freedom of expression more than anything else.
The injuries and how to limit them better should be society's primary interest when it comes to football. College athletes should not be ending their careers crippled for life or with brain injuries which will become manifest in a decade or two.
2
Reading the series of essays on race has raised doubts about the quality of the American academics. We should be able to rely on the professoriate to minimize or at least acknowledge confirmation bias and false correlations. I am fairly confident that the laws of physics will eventually be deemed racist because Newton and Einstein were white.
Finding oneself in juvenile court is not a matter of luck, it is the result of a personal choice.
Finding oneself in juvenile court is not a matter of luck, it is the result of a personal choice.
4
Guilty until proven innocent? Even if so, doesn't it matter that a sentence can be lengthened due to a combination of race and college football?
Start paying the players a salary. Not chump change, either. Continue giving them a tuition-free education, tutors, the whole nine yards. But require each student/player to sign a contract with the school making it mandatory for them to remain with the school for a full four years, no bailing out in their sophomore or junior year to go pro.
Making each player graduate or be responsible for their full tuition, room and board, and incidentals would be a nice idea.
Making each player graduate or be responsible for their full tuition, room and board, and incidentals would be a nice idea.
1
If they want to be paid like the pros, draft them like the pros. No more picking which school they want to play for. Make them pay tuition, room and board. Pros pay their own living expenses. Make them sign four-year contracts. No more leaving after their junior years for the pros. If they don't play up to expectations, fire them and get someone else. If they get injured, they are off the team and off the payroll. Who cares if they graduate. Pros are in it for the money,
3
If you pay them then charge them for their food, housing, coaching, and all the other benefits that they get. If you don't like the deal just don't take it. Now I do want their future medical issues addressed.
2
Finally, an opinion about college football which I have thought much about over the years. Why, for example, should talented black athletes bring glory and prestige to Alabama on Saturdays and then have its cheering legislators pass laws during the week that suppress their culture's rights? It's a modern form of slavery where pro football money is the lure in exchange for a winning record and national prominence for a bigoted political agenda. These athletes should always reject recruitment from a university located in a state which seeks their athletic talent but rejects their people's humanity throughout the legislative week. An exodus from this duplicity would make the confederate flag wavers endure the pain of a white team's losing season. Civil rights organizations should make this issue a top priority--and states, especially in the south, should be forced to make a choice about their beloved football success.
4
Slaves have no choice and are held by violence, no football player is held in slavery, they make choices within the rules as we all do. They go to Bama because they see it as a great deal, I wish they went to my team instead.
1
I think we should hold athletes to the same academic standards as the incoming student body. I'm fine with that even if it means less black students in college and on the football and basketball teams. There should be an NFL minor league for kids without grades to learn football.
Make football a "college" sport again.
Make football a "college" sport again.
"Beyond what increasingly appear to be the inherent and horrifying physical effects of long-term play on its athletes, there is the unavoidable fact of their exploitation: College players go uncompensated by rule, while TV networks, coaches and apparel companies make money hand over fist on the players’ talent." So the NCAA says that most colleges/universities don't turn a profit? Seems like a little bit of self-preservation on the association's part.
2
Almost no athletic programs (not just football) have a surplus, many get subsidies from the states or the academic side. Get informed.
No you get informed vulcanalx. Colleges have separate Athletic Associations that pay the coach, build the stadiums, support the players scholarships, and contribute money from football to other sports at the school and donate money back to the school.
The economics of belonging are indeed sinister. Not belonging to a group (and earning a degree) puts you at serious risk of earning dramatically less over your lifetime. In order to join, millions of students borrow billions of dollars, yet they ultimately fail in their pursuit of membership and drop out
College football coaches now make more than is reasonable by any metric. Nick Saban at Alabama is used as proof that wins equal applications, and applications equal money and respect. For every Saban, there are 3 Matt Ruhle's....the coach at Temple last year who turned his 18 win, 20 loss 2 year tenure at TU (with a $1M+ salary) into being the new coach at Baylor. Not sure of the salary at BU, but the last guy made $5.3M until he got caught covering up an environment of rampant sexual assault by the team.
D1 College football should be a paid activity. Recruit and pay players as professionals. Schools can buy the sponsorship of a team, and as a perk can offer discounts to players who want to study while playing in the NFL development league (brought to you by the NCAA). It would take about 2 years for colleges to stop sponsoring all but the top 50 teams.
College football coaches now make more than is reasonable by any metric. Nick Saban at Alabama is used as proof that wins equal applications, and applications equal money and respect. For every Saban, there are 3 Matt Ruhle's....the coach at Temple last year who turned his 18 win, 20 loss 2 year tenure at TU (with a $1M+ salary) into being the new coach at Baylor. Not sure of the salary at BU, but the last guy made $5.3M until he got caught covering up an environment of rampant sexual assault by the team.
D1 College football should be a paid activity. Recruit and pay players as professionals. Schools can buy the sponsorship of a team, and as a perk can offer discounts to players who want to study while playing in the NFL development league (brought to you by the NCAA). It would take about 2 years for colleges to stop sponsoring all but the top 50 teams.
2
No, college players should not be paid. If they want money then start an NFL minor league.
If you pay players many supporters will quit. Paying them will destroy college sports in their entirety.
"College football coaches now make more than is reasonable by any metric. "
Except the economic metric called the law of supply and demand.
Except the economic metric called the law of supply and demand.
I have good friends who do the complete football-is-fantastic thing, repeatedly, year after year after year. Always the same routine. It appears to me to be some sort of tribalism. Most of them were taught as young children, by parents with the same traditions, that watching football, and going to the big game (they're ALL 'big,' of course!) is an important thing. They've never stopped to thing about it, it seems.
2
Sports are a great thing. The overcoming of obstacles, teamwork. Those of us that have played have benefited tremendously. If you haven't you won't understand it. Bet you weren't the military either, right?
2
I agree, sports = great. I thought we were talking about watching sports. Although now that you mention it, I suppose executing that routine, and getting to that same seat every year does require overcoming obstacles, and works better with teamwork.
To be sure, it is a ritual with complex social implications. However, people, mostly men, have competed in one kind of game or another, and other people have watched them doing it for centuries. Should competition cease or should we outlaw dangerous sports only? As to the problem of minority exploitation in sports, is the solution prohibiting their participation to avoid exploitation? As to financial compensation, should players be paid according to their importance to the team, on a descending scale for the fourth or fifth stringers? Is the moral question also present in field athletics, swimming or lacrosse? Will the moral
problems be solved with the removal of sports from colleges? Finally, are the same issues present in professional sports, like football and baseball?
problems be solved with the removal of sports from colleges? Finally, are the same issues present in professional sports, like football and baseball?
2
Does the Times have to gratuitously bring up race in every piece that it publishes?
71
Yes, Yes of course it is mandatory. Race is everything in the minds of racists!
2
What is gratuitous about a factual examination of the exploitation of young, black athletes? What's the good part of Illinois, Ron?
3
ron wilson....i made a comment without reading the story. the hed was enough. the corruption and worship of university/college sports in the usa is beyond the pale. i haven't followed any of them for decades.
i prefer a system where the athletes are true students, not guns for hire.
i prefer a system where the athletes are true students, not guns for hire.
2
While the exploitation continues, it is more and more equal opportunity exploitation. I heard and read the vilest statements from "supporters" about a white QB or a white kicker that didn't come through. They all are being used and at the highest competition levels they can't be both successful players and students. Why not allow scholarships that last 7 years so after playing for 4 they can continue and complete their education? If you say only a few schools can afford such expenses, my response is that if it is allowed, and a school wants to compete in the big time, they will find a way to get the revenue.
6
At my school you are encouraged to get your degree and can come back at any time to complete it. If you are a pro you can pay, if not there are alternatives that get your degree.
For the vast majority of schools, especially outside the Power 5, football is a money bit. Schools like UAB or New Mexico St. will rarely turn a profit. It's an arms race and these schools over spend because they think it brings prestige to their universities. And they raise student activity fees to pay for it.
1
A column on college football by a writer who hates the sport who teaches at a University that doesn't play it...why am I not surprised. The one activity that brings together millions of fans of all classes, races, and genders ...and this writer despises it. Is she upset because football is a masculine sport played by men and enjoyed by men? What is really bugging her? Hard to say. As a Sports Photographer who knows many of the college football participants let me say the points this column makes are ridiculous...even idiotic. It's joyful sport in so many ways for all paqrticipants. But Tarver cherry picks all that is bad about the game and makes absurd unproven observations. This is part of much of a larger trend of denigrating everything in working-class culture. Most of these fans are working-class. The very people the left purports to be their will on earth. But they hate to the very core everything they love or find sacred....especially college football. So-called progressives have been mocking & lecturing working class people for decades. You are bad for eating factory-farmed meat, owning a gun, and driving an SUV. You are bad for speaking the language of micro-aggressions and patriarchy and cultural appropriation. And now you are terrible people for loving college football. Come on! This plays perfectly into the narrative that liberals are pompous fanatics. Dems will not win over working-class swing voters if they persist in ridiculing college football...that's nuts.
42
Who better to critique the game than an outsider? Do you expect a fair critique from Roger Goodell??
An outsider??? Give me a break. I am not bothered by intelligent critiques ...but that outsider should have some understanding of the history and traditions of the sport. Hopefully, that outsider will be on planet Earth not Pluto too. Maybe it's just me but I don't think we are going to get an honest assessment of college football from someone who presents papers like Flesh, Meaning and Empathy: Toward a New Merleau-Pontian Theory of Sexuality,”. Get real...this was an academic hack job that isn't worthy of the NYT which I read everyday. I'm embarrassed that this paper thought they needed to give space to someone who hates the sport and has a half sharpened ax to grind. Judges give harsher sentences when the home team loses....come on....this is a sick joke. If you don't like college football don't watch. But if you are going to critique the sport at least do your homework....something this author clearly hasn't done. She has distorted leftist agenda she is trying to push...I'm not buying.
1
Wow. Great, disturbing article. I remember a football loss as an occasion for a man in social competition to physically assault me (I bloodied his nose and he stopped). So I know sports losses get people riled up. Truly troubling that men entrusted with the awesome responsibility of being judges would also be such idiots. That they are racist idiots only compounds dismay....yet, sadly, I am not surprised. When I got back after two combat tours with an infantry battalion, now a civilian, my depression over buffoons, which seemed to be a majority of Americans, cheering like war was a football game.
6
Spot-on - when coaches talk about his players "going to battle" or "fighting in the trenches" and "going to war" they have no idea that this must annoy service veterans to no end. Football is a game; serving one's country is not.
2
The Kaepernick situation is instructive. Football is a cultural outpost of white nationalism. The African-American players are expected to avoid challenging these cultural norms, even in the most trivial symbolic ways. It is more acceptable to abuse your spouse physically than to sit during the national anthem. And in the Age of Trump this intolerance will only increase.
4
Sure it is??? NOT!! He is not good enough to bother with his antics. Mostly he is not good enough. See what would happen if say a great QB started kneeling, he would be criticized but he still would have a job. Now a great QB would keep his personal views out of his work place and then nobody much would care.
"Football is a cultural outpost of white nationalism" ??
White nationalist are more tolerant than advertised. One would assume they would not spend their weekends watching a majority of Black athletes play. I assumed they spent their weekend reading Breitbart and having picnics under a Stonewall Jackson statue.
White nationalist are more tolerant than advertised. One would assume they would not spend their weekends watching a majority of Black athletes play. I assumed they spent their weekend reading Breitbart and having picnics under a Stonewall Jackson statue.
Kaepernick has the right to voice his opinion. On the football field - play football.
Erin Tarver has written a flawed, disingenuous column oozing elitism and filled with unsubstantiated generalizations. Ms. Tarver, who specializes in Feminist Studies at Emory, loses all credibility when she repeats stereotypical, pop psychology shibboleths, about fans identifying vicariously with teams for their "personal identity" and to justify their "manhood", makes undocumented assertions about how white fans react to Colin Kaepernick, Richard Sherman, and Tyrone Mathieu, insults black players by claiming with absolutely no evidence, that white fans see them as "mascots", and concludes with an absolutely specious,logically illegitimate,"correlation proves causation"argument, ludicrously positing that LSU football results are a dispositive factor in sentences handed down to young black offenders. When Ms.Tarver attempts to apply the ideas of Michel Foucault and Malcolm X to an evaluation of contemporary college football, its akin to Donald Trump pontificating on the angst of the isolated intellectual. When she uses the term " we cheer", we know professor Tarver isn't and I'd wager she never has.
39
I wonder if the author realizes how elitist she is revealing herself to be?
Agnew wasn't good for much, but he did give us "nattering nabob of negativism".
Which somehow came to mind reading this diatribe. BTW, I'm a baseball fan.
Which somehow came to mind reading this diatribe. BTW, I'm a baseball fan.
7
I used to be a big fan of college football and of the Steelers. That was a long time ago. Changes in where in live and maturing caused me to lose interest. Something else should be discussed about obsessive sports fans. Sure we can say it fosters community but I also think it retards personal growth. So many people still reliving their high school and college days twenty and thirty or more years later. As for professional football, most fans can't afford to buy tickets to see their favorite team play.
4
So do what I do. Watch on TV, follow many of your teams. Celebrate NC's in different sports, like say baseball, softball, gymnastics. Celebrate the accomplishments (on the field, in the classroom, and in our society) of all the athletes that compete for your school. Now not everyone is a Gator so most can't match the overall accomplishments, but we do allow in anybody.
i haven't paid attention to the stoo dent ath a leets/mercenaries for a long, long time.
the whole system stinks.
the two major revenue sports are rife with corruption, coaches who should be ashamed of their own behaviour and young men who too often wouldn't be anywhere near a college or a university for their academic competence.
the whole system stinks.
the two major revenue sports are rife with corruption, coaches who should be ashamed of their own behaviour and young men who too often wouldn't be anywhere near a college or a university for their academic competence.
3
For goodness sakes, is everything in the Times about race? Watching college football without a prerequisite amount of shame and apology is now racist? How do people who write and live this drivel even function during a normal day?
21
You can apologize for your racism during the TV commercials, and thereby have a clear conscience when the game comes back on.
Just what I needed from the NYT. An anti-football piece by a philosophy professor at a non football school who "specializes in feminist philosophy" (according to her college listing).
59
Best comment here. By far.
1
Yes, it is just what you need.
"If you try, sometime: you just might find you get what you need"
Xo
"If you try, sometime: you just might find you get what you need"
Xo
Mr. Tarver, you won't bum me out at the approach of the start of college football season. How 'bout them Dawgs!?
7
Ms. Tarver: to paraphrase a political philosopher, I know football fans, and you're no football fan. Fortunately, you're only preaching to the saved: No self-respecting, virtue-signaling NY Times reader would ever support that nasty sport.
9
It's disingenuous to discuss D-1 football player compensation without mentioning that these young men risk serious injury to fund Title IX initiatives for non-revenue sports, including women's basketball, volleyball, softball, track, etc. and some men's sports like gymnastics. Title IX needs to be reexamined.
What exactly is "fair" about giving a D-1 college football player who creates vast wealth for his university and who risks serious injury and concussion on every kickoff the same stipend as a non-revenue, non-contact sport athlete? It's wrong and needs to be discussed.
What exactly is "fair" about giving a D-1 college football player who creates vast wealth for his university and who risks serious injury and concussion on every kickoff the same stipend as a non-revenue, non-contact sport athlete? It's wrong and needs to be discussed.
6
Well Gee they all accept the rules of the deal. For example almost no baseball players get a full ride, while many football players who are walk ons do. Life is not fair, make your choices.
Cheering more brain damage and concussions and other harmful long term effects of the sport seems to be the answer to your answer to your question. It seems to be the American way.
Josiah Royce's question, "What does this enthusiasm make you do?" should be rephrased to, "What does this enthusiasm prevent you from doing?" Let's see. I could spend 4 hrs watching a game or do repairs on the house, garden, read, take a bike ride or walk, go fishing . . ..
3
You can do repairs on the house, garden, read, take a bike ride or walk, go fishing, any time. Just not game time.
1
First it is a choice, next you can do some of these things as well, after all it is only four hours. I used to spend the entire day on Saturday watching and enjoying football. I have spent an entire week going to a bowl game and its activities. It is a choice.
1
My brother-in-law played college football. He is a physical wreck from playing the game. Surgery after surgery to repair the damage to his hips and knees. And there is concern about his memory. Was it worth it? His son's decision answers the question. He also has son (2 years old now) and the decision that he will not play football has already been made.
3
Great decision, but many players are in fact healthy, especially if they were not starters. Many don't understand looking at the entire population of college football players instead of just those that took the most punishment. I never played but have several physical issues.
On the face of it, lots of college sports fanatics are just like predominantly working-class pro sports fanatics in places like Baltimore. All these fanatics long for victory as a form of vicarious ego-enhancement in their otherwise pathetically mundane, if not outright humiliating, lives. On the other hand, football is simply the greatest display of raw physical strength and courage available to the masses. And, despite concussions, football is a classically American form of relatively benign simulation. The Romans, made of much sterner stuff than we are, wanted their gladiatorial blood and guts for real. Americans, as always. prefer a relatively bland, unthreatening, Disney cartoon version of a fight to the death or being devoured alive by LSU tigers. Climbing is infinitely more dangerous than football, yet few sensitive souls wail that we should save the participants in this sport from themselves by outlawing their freely chosen brushes with death. No football player can now be unaware that he may injure his brain if he chooses to risk it. But the inconvenient truth for reformers is that most former football players do not wreck their brains at all. So why not treat football players as free individuals able to take their chances, at infinitely better odds, right along with the Formula 1 drivers, jockeys, climbers, and matadors? You pays your money, and you takes your choice. And why pay college players more than the $50,000 a year in free education? Some "exploitation"!
2
Does anyone cheer the irony of institutes of higher learning spending vast sums of money to physically damage the brains of young men?
5
Oh come on! Are you going to suggest getting rid of bars too? What about cars? It's okay to enjoy one of the greatest sports ever created and not be a fan of certain negative externalities. I, for one, can't wait for the season to start.
3
You, the fans, are sacrificing your souls and your own once healthy bodies.
Ultimately, you are cheering for an occasion to let loose, tail-gate, party, indulge, over-eat bad food, binge drink, get wasted and scream in cacophonous unity with 60,000 of your best friends.
All this to boost the egos of steroid infused muscle men that too many in our society revere as false gods -- men who receive so many head blows in practice and on game days that they damage their brains and become candidates for Lou Gehrig's disease, Parkinson or some other manifestation of chronic traumatic encephalopathy.
And so it is that I gave up watching all football some 20 years ago.
Ultimately, you are cheering for an occasion to let loose, tail-gate, party, indulge, over-eat bad food, binge drink, get wasted and scream in cacophonous unity with 60,000 of your best friends.
All this to boost the egos of steroid infused muscle men that too many in our society revere as false gods -- men who receive so many head blows in practice and on game days that they damage their brains and become candidates for Lou Gehrig's disease, Parkinson or some other manifestation of chronic traumatic encephalopathy.
And so it is that I gave up watching all football some 20 years ago.
2
What a strange article. Team spoorts like football and soccer are all about identity and offer a vicarious way to "fight" and represent that identity. One could completely remove college football and society would be much the same. People would not be more or less racist just by switching to watching soccer. To blame NCAA for the ills of US society is just so odd that I'm baffled how you got to be a professor of philosophy.
8
Big time college sports, especially football, but also basketball, is intellectually indefensible, it is like smoking, wearing high heels or eating every morning at Cinnabon.
2
I live in Louisiana and I totally agree with this article. My brother told me years ago that "the only Black people that most White people like in Louisiana is the Black players on the LSU football team. We just laughed at the saying, but we know deep down in our hearts it is actually the truth,
A friend of mine who lives on Baton Rouge near LSU told me that as Black people you do not want to be pulled over by the cops if the football team loses a game.
As a resident of Louisiana, we African Americans live with the harsh reality that occurs over a college football team. Really, a college football team!
A friend of mine who lives on Baton Rouge near LSU told me that as Black people you do not want to be pulled over by the cops if the football team loses a game.
As a resident of Louisiana, we African Americans live with the harsh reality that occurs over a college football team. Really, a college football team!
9
Very simple solution. Get rid of amateur athletics altogether. Like soccer in Europe.
The idea that Div. I football players are "compensated" by their scholarship and failure to take advantage is their fault is utter nonsense. The amount of time and physical effort that these young men need to put in on the sport makes it impossible for any one to even partially participate in the academics of the school. They are used up and disposed of for our enjoyment. Their traumatic brain injury later in life is off our radar and certainly of no concern to the school for which they played.
4
Ain't mindless tribalism great? While I detest it, I also envy the ability some people have to waste so much time and spend so much money so as to distract themselves from various concerns with so little thought given to the hypocrisy and misplaced priorities of this nonsense. I have lived in Big Ten country for almost forty years and the madness gets ever more distressing.
2
Nice self flagellation. College football is here to stay. Can it be made safer? Can it be more fair financially -- i.e. -- compensating the players? Maybe, although that might be a slippery slope but I would have no issue with a standard salary to all college football players -- every player paid the same so it doesn't influence recruiting.
There are other issues like -- should players have to meet the same academic standards as other students? That's a tough one but worth considering.
There are risks to playing football, just like there are risks in other sports such as riding & jumping horses. Skiing is risky. Still, given the known risks, you don't see many players at any level giving up the sport. It's fun to play (more if you are good), and the social rewards are large. Who gets the most girls, tuba players (no offense tuba folks) or moderately decent players?
The question of race is -- a question. I do find it somewhat ludicrous to see virtually all white fans cheering virtually all black teams but all in all I think that is a good thing. Of course we could mandate affirmative action for white players so that say, 70% of all starters and players must be white, but I prefer merit.
And in the end the high profiles of many black athletes has been good for race relations. How can you not see a Tony Dungy or Michael Strahan or Michael Jordan to name just a few on TV and not relate to them as people? Smart engaging people.
There are other issues like -- should players have to meet the same academic standards as other students? That's a tough one but worth considering.
There are risks to playing football, just like there are risks in other sports such as riding & jumping horses. Skiing is risky. Still, given the known risks, you don't see many players at any level giving up the sport. It's fun to play (more if you are good), and the social rewards are large. Who gets the most girls, tuba players (no offense tuba folks) or moderately decent players?
The question of race is -- a question. I do find it somewhat ludicrous to see virtually all white fans cheering virtually all black teams but all in all I think that is a good thing. Of course we could mandate affirmative action for white players so that say, 70% of all starters and players must be white, but I prefer merit.
And in the end the high profiles of many black athletes has been good for race relations. How can you not see a Tony Dungy or Michael Strahan or Michael Jordan to name just a few on TV and not relate to them as people? Smart engaging people.
2
This provocative article ranging from an exploration of a fan's self image to the complicated and critical interplay of college sport and race should generate hearty discussion. I fear it will be skimmed and serve to send partisans to their respective corners to defend hardened points of view.
People get angry when someone threatens to turn off a show they are enjoying, and football fans will view this piece in that light. It's a shame. Self examination is what is called for here.
People get angry when someone threatens to turn off a show they are enjoying, and football fans will view this piece in that light. It's a shame. Self examination is what is called for here.
2
Thank you for providing me with new reasons to disdain college football.
As you note, it is a particularly American form of tribalism that frames an "us versus them" structure for each team and its rivals, with the vast majority of football fans sharing a value system that rationalizes financial exploitation, physical damage, and psychological abuse of players. The willingness and even enthusiasm of many Americans for embracing football as a shared culture saddens me, and particularly sad are parents who encourage their young children to play, knowing the risks of brain damage and the improbability of a professional career. Overlaying racism on this culture makes it even more distressing and repugnant.
As you note, it is a particularly American form of tribalism that frames an "us versus them" structure for each team and its rivals, with the vast majority of football fans sharing a value system that rationalizes financial exploitation, physical damage, and psychological abuse of players. The willingness and even enthusiasm of many Americans for embracing football as a shared culture saddens me, and particularly sad are parents who encourage their young children to play, knowing the risks of brain damage and the improbability of a professional career. Overlaying racism on this culture makes it even more distressing and repugnant.
Shhh...don't tell anyone that I read this article, and found it engagingly reasoned, refreshingly critical and...dangerously un-American. I mean,
there are A LOT of totally edgy things one can do in contemporary US society
--like not pay any attention to Twitter, or like not watch Game of Thrones (and tell people you don't), or like patrol a Southern city in the middle of a clash of protesters with a machine gun and full-on combat gear--but sensibly critique college football? HERESY! Even LSU football? INSUBORDINATION! I promise to visit Ms. Tarver in prison, no doubt at a dark site in a country where they worship, say...what we (only) call soccer, or say, cricket.
there are A LOT of totally edgy things one can do in contemporary US society
--like not pay any attention to Twitter, or like not watch Game of Thrones (and tell people you don't), or like patrol a Southern city in the middle of a clash of protesters with a machine gun and full-on combat gear--but sensibly critique college football? HERESY! Even LSU football? INSUBORDINATION! I promise to visit Ms. Tarver in prison, no doubt at a dark site in a country where they worship, say...what we (only) call soccer, or say, cricket.
3
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Talk about incredible over analysis and navel gazing at something that many people enjoy and come together for entirely good reasons. Yes, colleges in the SEC were pressured not to integrate until the famous shellacking of all white Alabama by USC. But many kids who grew up in the 50's and '60's and were not taught to hate, played sports and shot baskets pretending to be the Big O, or caught a fly ball pretending to be Willie Mays, or ran a football pretending to be Jim Brown.
7
Good and necessary essay given all you mention. Looking at the recent history of Penn State and its huge spending and favors granted to this brutal sport coached by thoroughly corrupt employees enabled through the theoretically state U its sickening. Particularly given that the ostensible function of a University is to educate. Let´s hope and watch as football as we have known it is gradually dismantled. Fought every bit of the way by the profiteers.
2
I gave up following Division 1 college football years ago. Student athletes?? Come on!
My daughter attended Middlebury College. NESCAC Division 3. Used to love to visit and attend those football games. Nice little brand of football. No admission charge. Beautiful atmosphere between the Green and Adirondacks. True student athletes.
My daughter attended Middlebury College. NESCAC Division 3. Used to love to visit and attend those football games. Nice little brand of football. No admission charge. Beautiful atmosphere between the Green and Adirondacks. True student athletes.
1
Sports and academics are not natural allies and need not be made to hold hands. Kick out celebrity sports like football and baseball; turn the teams into semi-pro's; pay the players well and move teams out the schools.
Why would you expect people to consider scandals, violence, and exploitation in their decision to support their favorite team when they don't consider it for things that really matter? Football is supposed to be fun. With the exception of committing a crime, why all of the non-football coverage such as players politics, fashion, musical tastes, etc.? White or black - I don't care. That's why I stopped reading the sports page and watching ESPN. Real fans root for their teams because it's fun.
1
Thank you for a clear eyed take on college football; the finding on sentencing differences after LSU losses made my jaw drop. I write this on the first day of fall classes at Penn State, where the repercussions of the Sandusky scandal still reverberate. The denial and compartmentalization of the tragedy by of a huge swath of the Penn State fandom and alumni provides a lens into the power of the tribalism that the sport generates. To this day, otherwise rational people find ways to argue that Joe Paterno could never have harbored a pedophile on his coaching staff because of all the good that JoePa has done for his players and the school. Blame is put on the president who had less power on campus than the coach, and the lawyers hired to uncover the details of the scandal, and the board of trustees who fired the legend.
The cognitive dissonance exposes the degree that people will hold on to the myth of the tribe and the belief in all of the good in the chosen icon of devotion rather than to see how football warps the academics and compromises the ideals of the university. Paradoxically, although the mission of a university is to teach students to think critically about the world and uncover truths, the devotion to college football actually causes people to suspend their critical judgement and ignore obvious truths about race, power, and ethics.
The cognitive dissonance exposes the degree that people will hold on to the myth of the tribe and the belief in all of the good in the chosen icon of devotion rather than to see how football warps the academics and compromises the ideals of the university. Paradoxically, although the mission of a university is to teach students to think critically about the world and uncover truths, the devotion to college football actually causes people to suspend their critical judgement and ignore obvious truths about race, power, and ethics.
3
I tutored athletes at the University of Texas. My first lesson concerned the grueling hours they put in on the field and the absolute need for help in focusing on their 'other' job as students. One evening as I waited for my students I sat in a lounge that acted as a shrine to the great football teams of the past. The posted team photos caught me by surprise. Yes, I taught in Painter Hall and knew all about Sweatt v. Painter, that classic case where the University made no claims about equality in snubbing the separate but equal clause of the constitution. But that was the 40's and the beginning of the 50's, I had presumed. As I looked over those team photos I scanned for anything but white faces and didn't find any until 1970. The one non-white face was Julius Whittier in 1970. I thought, wrongly of course, that even Alabama had listened to their better angels before this. There should be a huge party at UT in 2020 at UT. Let us celebrate the first 50 years of humanity there. Perhaps, the school can give the southern statues to the city of Buda down the road or melt them down and build a monument to General Longstreet to honor those white southerners who had shed their snake skins well before the rest of them allowed non-whites to play with pig skins.
1
I wonder if Mr Tarver also has the haunting fear that quite a large number of people are having a lot of fun.
6
We live life vicariously We live and die watching other people do things. As Yoda might have said, "Do or do not do. Don't watch." Life is very short. If you think you have time on your hands watching someone else play sports, I assure you, you have no clue on this Earth what life is about. The academic quality of a university is inversely proportional to the combined quality of the football and basketball teams.
2
College football is a sideline business to the unviversity enterprise that makes a lot of money.
1
Most schools lose millions on athletics.
Since, thankfully, Emory has no football team, it's understandable that one of its filosofy perfessorz misses the main point: jocks are there to perform. Moreover, as they generally fail to meet accepted entrance requirements, jocks are academically marginalized. Then you discover (wow!) that said jocks are mostly black--which makes the whole endeavor de facto racist.
So when the amerikanz blather on about their 'culture' and 'tradition' of college football, what they're really talking about is 'entertainment'. And since it's unrealistic to call such self-induced stupidity 'hypocrisy',
we must rely upon the wise to deconstruct such verbal nonsense.
Yet what we have here is a augmentation of confusion by academic means; I hear Sartre laughing, again.
So when the amerikanz blather on about their 'culture' and 'tradition' of college football, what they're really talking about is 'entertainment'. And since it's unrealistic to call such self-induced stupidity 'hypocrisy',
we must rely upon the wise to deconstruct such verbal nonsense.
Yet what we have here is a augmentation of confusion by academic means; I hear Sartre laughing, again.
1
I used to watch football. No more. It is so dehumanizing. I now watch
Premier League Soccer and am hooked.
Every play in football is focused on putting an opponent in the hospital.
I will stay above this mentality.
I don't expect anyone south of the Mason Dixon line to understand this.
Premier League Soccer and am hooked.
Every play in football is focused on putting an opponent in the hospital.
I will stay above this mentality.
I don't expect anyone south of the Mason Dixon line to understand this.
An otherwise fine piece, Prof Tarver. But you left out the phenomenon of the growing concerns here and everywhere about concussive injuries to players. The worst of it seems to fall upon our bright, young, quarterback leaders who are knocked to the ground with increasing force.
Force equals mass times acceleration. Defensive players have doubled in weight in my lifetime, and they are at least 50% faster. That product brings a blow 3 times greater to the QB. Brett Favre can no longer remember his years of coaching his own daughter's sports teams. It gets a lot worse than that.
Here in the land of Lake Woebegone, my grandson's high school football coach recently called him to come back and play again this year. But this kid is too smart, taking after his grandmother as he does. "It's not worth it," he says, "even if it's not a concussion. My best friend's knee is ruined." This backlash is happening everywhere in highschool football. Parents don't want their sons damaged for life.
Nobody wants to go back to flag football but, if the sport is to survive along with its players, that may become our only option. That, or reduce the size and quickness of players.
Force equals mass times acceleration. Defensive players have doubled in weight in my lifetime, and they are at least 50% faster. That product brings a blow 3 times greater to the QB. Brett Favre can no longer remember his years of coaching his own daughter's sports teams. It gets a lot worse than that.
Here in the land of Lake Woebegone, my grandson's high school football coach recently called him to come back and play again this year. But this kid is too smart, taking after his grandmother as he does. "It's not worth it," he says, "even if it's not a concussion. My best friend's knee is ruined." This backlash is happening everywhere in highschool football. Parents don't want their sons damaged for life.
Nobody wants to go back to flag football but, if the sport is to survive along with its players, that may become our only option. That, or reduce the size and quickness of players.
39
You don't seem to have read the article very closely. Here is just one of the instances in which injuries, though not the primary focus, are mentioned: "Many football fans today know well enough to be concerned about the game. Beyond what increasingly appear to be the inherent and horrifying physical effects of long-term play on its athletes ..."
1
Thanks, Joe....just my clumsy attempt to reinforce that passage with a personal story. Given the billions of $ in the NFL and an addictive audience, this will soon become an inscrutable problem...
For what it's worth, the meaningful equation is kinetic energy, not force. Force is merely the energy applied to generate kinetic energy. It is the energy of the collisions that causes the damage. Kinetic energy is 1/2mv^2. The mass is important, but the bigger issue is that those big bodies are moving faster than ever before. If you watch football, pad sizes have all decreased markedly over the years which allows much faster movement--and much harder collisions. Many of these comments refer to "lumbering linemen." The issue is that the lineman are no longer lumbering. When you have a 260 pound linebacker who can run a 4.6 40, there's some real energy in those collisions.
1
I have talked with several dozen college football players and I am always shocked at the demands that college football places on them. The time in the weight rooms, the time spent studying films and playbooks, the time at practice. For most it is a 40 or 50 hour spent each week on preparation for college football game day.
This is wrong.
When are they students instead of cannon fodder for the distorted egos of "fans"? Being a student falls in the cracks. Oh we hear about the student athlete of the week in premed with a 3.95 GPA. Rare as the truth from The Trumpster's mouth.
Typically these players who end up in college football have been raised and bred since pee wee football to play football.
They are heroes in high school preening with their letter jackets. They play now in multimillion dollar football stadiums while their high schools are starved for funding. Athletics dominates academics.
A select few are recruited at pagan like ceremonies where all Americans chose their college. They get a scholarship which is revoked if they are injured.
They generate millions of dollars in salaries for coaching staffs and athletic
playersdirectors. They get concussions and brain damage.
Why not call college football what it is. The minor leagues of pro football. Sell the minor league franchise to the advertisers and let the players benefit at the major conferences. $50,000 a player for "the season" is a drop in the revenue bucket.
This is wrong.
When are they students instead of cannon fodder for the distorted egos of "fans"? Being a student falls in the cracks. Oh we hear about the student athlete of the week in premed with a 3.95 GPA. Rare as the truth from The Trumpster's mouth.
Typically these players who end up in college football have been raised and bred since pee wee football to play football.
They are heroes in high school preening with their letter jackets. They play now in multimillion dollar football stadiums while their high schools are starved for funding. Athletics dominates academics.
A select few are recruited at pagan like ceremonies where all Americans chose their college. They get a scholarship which is revoked if they are injured.
They generate millions of dollars in salaries for coaching staffs and athletic
playersdirectors. They get concussions and brain damage.
Why not call college football what it is. The minor leagues of pro football. Sell the minor league franchise to the advertisers and let the players benefit at the major conferences. $50,000 a player for "the season" is a drop in the revenue bucket.
110
In ancient Greece, the poet's main job was to praise athletes and war heroes. We in the literati get no respect -- or girls for that matter. DNA wants a robust carrier, not the Woody Allens of the world. (Woody, to be fair, says he never had trouble getting dates, probably because he's hilarious.)
I guess sometimes people get an idea in their head that won't go away and that thought seems to inspire other thoughts and on and on and before long they come up with proof, for example, that American football has no net positive value to it whatever and instead represents everything that is bad about white people. I'm admittedly white and I confess that I love football more than any other sport, but in my defense I love it because it is the most complicated game since chess. Some may disagree with that remark, but only the ignorant will laugh. I am also dazzled by the outstanding physical feats that football players perform dozens of times a game. And the heck of it is, as much as I love football, the players on the field seem to love it more. But let's assume for the sake of scholarship, everything in this article has elements of truth and valid examples of proof do exist; then let's ask questions as to the pervasiveness of the truths as compared to fans like myself and non-white fans as well. Maybe I live in the wrong time or place, but it has been my experience that at least 90 percent of fans, black and white, agree with me.
42
I guarantee you that 90% of football fans don't watch for its complexity. Football is a spectacle of gladiator-like competition.
When the predominately white fans watch predominately black players, issues of race should be considered.
When the predominately white fans watch predominately black players, issues of race should be considered.
So your basis for the aspersions you cast on this article, for insinuating that it is untruthful, is "Some people disagree"? When I went to college, truth was not something to be fixed in relation to opinion.
1
Great piece reflecting on questions that have long perplexed me. For one, I appreciate the insight into our penchant for living vicariously through things like college sports (we could expand this to our favorite race car driver, pop star, pro team, etc.). Of course this is fueled through the marketers and media and athletic directors, who see the cash value of this kind of idolatry. This would all come tumbling down if we would suddenly decide "get a life" rather than seeking identity through something outside ourselves.
And this piece was also very insightful for what it says about the way we "use" these black athletes for their on-field exploits, while successfully maintaining our otherwise deeply-rooted racial biases. I'd never thought of it in just these terms, including seeing them as "mascots" and tolerating them as we did black entertainers; and never even imagined that punishment might be inflicted on other black young men when "our" black-dominated football team loses unexpectedly.
I have found stadiums full of white fans--whether the ncaa or the nba--cheering on teams of color to be somehow jarring--as the Romans and the gladiators. (And we have to wonder where all these fans would align themselves re Charlottesville...) This, along with the general over-glorification of sports (for financial gain) and its growing association with patriotism, have led me to turn away from the TV on Saturday afternoon--and take bike rides instead.
And this piece was also very insightful for what it says about the way we "use" these black athletes for their on-field exploits, while successfully maintaining our otherwise deeply-rooted racial biases. I'd never thought of it in just these terms, including seeing them as "mascots" and tolerating them as we did black entertainers; and never even imagined that punishment might be inflicted on other black young men when "our" black-dominated football team loses unexpectedly.
I have found stadiums full of white fans--whether the ncaa or the nba--cheering on teams of color to be somehow jarring--as the Romans and the gladiators. (And we have to wonder where all these fans would align themselves re Charlottesville...) This, along with the general over-glorification of sports (for financial gain) and its growing association with patriotism, have led me to turn away from the TV on Saturday afternoon--and take bike rides instead.
79
Yes, football stadiums are filled with whites. When Stevie Wonder (he still does) plays a concert, stadiums are filled with whites. When jazz and blues musicians play in their venues the audiences are mostly white. When Denzel Washington has a blockbuster, the audiences are mainly white. When black doormen across NYC open the doors for the rich, those with the easy entry are mostly white.
And your suggestion that football fans might align themselves with the racists in Charlottesville is hysterical. Sanctimonious blah blah nothing.
And your suggestion that football fans might align themselves with the racists in Charlottesville is hysterical. Sanctimonious blah blah nothing.
You've done well Grasshopper
College football is dichotomous. This article does an excellent job detailing its flaws and problems, the areas of concern I argue must be a concern to anyone identifying as a fan.
Yet, as others have pointed out, there are benefits as well. The balance between the two varies between institutions. I'm proud to cheer for a team that has one of the highest player graduation rates in the nation. Players who are injured and can no longer play remain on academic scholarship for the rest of their four years. My school turns a significant football profit that helps fund other sports and philanthropic efforts in the community. There are background checks and other vetting on incoming players to weed out individuals who have a history of violence or criminality. There are strict rules on drug use; and any violence beyond an unremarkable Friday night scuffle will see you kicked off the team, no matter how good you are. We send quite a few players to the pros - we send more to grad school. We've had some problems, but they are few.
Then there's the other side of the coin. Witness the unfolding scandal over the last year and a half at Baylor University. Rapes and other violent crimes ignored and possibly covered up. Players with violent rap sheets actively recruited. No drug testing of any kind. "Boys will be boys" despicable excuses. Everything wrong in college football.
Some schools do it right. Others don't.
Yet, as others have pointed out, there are benefits as well. The balance between the two varies between institutions. I'm proud to cheer for a team that has one of the highest player graduation rates in the nation. Players who are injured and can no longer play remain on academic scholarship for the rest of their four years. My school turns a significant football profit that helps fund other sports and philanthropic efforts in the community. There are background checks and other vetting on incoming players to weed out individuals who have a history of violence or criminality. There are strict rules on drug use; and any violence beyond an unremarkable Friday night scuffle will see you kicked off the team, no matter how good you are. We send quite a few players to the pros - we send more to grad school. We've had some problems, but they are few.
Then there's the other side of the coin. Witness the unfolding scandal over the last year and a half at Baylor University. Rapes and other violent crimes ignored and possibly covered up. Players with violent rap sheets actively recruited. No drug testing of any kind. "Boys will be boys" despicable excuses. Everything wrong in college football.
Some schools do it right. Others don't.
49
A thoughtful response. I, too am proud to have graduated from a "public Ivy" that does it right, serving the students and the community. I had the privilege of living as a student with (mostly) well-behaved young men who went on to become useful professionals as well as professional athletes. (Alcohol or "Friday night scuffles" led to a phone call to the coach's home and immediate action). A kid who was injured in wrestling practice at the start of his freshman year kept a full four-year out-of-state scholarship. But there are problems everywhere.
The issue of time commitment can be managed by dutiful attention of administrations. The fact is that that these student athletes are working their way through college. The NCAA limits on practice time must be assiduously observed, and the kids should be getting some pocket money.
The issue of physical injury can also be managed. The head must be taken out of the game, utterly, and tackling must be done rugby-style. Other injuries can be minimized, with the understanding that young people will inevitably take risks. But these risks must be controlled. Otherwise, litigation and outrage will end the game - problem solved.
Racism and the exploitation of athletes as mascots (well said, Malcolm, may peace be upon you) are another matter, that reflects society as a whole. Perhaps in the aftermath of Charlotteville we can make some progress. Perhaps.
I, too, look forward to the season, but with eyes wide open.
The issue of time commitment can be managed by dutiful attention of administrations. The fact is that that these student athletes are working their way through college. The NCAA limits on practice time must be assiduously observed, and the kids should be getting some pocket money.
The issue of physical injury can also be managed. The head must be taken out of the game, utterly, and tackling must be done rugby-style. Other injuries can be minimized, with the understanding that young people will inevitably take risks. But these risks must be controlled. Otherwise, litigation and outrage will end the game - problem solved.
Racism and the exploitation of athletes as mascots (well said, Malcolm, may peace be upon you) are another matter, that reflects society as a whole. Perhaps in the aftermath of Charlotteville we can make some progress. Perhaps.
I, too, look forward to the season, but with eyes wide open.
2
Given the expense, possible long term injuries and corruption that so often accompanies the game it is doubtful it belongs on campus. When coaches make more the university presidents and state governors the values involved are questionable.
I think it was 1905 that saw a dozen or so deaths on the football field and a movement to kill the game. Roosevelt came to its defense and the rules were revamped (the flying wedge had to go) to make it a little safer.
Head injuries are a problem, and it may be impossible to do away with them entirely while still keeping the game as we know it. I think Joe Paterno (pre-scandal) had a simple but possibly effective solution. Get rid of facemasks. They make the players feel invulnerable and willing to lead with their head. If that piece of armor was gone, instinctive self-preservation might cut down on head-first hits.
Head injuries are a problem, and it may be impossible to do away with them entirely while still keeping the game as we know it. I think Joe Paterno (pre-scandal) had a simple but possibly effective solution. Get rid of facemasks. They make the players feel invulnerable and willing to lead with their head. If that piece of armor was gone, instinctive self-preservation might cut down on head-first hits.
1
I think, regardless of colour, brain damage resulting from concussions should put all of us off this violent sport. I agree with your point of view, but the bigger picture is these athletes (black and white) are potentially ruining their lives for 4 years of fame.
69
The brain damage you mention isn't limited to football since lacrosse, soccer, hockey and other sports routinely played by men and women and boys and girls also produce those kinds of concussions. Are we to ban all of those sports? Why should football be the only target here? Or is there a moderate middle ground available which will allow those sports to continue and their participants to continue to enjoy playing them?
Most concussions take place in soccer played by girls
To the brain damage you can also add premature or more severe joint problems years later due to the damage from football that is originally masked by youth, ice, and anti-inflammatory drugs. Football (and other contact sports) cost this country huge amounts of pain, disability, and medical expenses.
Here's the good news. As the decline of the NFL acclerates and with it the plantation supply line known as major college football, we say huzzah. Like professional boxing, American football has become a gladiatorial freak show, stoked on pharmacology and violence, and propped up by the thinly veiled but enormously lucrative gambling interests. It is a congressionally-sanctioned anti-trust, monopolistic existence, complete with tax-avoiding permissions, loopholes and guarantees for it's billionaire class of owners. Typically American indeed. But, finally time limited thanks to it's ignorance of workplace dangers, harboring of miscreants better suited to horizontally-striped suits and a growing awareness among parents that safer, better athletic outlets are available for energetic boys. With it's demise, so too the college "game", an ugly apprenticeship for those too low on the IQ scale to actually go to class, read a book and become a productive, employable citizen instead of a hormonal hulk, devoid of intellectual curiosities and a danger to all around him. Fortunately colleges will be forced to actually stick to educating those that can do the work; unfortunately the vast cohort of wannabees will have no place on a campus devoted to learning. There are few jobs for these soon-to-be losers. But that will be their parents' problem; perhaps then some of them will demand more of the educational "system" that has so richly failed their doomed offspring.
58
I recommend The True Believer, by Eric Hoffer, a book which explains why people join mass movements of various kinds in order for them to identify themselves in some other way than what they really are. Our allegiance to sports teams is certainly an example of this. So is religion, political parties, etc. it seems as though people will grasp at anything to avoid the reality of self-acceptance.
I am overjoyed that someone has explained in print why people have faith or choose a kind of politics or follow a sports team. That clears up so many questions that have been unanswered for millennia.
To anyone who complains about the declining quality of education (however you measure quality) and/or the increasing tuition costs (particularly at public, land-grant universities):
To reverse these problems, and (more importantly) reverse the psychology that has led to them, we need to ban semi-professional sports. Period.
To reverse these problems, and (more importantly) reverse the psychology that has led to them, we need to ban semi-professional sports. Period.
2
For God's sake, can't we just have a little fun? No one forces anyone else to play college football, or any sport for that matter. They play because they either like playing, want the glory of winning, are trying to get to the NFL or need help to get through college financially.
As a non-Trump person, I will tell you that the problem with the NYT and liberals is that they will find something wrong with everything. Yes, football is a violent game and rules need to implemented to further protect the players. But, geez, if you guys implement everything you say, we will all be stuck in our homes bored out of our minds with nothing to do. Let us root for our teams and have some happiness.
As a non-Trump person, I will tell you that the problem with the NYT and liberals is that they will find something wrong with everything. Yes, football is a violent game and rules need to implemented to further protect the players. But, geez, if you guys implement everything you say, we will all be stuck in our homes bored out of our minds with nothing to do. Let us root for our teams and have some happiness.
211
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
1
Seth is right about the NYT whining about too many things. I'm very anti-Trump but have to say that he is the major reason i subscribe to the Times. Otherwise i would find it just too silly on many of the positions it takes and promotes.
1
What about the little boys who have been fed into the system since they were 5? How much choice do they really have? And let us not forget this, you may be having 'some happiness' but the players are being crippled for life in both body and mind.
2
Once again, at our major universities, we can watch mostly poor, mostly black young men "bashing their brains out" and risking lifelong injuries for the benefit of mostly white administrators, fans and student bodies. This is the path that many universities have chosen to finance their overblown campus' and excessive salaries. In many revenue sports when an actual student appears on the field, it is as a last resort because the "paid" athletes have been wounded or suspended. Meanwhile, what they are supporting are classes of hundreds watching a big screen tv, monitored by a teaching assistant. In most jobs, if you are bringing in tens to hundreds of millions of $$$$, you are well paid.
70
You do realize that no one is forcing these "mostly poor, mostly black young men" to play football, right? Also, you failed to mention how football/all college sports are a vehicle for many of these individuals you have previously mentioned to get out of their rough neighborhoods to play the game they love while also receiving a full-ride scholarship to do so (in most cases). Off the field, athletes are pampered with unbelievable facilities, tutors, and generally, receive respect from their classmates.
You paint collegiate athletics with a horribly pessimistic and frankly, incorrect brush. There are certainly issues with collegiate athletics, but what you are insinuating and what is reality are two drastically different circumstances.
You paint collegiate athletics with a horribly pessimistic and frankly, incorrect brush. There are certainly issues with collegiate athletics, but what you are insinuating and what is reality are two drastically different circumstances.
1
But at the overwhelming majority of institutions, football is not a money maker -- it is a drain. At Alabama and a small number of other schools the fruits of football success are spread beyond the athletic department and used to recruit (out-of-state-tuition-paying) students nationally. All of this fits within the dominant paradigm that higher education is a business.
Football separates us from the animals.
2
Romans cheering the death and horror of gladiator combat...Americans drunkenly cheering the brain injuries and broken legs of American college students...pretty much the same.
Professional gladiator football at the NFL level sits on the shoulders of non-union gladiator college sports. And college gladiator football sits on the shoulders of High School child abuse gladiator football.
So to have a few make millions broadcasting the destruction of the NFL, there must be many thousands of high school kids maimed for life, cheered on by ignorant or just truly bad parents.
Stop gladiator sports like football. CTE is real, and will kill just like tobacco.
Hugh Massengill, Eugene Oregon
Professional gladiator football at the NFL level sits on the shoulders of non-union gladiator college sports. And college gladiator football sits on the shoulders of High School child abuse gladiator football.
So to have a few make millions broadcasting the destruction of the NFL, there must be many thousands of high school kids maimed for life, cheered on by ignorant or just truly bad parents.
Stop gladiator sports like football. CTE is real, and will kill just like tobacco.
Hugh Massengill, Eugene Oregon
175
As a non-athlete who has long been horrified by cheers at any events that require a nearby ambulance to cart off the maimed, I largely agree with your sentiments. Grateful my parents had the foresight many decades ago to forbid our involvement in football. To play devil's advocate, however, I guess my only two questions to you would be 1) who gets to decide which sports are gladiator-like and which are not? and 2) do you agree that strides have been made (better gear, better rules) to keep kids/young adults safer in most organized sports?
No, not the same at all. At the height of their popularity, a central purpose of Roman gladiatorial games was the gore and bloodletting. Without it, the watchers would have booed, walked out or even rioted. By contrast, it's hard to imagine a football fan leaving the stadium after a game complaining that no one was obviously injured.
There may be a few such who would inwardly cheer the injury of a player on the opposing team, but they're a rarity.
The comparison is entirely without merit.
There may be a few such who would inwardly cheer the injury of a player on the opposing team, but they're a rarity.
The comparison is entirely without merit.
I'm not sure what the central theme of the piece is but I do agree with the point that the fact that white audiences now cheer and take pleasure in the accomplishments of minority athletes who represent their teams has had almost no impact on white/black relations. It reminded me of the early chapters in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, when the main character had to participate in some bizarre boxing match before he was allowed to read his speech and, bruised and bloodied, given a scholarship to an all-black college.
2
This article is so NYT. The kids know the deal before they get an offer. They know the percentage of players that go pro from D-1 programs; they know the injury risks; they know they can be cut; they know that if they want to get a degree they'll have to take advantage of tutoring and go to summer school. And they are compensated via free tuition and room/board and perks. Maybe you don't think it is adequate; fair enough. (But who would you pay? Does the second-string punter/GPA booster get a cut?) You know what? They, at the end of the day, like playing. And the fans like watching.
6
I'm a Bernie bro myself, but has anyone noticed that being a self-righteous NYT Puritan trying to save the world through PCness is exactly the same kind of vanity-driven ego-booster as being a football fanatic?
6
The Author tells us the fans have been manically in love with their teams for a hundred years or more, generation after generation. For many of those years they teams were all white, the fans loved them. The teams integrate beginning in the 1960’s and today the teams are mostly black. Today the fans, like the generations before them, love the teams. Today the fans are racist.
Confederate statues were erected in the early 20th century to support Jim Crow. The US World War II memorial on the Mall in Washington was dedicated in 2004, 59 years after the end of the war. To support, well what? Or could it be that as was the case with Civil War soldiers in the early 20th century; mortality was upon them, they had got on with their lives, now the end was near, time to reflect and the desire to be remembered caused them to act and erect memorials.
Confederate statues were erected in the early 20th century to support Jim Crow. The US World War II memorial on the Mall in Washington was dedicated in 2004, 59 years after the end of the war. To support, well what? Or could it be that as was the case with Civil War soldiers in the early 20th century; mortality was upon them, they had got on with their lives, now the end was near, time to reflect and the desire to be remembered caused them to act and erect memorials.
4
True, most football programs do not "turn a profit" in and of themselves. But, absent these losing athletic investment, universities would see greater losses from declining alumni giving.
2
Would it matter if those donations declined? Boosters demand that those big donations go directly to a football or basketball program and not a library. The alumni concerned with academics would still donate.
2
Not true. See T. Boone Pickens.
And State still can't beat OU.
Well written. I graduated from a college football powerhouse and spent many years afterwards religiously going to regular season and bowl games. After a surprising loss, I watched the players casually talking to their friends from the opposing team near midfield and I realized that I was more angry about the loss than the players themselves. I saw that this was ridiculous and decided to take a step back and stopped attending and even watching games. That distance gave me the perspective to see how embarrassing it is that I put so much emphasis and energy on a game effectively played by children. The fact that its is dangerous to their health, exploitive and rife with corruption makes it all the less acceptable.
16
I have never understood the appeal of watching other men playing games. Football is mock warfare so I suppose watching it is rather like watching a war movie. A harmless past time, you might say, except that schools that go all in for football are usually pretty poor academically. For every Michigan there are dozens of sports factories of no academic distinction whatsoever. Rutgers, the site of the first college football game, used to be a top university. Since it decided to become a sports powerhouse, its reputation has plummeted. A case of cause and effect?
2
No.
2
For decades, I have said that football IS religion to many people. I was very surprised when I moved from the West Coast to Midwest just how massive a religion it is.
How is it like a religion? Football has closely followed rituals, special garb of officiating leaders, own version of deacons, own types of music interspersed for the congregants, and even a " breaking bread together" set of rituals. It has its own large "cathedrals". The members of congregations often wear items that identify them and their sect of the religion.
Plus this religion collects money. Big money.
How is it like a religion? Football has closely followed rituals, special garb of officiating leaders, own version of deacons, own types of music interspersed for the congregants, and even a " breaking bread together" set of rituals. It has its own large "cathedrals". The members of congregations often wear items that identify them and their sect of the religion.
Plus this religion collects money. Big money.
4
Both "religions" collect big money. Indeed, the supernatural versions money collection process dwarfs footballs revenues
3
Gave up organized sports and watching the same a decade ago.
Haven't missed an thing important in life.
Went to a small college in upstate NY, went to a number of games mostly to socialize and drink with others, and of course root your team onto victory, fun. But after college, had no interest in following my alma mater's football season, and have always been struck by the level of attention and excitement college football generates in people who never even attended the college they root for so fiercely.
UCONN here, has been for at least the past 10 years trying to break into the big leagues of college football, spending money, firing unproductive coaches, creating new rabid fans, again who never went to the school, and this is a thousand fold for the UCONN women and men's basketball teams. Seems all of little Connecticut can strut their tail feathers and boast having the best women's team ever in America. Period.
It's too bad we can't boast we have a growing state economy, a healthy infrastructure, and a education system that meets the needs of all residents in the state.
What we seem to value and cherish are fleeting memories of "glory days".
Haven't missed an thing important in life.
Went to a small college in upstate NY, went to a number of games mostly to socialize and drink with others, and of course root your team onto victory, fun. But after college, had no interest in following my alma mater's football season, and have always been struck by the level of attention and excitement college football generates in people who never even attended the college they root for so fiercely.
UCONN here, has been for at least the past 10 years trying to break into the big leagues of college football, spending money, firing unproductive coaches, creating new rabid fans, again who never went to the school, and this is a thousand fold for the UCONN women and men's basketball teams. Seems all of little Connecticut can strut their tail feathers and boast having the best women's team ever in America. Period.
It's too bad we can't boast we have a growing state economy, a healthy infrastructure, and a education system that meets the needs of all residents in the state.
What we seem to value and cherish are fleeting memories of "glory days".
3
The New York Times normally takes the positon that college student demographics should mirror the demographics of society as a whole, but it’s different when the imbalance disfavors white students. Blacks make up only 13.2 percent of the population, but black players outnumber white players 13,453 to 11,240 in NCAA Division I football. But nothing stops the Times from alleging racism. The Times alleges that college football is racist because the sport is violent and mostly white fans “gloat” over the “sacrifice” of mostly black players. However, the fans also gloated when college teams were all white. Division I players, unlike mostly white Division III players, get scholarships, room and board, but the article suggests they are not paid cash because they are mostly black. However, college players weren’t payed when the trams were all white. The reason college players aren’t paid is that millions of high school players play the game from free and would be more than willing to play the college game for free, even without scholarships. In fact, Division I teams would have no trouble fielding football teams if they eliminated scholarships and charged players to pay.
9
Please be assured that this BIG TEN graduate is not cheering. Collegiate football is treated as the training ground for the NFL. The head injuries that are sustained by players in college are too much for this sport to continue without major changes in the rules of the game. How many NFL players who came through college football, have to end their lives in serious decline due to injuries?
4
Nice piece, but neglected two trends which are profoundly disturbing for the future of economic inequality and stratification of our society. First, many of these elite football schools have or are attempting to introduce "athletics" fees as a non-optional part of the tuition and fees students must pay to enroll. These fees (among many others) contribute to the massive inflation of the cost of education, pricing some students out, saddling many others with massive student debt. Second, colleges and universities devote massive effort towards fund raising exclusively for their athletics programs. What positive gains in education, scholarships, and quality could these schools make if some of this effort was devoted to the educational mission instead? For example, Clemson University just built a $55 million entertainment complex exclusively for football recruitment, complete with laser tag and bowling. Alumni who generously wish to give to "Dear Old State" should pause and make sure their gifts are going to improve the educational mission/students and not simply subsidizing a minor league sports franchise.
5
As another reader noted, this is really just the more modern version of "bread and circuses." How much time, energy, money, lost opportunity, psychic energy devoted to the weekly slavering over who wins or loses? All at the expense of focusing attention on how our political-economic system is failing us.
But this form of arrested development is just what they want. Untold millions of men and women stuck at the level of emotional and intellectual maturity of an adolescent.
Sports, together with the internet: modern versions of Plato's cave. Tocqueville got it right:
"I see an innumerable multitude of men, alike and equal, constantly circling around in pursuit of the petty and banal pleasures with which they glut their souls. Over this kind of men stands an immense, protective power which is alone responsible for securing their enjoyment and watching over their fate. It would resemble parental authority if, father-like, it tried to
prepare its charges for a man’s life, but on the contrary, it only tries to keep them in perpetual childhood.
But this form of arrested development is just what they want. Untold millions of men and women stuck at the level of emotional and intellectual maturity of an adolescent.
Sports, together with the internet: modern versions of Plato's cave. Tocqueville got it right:
"I see an innumerable multitude of men, alike and equal, constantly circling around in pursuit of the petty and banal pleasures with which they glut their souls. Over this kind of men stands an immense, protective power which is alone responsible for securing their enjoyment and watching over their fate. It would resemble parental authority if, father-like, it tried to
prepare its charges for a man’s life, but on the contrary, it only tries to keep them in perpetual childhood.
5
Like Mr. Tarver , I grew up in Louisiana and graduated from LSU, 50 long years ago.
Mea culpa: I remain a hard core LSU Tiger fan and am guilty of many of the things he points out.
I watched southern college football go from all- white teams on all-white campuses to majority black teams on integrated campuses.
The fans cheer loudly for the black athletes but most wouldn't invite them home for dinner nor want them to marry into the family.
The story about the judges' more harsh penalties for blacks after an LSU loss is news but not a surprise. Churches have long reported that the collection plates are lighter the day after LSU loses.
Integrated athletics has probably only had a marginally positive effect on race relations in the south. The integrated student bodies have had a significant positive effect, however, as white students recognize that blacks are people, too. It doesn't change everybody though, if racism is still ingrained into their families' heritage.
There are so many racial issues to fix: biased voter laws, police abuse, underfunded education....the list is long. 50 years later I have become more aware and involved into trying to correct these injustices.
But on Saturday nights in the fall, I lapse back into taking pride in the success of my football team....Geaux Tigers!
Mea culpa: I remain a hard core LSU Tiger fan and am guilty of many of the things he points out.
I watched southern college football go from all- white teams on all-white campuses to majority black teams on integrated campuses.
The fans cheer loudly for the black athletes but most wouldn't invite them home for dinner nor want them to marry into the family.
The story about the judges' more harsh penalties for blacks after an LSU loss is news but not a surprise. Churches have long reported that the collection plates are lighter the day after LSU loses.
Integrated athletics has probably only had a marginally positive effect on race relations in the south. The integrated student bodies have had a significant positive effect, however, as white students recognize that blacks are people, too. It doesn't change everybody though, if racism is still ingrained into their families' heritage.
There are so many racial issues to fix: biased voter laws, police abuse, underfunded education....the list is long. 50 years later I have become more aware and involved into trying to correct these injustices.
But on Saturday nights in the fall, I lapse back into taking pride in the success of my football team....Geaux Tigers!
2
The fact that a tiny fraction of minority athletes makes it big and that athletics is the only option for many of these poor minority kids is pretty darn sad. If one tallies up winners and losers in our current system, I imagine universities, coaches, marketers, and fans fare very well as a whole. I am not aware of any significant improvement in the opportunities and succes rates of the class of people we like to use for our rationalization of the status quo. Admit it, somebody is being taken advantage of here.
2
According to USA Today, Just 23 of 228 athletics departments at NCAA Division I public schools generate enough money on their own to cover expenses.” Even the so-called revenue sports--football and basketball—lose money at most schools.
3
I have watched fewer and fewer football games lately to the point that I probably won't watch any more games. One cannot get enjoyment out of watching young people willingly expose themselves to the inevitable head trauma of the game. It is even sadder to see pre-teen kids playing tackle football. I recently saw a news item about a high school football stadium in Texas that cost over $70 million dollars; and we have an education funding crisis in this country. What are we NOT thinking?
8
Major college sports are fulltime jobs for these athletes. I propose they be treated like people who in the real world have fulltime jobs and go to school at night. Part time students usually take 1 or 2 courses a semester. At the end of their eligibility they would have 8 to 16 courses completed. Scholarships would be extended for the time it would take to complete a degree with a regular student schedule. All during this time on campus the student-athletes would be assigned a tutor and advisor who would be responsible for their academic progress. Mentors could be recruited from the community and alumni. Of course this assumes schools are really interested in their players in life after 'school'. Not a perfect plan but maybe a starting point.
1
Perhaps class action lawsuits brought against university trustees and the NCAA by brain damaged sports victims will restore sanity.
Not one single athletic program makes money if you count the utilities maintenance and amortization charges and the social costs of damaged bodies and minds, including those of the booze besotted spectators.
Not one single athletic program makes money if you count the utilities maintenance and amortization charges and the social costs of damaged bodies and minds, including those of the booze besotted spectators.
4
We all want to cheer for our teams in Sports, and appreciate the fairness in any game, and further try to inspire our children to find role models, even mentors to emulate, all the while enjoying the camaraderie and enthusiasm offered when something is done well, with respect towards each other. But that does not seem to be what is occurring...as we celebrate even foul play if it's our team doing it, or if a misdeed is accomplished in our favor without being caught by the referee. In other words, we seem to have lost the ability to discern 'right from wrong', a dangerous 'new normal' that may influence our behavior off the field as well. A paradigm is needed, a pause to correct our thoughts and behavior. And this is as good a time as any for urgent correction, especially in a younger generation still able to recognize when in error, and straighten things out.
5
It's pathetic really. Not sure we could bring about much change in the short-term around all this. But one thing I think that we could do that would maybe change things is to start paying college football players. Let's strip away the absurd notion that we are doing them a favor by giving them an education. And we should pay for lifetime insurance policies for them, because their risk for brain problems later on is so high. It's deeply unethical to ignore the risks they are taking. If ticket prices go up or the greedy individuals and firms make less money from exploiting football players, so be it.
8
Devil's advocate: Instead of vicariously getting thrills and self-worth by identifying with a team, while sitting and watching, how about using the same time and motivation to actually do something worthwhile? Serious question. Would appreciate others' thoughts.
8
Serious answer: "worthwhile" is highly subjective. Do you find it worthwhile telling others how to spend their free time?
1
I think suggesting is not "telling."
2
I live in a college town, where football rules in the fall. I have also taught at that university. I have seen the ways collegiate athletes are treated.
On the one hand, athletes are expected to put in up to 20 hours per week on the field, with additional hours spend in the gym. Missed classes are par for the course. I have to report failing grades for these students, but little is done to aid them in improving their grades.
For most, graduation from college will not result in a professional career in their sport. Those who get their diploma - which is hardly all - get a meaningless degree for which they did little work. Communication studies seems to be a perennial favorite. Yet their bodies are often damaged. One young woman on the swim team ripped a muscle in her shoulder, ending her competitive time. She should be guaranteed continued tuition until she graduated by NCAA rules. Instead, her coaches and team mates pressured her to give up her scholarship, loading her down with non-training responsibilities and pulling her academic aides. She left the university, unable to afford tuition.
The NCAA both considers student athletes to be "paid" in tuition, and denies them the right to organize for better conditions and sue for workman's comp when they suffer life-long injuries. Pay them already - they earn it with their pain and work.
On the one hand, athletes are expected to put in up to 20 hours per week on the field, with additional hours spend in the gym. Missed classes are par for the course. I have to report failing grades for these students, but little is done to aid them in improving their grades.
For most, graduation from college will not result in a professional career in their sport. Those who get their diploma - which is hardly all - get a meaningless degree for which they did little work. Communication studies seems to be a perennial favorite. Yet their bodies are often damaged. One young woman on the swim team ripped a muscle in her shoulder, ending her competitive time. She should be guaranteed continued tuition until she graduated by NCAA rules. Instead, her coaches and team mates pressured her to give up her scholarship, loading her down with non-training responsibilities and pulling her academic aides. She left the university, unable to afford tuition.
The NCAA both considers student athletes to be "paid" in tuition, and denies them the right to organize for better conditions and sue for workman's comp when they suffer life-long injuries. Pay them already - they earn it with their pain and work.
76
As an Iowa citizen, I'm sure that too many Hawkeye (or Cyclone) fans wouldn't mind the resources of every other segment of the university being cut--which has been happening--so long as the football program survived. And, such a mindset if obviously common in other states.
2
@Bruce: As a Cyclone fan, I can tell you football is just the waiting period before basketball starts.
College players are uncompensated? Really?
Most receive a partial or full scholarship. Have you checked the price of a college education lately? That is being well compensated. In addition, the athletes receive free meals and medical care. Of course many are additionally compensated "under the table," against NCAA rules, of course.
If they fail to take advantage of that education, that is their own fault.
The article also said most programs do not turn a profit. This is only true for the non-revenue sports. Football and Basketball turn a HUGE profit that allows the institutions to provide non-revenue sports such as women's basketball, women's volleyball, tennis, golf, swimming, archery, etc.
Without such a profit, how do you think the schools can afford to pay the coaches multi-million dollar contracts?
Most receive a partial or full scholarship. Have you checked the price of a college education lately? That is being well compensated. In addition, the athletes receive free meals and medical care. Of course many are additionally compensated "under the table," against NCAA rules, of course.
If they fail to take advantage of that education, that is their own fault.
The article also said most programs do not turn a profit. This is only true for the non-revenue sports. Football and Basketball turn a HUGE profit that allows the institutions to provide non-revenue sports such as women's basketball, women's volleyball, tennis, golf, swimming, archery, etc.
Without such a profit, how do you think the schools can afford to pay the coaches multi-million dollar contracts?
14
Just try to be a college athlete in a money maker sport and study at the same time. What a joke. They are recruited for their ability to attract money to the U. They are not prepared nor encouraged to study. Sure a few make it but many more receive a less-than education along with lifelong injuries and if lucky enough local renown to sell used cars.
5
Study? When do they have time to study? There are required practices to attend, starting in the summer. There are required hours on game day, before and after the game. There is travel, often by bus. When do they have time to study?
Medical care? Just don't get hurt! If a football player is hurt and can no longer play, he is no longer on the team and must hope that his parents maintained him on their insurance.
Medical care? Just don't get hurt! If a football player is hurt and can no longer play, he is no longer on the team and must hope that his parents maintained him on their insurance.
3
There are no "partial" scholarships in D-1 college football, unlike baseball and wrestling. In football, it's a full scholarship or nothing.
1
The charge that college athletes - especially at Division 1 programs- are being exploited is overblown, if not outright false in most cases. They ARE being paid - in tuition, room and board (and the "board" here is far superior to the ramen noodle/Big Mac diets most students are forced to exists on.) That alone comes to well over $20,000 a year at many universities - and over $40,000 and up at most private schools. The last I looked that was well above the average income of the U.S. worker. And this doesn't include the many, free, world-class professional development extras these athletes receive - coaching and physical training. For many of these athletes who wish to pursue pro careers, the annual costs of these services would easily the price of tuition, room and board.
Could Richard Sherman have afforded the costs of a Stanford education without football?
Is it easy? No. But it isn't much harder or time consuming than the work hours most other students have to put in to avoid coming out of college with staggering tuition loans - and they do it without all the extra study help, travel and status the athletes enjoy.
The answer to those athletes who feel exploited is the development of a farm system, such as has long existed for baseball. Skip the study hall and go straight to professional sports.
Could Richard Sherman have afforded the costs of a Stanford education without football?
Is it easy? No. But it isn't much harder or time consuming than the work hours most other students have to put in to avoid coming out of college with staggering tuition loans - and they do it without all the extra study help, travel and status the athletes enjoy.
The answer to those athletes who feel exploited is the development of a farm system, such as has long existed for baseball. Skip the study hall and go straight to professional sports.
14
Mr Sherman was also a star student in high school and chose Stamford because of its academic excellence. He was also eligible for an academic free ride. On an academic scholarship one can work, earn money and be employed for $$$ by the university.
1
Brilliant article.
2
I work for a public Division 1 university in southeastern GA, football is a second religion here. While I agree with author's historical context of past discrimination that is not the case today nor has it it been since the early 70's. Football, as well as, a number of other other Division 1 sports has provided a way out of poverty for countless poor, yet physically able men and women both black and white. As one who has frequent contact with our undergraduate student athletes I can say that they are often the most academically focused and serious students we have enrolled.
8
In 1909, West Point Cadet Eugene Byrne died from an injury during football game with Harvard. The Navy quarter back was paralyzed in the same week. Football almost came to an end. Given the concussion issues, we may be at that point again.
There is no doubt that football is a suspect coliseum sport. Fans are
cheering for pain that others are experiencing. Morally there are loads of issues with this formula.
There is no doubt that football is a suspect coliseum sport. Fans are
cheering for pain that others are experiencing. Morally there are loads of issues with this formula.
35
Gladiators in fancy coliseums. Bread and circuses. Distraction at any cost.
67
Excellent essay! I would point out that it also helps explain the white vitriol directed at African American athletes and students at the University of Missouri in 2015 in that their protests took place in the midst of a losing season, followed in turn by another losing season. At the same time, it explains the ease with which the racial scandal and subsequent outcry involving the exposure of overtly racist practices of the University of Alabama's "Machine" Panhellenic organization were so quickly forgotten. After all, Bama won a national championship that year and followed it up with being runner's up in the National Championship game. So long as African Americans "dance for their supper," white fans feel little need to confront their own attitudes. When the "dancing" goes awry, the demons come out.
81
College football is about 50-50 by race. No other sport or other extracurricular activity mixes blacks and whites equally. And no sport or activity is as dependent on successful mixing of the races. The football field is the only place at the university where racial equality exists and where both races work together to achieve success. Football is the one true melting pot at our universities. Without football there is far less racial mixing.
In addition, many of the black football players come form dangerous environments, abject poverty, drug-infested neighborhoods and broken families.They are pretty much destined for failure. College gives them a chance. And for every one who succeeds, you have saved a life.
In addition, many of the black football players come form dangerous environments, abject poverty, drug-infested neighborhoods and broken families.They are pretty much destined for failure. College gives them a chance. And for every one who succeeds, you have saved a life.
8
Then you must support making the teams 100 percent black.
2
I grew up in a college town, and to me, autumn is a mix of the smell of freshly raked leaves, sun shining on a mountain turned coral and rust by sun and anthocyanin, and the roar of distant football coming form the stadium and echoing off the mountain.
I loved college football. But back in the 70s and 80s, football was big money but not a juggernaut. The blimp came once a year, twice if the team was nationally ranked, and we were televised only once or twice a year. We listened to the game on the radio, or watched it Sunday morning on the educational station.
Now the ubiquity of TV broadcasts and the sheer dollar value of the programs is more corrupting. Coaches make millions and millions per year, and players may not ever graduate. Add to that the possibility that head injuries - life limiting injuries - have accrued already to some plays who take hard hit after hard hit, and we are watching kids literally kill their future selves.
So I have stopped watching. Even though I love the game, I can't help but feel that that coach gets a several million a year, and the player gets a partial education and CTE.
I loved college football. But back in the 70s and 80s, football was big money but not a juggernaut. The blimp came once a year, twice if the team was nationally ranked, and we were televised only once or twice a year. We listened to the game on the radio, or watched it Sunday morning on the educational station.
Now the ubiquity of TV broadcasts and the sheer dollar value of the programs is more corrupting. Coaches make millions and millions per year, and players may not ever graduate. Add to that the possibility that head injuries - life limiting injuries - have accrued already to some plays who take hard hit after hard hit, and we are watching kids literally kill their future selves.
So I have stopped watching. Even though I love the game, I can't help but feel that that coach gets a several million a year, and the player gets a partial education and CTE.
72
Exactly so.
Yes, I remember college football as you do from the 1970s and 1980s. There was a Supreme Court decision (NCAA_v._Board_of_Regents_of_the_University_of_Oklahoma) which is to blame for this explosion of money. Before that decision, ABC and NBC were limited by the NCAA to how many times per year a team could appear on TV. This meant that national TV exposure was more spread around and the amount of money involved was relatively limited. Once the Supreme Court decision came down, the floodgate was essentially opened and money flooded the sport. I too, love college football. My college team is now fortunate to be in a conference which is starting up its own network. But that's for pecuniary reasons, not for educational ones.
1
Yes, college football is dangerous for the players and rewards them little for that inherent danger. Yet, it remains part of college culture, and alumni contribute to the school for that feeling of community. I enjoy watching college football games on TV, but I also enjoy watching soccer matches, which are less dangerous, and tennis which has little danger. I enjoy them because I enjoy watching the skilled athletes performing live at a level I can't match. Lebron James, one of the world's greatest athletes won't allow his children to play football. The most dangerous sport is boxing or UFC; yet one of my all-time favorite athletes is Muhammed Ali, who said, "Boxing is nothing; it was just a way of introducing me to the world." Athletes still have the honor of performing heroically in their sport in order to introduce themselves to the rest of us. Would we notice them otherwise?
3
As this summer ends, the banners of the regional powerhouses will be pulled down from the expensive shore homes where they flew proudly thru the summer and they will be stored til next year. If hopes and prayers are answered, next summer, a new banner will be raised to celebrate a championship.
Like summers past, the men or women who performed the herculean feats the banners cheer will not be able to live here. There is little prospect they will be permitted to do so in the future. That prospect will be preserved for those who march under other banners that are uniquely exclusive.
Like summers past, the men or women who performed the herculean feats the banners cheer will not be able to live here. There is little prospect they will be permitted to do so in the future. That prospect will be preserved for those who march under other banners that are uniquely exclusive.
3
Fantastic article. As someone who has looked at Title IX numbers in community college, I also add that the athletes get accustomed to schools bending the rules for them. When the eligibility runs out, and there is no useful degree, what happens then? Now, sometimes there is a degree on the other end, but the poor graduation rates for athletes, especially football players, is well known. Football is the athletes core job in college, as UCLA quarterback Josh Rosen recently made clear. Football represents the modern gladiator games, but when we are asked to consider what happens to the gladiators afterward, society often turns away.
25
Even those college football players who win the golden prize & get into the NFL are not out of the woods. http://firstquarterfinance.com/nfl-pension-plan-retirement-plan/
As usual, its all about the corruption of money. The NCAA exists for the financial gain of its rulers, and educational instutions are slave to the financial rewards of maintaining an entertainment enterprise. As for the universities that show losses, like CEO's of other entertainment enterprises, they should be fired. "College" football and other sports should be for the benefit of the students; just like high school sports. I live in Ohio, where a good contrast exists between Ohio State and Mount Union. The former is a highly successful entertainment enterprise that recruits athletes othewise not qualified for admission, and who have no interest in the education that the unifersity offers. The latter offers no scholarships, but has a highly successful athletic program with real "student-sthletes" who are enrolled primarily to receive an education.
22
This article - and Mr. Sonville's comment - both explain the issues with clarity and without melodrama. Nicely done.
7
Division I Football does, in fact, generate millions in television and other revenues for their universities, and it is also true that the athletes themselves are not compensated directly for their time or accomplishments on the field.
However, these revenues do directly support the myriad non-football programs that are not self-supporting - including all Title IX-mandated women's programs - which would surely be eliminated if Division I football revenues were to be downsized significantly.
You can't have women's intercollegiate sports programs without Division I Football.
Is America ready for that trade-off?.
However, these revenues do directly support the myriad non-football programs that are not self-supporting - including all Title IX-mandated women's programs - which would surely be eliminated if Division I football revenues were to be downsized significantly.
You can't have women's intercollegiate sports programs without Division I Football.
Is America ready for that trade-off?.
20
only a very few elite football programs actually generate revenue for the universities. Yet the vast majority of those other institutions manage to support athletic programs for women.
20
your statement might be true if it could be verified by independent audit of the athletic Department's at Major Division 1 universities but neither the universities nor the NCAA accept the notion of such independent audits. further, to the extent that there have been efforts to conduct such studies by economists at Stanford and Smith College amongst others, accepted a handful of universities, your statement is not true. the fact is that the football programs at the vast majority of division 1 schools operate at a deficit and require substantial subsidies either from General University funds or the fees charged to students
10
Not quite. Very few athletic departments make a profit, not specific to football. However, you can look at the massive increases in coaching salaries and facility upgrades and it's clear that there is plenty of money to go around. It turns out that when you're making money hand over fist and arguing that you shouldn't have to pay your labor, it's better to not be making huge profits so that money has to go somewhere else.
3
Perhaps a look at how individual universities choose to reward particular employees might shed some light on how far they've lost track of their missions as "educational" institutions.
15
The negatives have been explored. The positives are touched upon. At best, we're part of tribal rituals. At worst, we accept the monetizing of every aspect of life--and this part of it, in the context of so-called education. Some want "student" athletes to be paid. How about student teachers, who will contribute more to the economy over their lifetimes? How about actually asking what it is we mean by "education?" We have in the White House a perfect example of an American success story. So successful, he even founded and ran a university! Real education, that which encourages real questions, is as unwelcome in the market-state as a really free press.
46
The writer ignores the positives and accentuates every negative possible. is it a violent sport yes. Can young men get seriously injured, yes. But and this is a big but, how many poor underprivileged kids get an opportunity to attend a university and get exposure to an education they could never afford ? How many go on o professional sports where the payoff is enormous ? While the percentage of professionals may be low, it is a "brass ring" which can make a poor family well off and make a poor kid wealthy, where their kids can become well educated and professionals in other fields. So while there are many problems with college football the enormity of it will remain in American culture forever. Whether you like it or not.
4
You raise a few valid points. However, many of the young men who play football or other sports do not give a flip about getting an education. They are there to showcase their enormous skills for the NFL. I have no issue with that.
What is a huge issue to me is the fact that football players generate hundreds of millions of dollars every year for their universities and they receive diddly squat for sacrificing their bodies. No, an education is not anywhere close to a fair exchange. It is well past time to reexamine union representation and pay for college athletes.
What is a huge issue to me is the fact that football players generate hundreds of millions of dollars every year for their universities and they receive diddly squat for sacrificing their bodies. No, an education is not anywhere close to a fair exchange. It is well past time to reexamine union representation and pay for college athletes.
129
For every one that makes it to the NFL there are countless injured undergraduate players who have their scholarship taking away and they often have no means to complete their education. The system that is held as valid by university presidents and coaches alike.
Today's fans have adopted "corporate thinking" when they wear the color t-shirts; think Penn State with 90% of their 100,000 fans wearing white t-shirts.
No questioning of the system from that crowd.
Today's fans have adopted "corporate thinking" when they wear the color t-shirts; think Penn State with 90% of their 100,000 fans wearing white t-shirts.
No questioning of the system from that crowd.
16
>while there are many problems with college football the enormity of it will remain in American culture forever.<
"Forever" is a long time. It seems likely the Romans said the same about gladiatorial combat, and for many of the same reasons.
"Forever" is a long time. It seems likely the Romans said the same about gladiatorial combat, and for many of the same reasons.
12
Division I college football exists to generate hundreds of millions, if not more, for the coffers of the NCAA, ESPN, college cable networks and the like.
The young men who play it strike a Faustian bargain--in exchange for a college scholarship (putting aside that they are discouraged from actually pursuing a degree where the workload might interfere with football) and the minuscule chance they will play in the NFL, they sacrifice their bodies and their futures. The scholarships are generally renewable year to year and if they are injured they can be thrown onto the scrap pile, their scholarship revoked. There are always more behind them, despite the risks, often due to difficult financial or personal circumstances that make this the only way they can get to college.
Equally disturbing is the unrelenting focus of some states on their college football programs, almost to the point of ignoring other priorities--like education. How much has been spent on new stadiums, million-dollar locker rooms, state of the art equipment and multi-million dollar coaches salaries, even for assistants? Multiple studies have shown that the payback is simply not there for these investments.
And the NFL is thrilled with this set-up, since it gets a minor league training ground without cost.
Given the money at stake and the entrenched interests, there is little chance of change. What Alabama or Oklahoma politician would ever suggest it?
The young men who play it strike a Faustian bargain--in exchange for a college scholarship (putting aside that they are discouraged from actually pursuing a degree where the workload might interfere with football) and the minuscule chance they will play in the NFL, they sacrifice their bodies and their futures. The scholarships are generally renewable year to year and if they are injured they can be thrown onto the scrap pile, their scholarship revoked. There are always more behind them, despite the risks, often due to difficult financial or personal circumstances that make this the only way they can get to college.
Equally disturbing is the unrelenting focus of some states on their college football programs, almost to the point of ignoring other priorities--like education. How much has been spent on new stadiums, million-dollar locker rooms, state of the art equipment and multi-million dollar coaches salaries, even for assistants? Multiple studies have shown that the payback is simply not there for these investments.
And the NFL is thrilled with this set-up, since it gets a minor league training ground without cost.
Given the money at stake and the entrenched interests, there is little chance of change. What Alabama or Oklahoma politician would ever suggest it?
223
" .. Division I college football exists to generate hundreds of millions, if not more, for the coffers of the NCAA, ESPN, college cable networks and the like .."
Fact: Title IX and the minor NCAA sports (swimming, golf, track) are *funded* via football and TV adverts. End that -- end minor NCAA sports.
What the writer and journalists do not get -- college football is about entertainment. A diversion from political calls for even-higher taxes, even-more bureaucrats, and even-less freedom.
Consider the entertainment wisdom of the late poet Andy Griffith, of Mt. Airy, N.C. -- "What It Was/Was Football."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNxLxTZHKM8
" .. Somebody had took and drawed white lines all over it and drove posts in it, and I don’t know what-all, and I looked down there, and I seen five or six convicts a-running up and down and a-blowing whistles. They was. And then I looked down there, I seen these pretty girls wearin’ these little bitty short dresses and a-dancing around, and so I sit down and thought I’d see what it was that was a-going to happen. I did.
"About the time I got set down good, I looked down there and I seen 30 or 40 men come a-runnin’ out of one end of a great big outhouse down there. They did. And everybody where I was a-settin’ got up and hollered! And about that time, 30 or 40 come runnin’ out of the other end of that outhouse, and the other bank-full, they got up and hollered .."
Fact: Title IX and the minor NCAA sports (swimming, golf, track) are *funded* via football and TV adverts. End that -- end minor NCAA sports.
What the writer and journalists do not get -- college football is about entertainment. A diversion from political calls for even-higher taxes, even-more bureaucrats, and even-less freedom.
Consider the entertainment wisdom of the late poet Andy Griffith, of Mt. Airy, N.C. -- "What It Was/Was Football."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNxLxTZHKM8
" .. Somebody had took and drawed white lines all over it and drove posts in it, and I don’t know what-all, and I looked down there, and I seen five or six convicts a-running up and down and a-blowing whistles. They was. And then I looked down there, I seen these pretty girls wearin’ these little bitty short dresses and a-dancing around, and so I sit down and thought I’d see what it was that was a-going to happen. I did.
"About the time I got set down good, I looked down there and I seen 30 or 40 men come a-runnin’ out of one end of a great big outhouse down there. They did. And everybody where I was a-settin’ got up and hollered! And about that time, 30 or 40 come runnin’ out of the other end of that outhouse, and the other bank-full, they got up and hollered .."
2
Excellent observations.
You make it sound as if we live in a dog eat dog capitalist oligarchy, rather than an egalitarian democracy.
You make it sound as if we live in a dog eat dog capitalist oligarchy, rather than an egalitarian democracy.
A column on college football by a writer who hates the sport who teaches at a University that doesn't play it...why am I not surprised. The one activity that brings together millions of fans of all classes, races, genders, and political views & she not only hates it she see something sinister! Wow. Is she upset because football is a masculine sport played by men? Hard to say the article is all over the place. As a Sports Photographer who knows many people in college football let me say this article is absurd on every level. This writer cherry picks all that is bad , makes absurd unproven observations,& can't bring herself to say anything positive. Most of these fans are working-class voters the very people the left purports to be their will on earth. But they hate to the very core everything they love, enjoy or find sacred....especially college football. So-called progressives have been mocking & lecturing working class people for decades. You are bad for eating factory-farmed meat, owning a gun, & driving an SUV. You are bad for speaking the language of micro-aggressions & patriarchy & cultural appropriation. And now you are terrible people for loving college football. Are you kidding me? This is part of much of a larger trend of denigrating everything in working-class culture. This plays perfectly into the narrative that leftist academics are pompous fanatics. Dems will not win over working-class swing voters if they persist in ridiculing college football ...that's nuts.
3
Early in this piece, the author lists football's many known negative aspects- the physical damage, the encouragement of violence, the profiteering. For these reasons and more, I really can't fathom how any thinking person can be a fan. What sense of "belonging" that is generated for the spectators can possibly justify a sport that is, at its essence, predicated on men trying to physically hurt one another?
92
Koyote, "big hits" are exactly why many people watch. Not that they wish injury to players, but imagine if it were flag or no contact football.
Would fans pay hundreds or thousands of dollars to watch?
Would fans pay hundreds or thousands of dollars to watch?
4
Simple. Watching some of the most physically gifted young men in the world performing incredible athletic feats of greatness that none of us can fathom. Modern day gladiators.
I will stop watching football (the NFL more than college) when they pry my cold dead fingers from the remote.
I will stop watching football (the NFL more than college) when they pry my cold dead fingers from the remote.
4
I assume Koyote from The Rust Belt this is a rhetorical question. People who feel economically hopeless buy lottery tickets. The hope of playing and profiting from football has about the same odds with many many more risks.