Ban College Football?
In the Wall Street Journal today, Buzz Bissinger, author of "Friday Night Lights," calls for a ban--an outright ban--on college football:
In more than 20 years I've spent studying the issue, I have yet to hear a convincing argument that college football has anything do with what is presumably the primary purpose of higher education: academics.
That's because college football has no academic purpose. Which is why it needs to be banned. A radical solution, yes. But necessary in today's times....
Who truly benefits from college football? Alumni who absurdly judge the quality of their alma mater based on the quality of the football team. Coaches such as Nick Saban of the University of Alabama and Bob Stoops of Oklahoma University who make obscene millions. The players themselves don't benefit, exploited by a system in which they don't receive a dime of compensation. The average student doesn't benefit, particularly when football programs remain sacrosanct while tuition costs show no signs of abating as many governors are slashing budgets to the bone....
I actually like football a great deal. I am not some anti-sports prude. It has a place in our society, but not on college campuses.
I'm still collecting my thoughts on this, but to be honest? Half the reason I decided to post it was to see how Dave Carter would reply. Dave's never less than entertaining, of course. But when he's good and mad? Dave's a thing of pure beauty.
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Comments:
Aug '10
Re: Ban College Football?
Joseph Stanko
We played the same game, though we had a far less PC name for it... · 27 minutes ago
We had a similar game, except we didn't bother with the ball. Our game was just two hordes of kids running at each other from opposite ends of the field, trying to get to the other end without being tackled.
"More brawlers than warriors. They make a wondrous mess of things." - 300
May '10
Re: Ban College Football?
Ronaldus Maximus
I understand your sentiment. However, because the Federal Government, sorry President Barrack Obama, funds all student loans and because of never-ending inflationary prices of college tuition, I think the overall value and need for a college degree is more important than the state of collegiate athletics. Concerning ourselves with paying college football players and/or the largess going towards athletic departments are simply a distraction from a the impending education bubble we have around the corner.
America is wasting billions sending its youth to college to receive little or no real world training and skills, while being immersed in values and beliefs that are anathema to most their parents. · 2 hours ago
I fully agree that there are much bigger core issues. Largely, the convoluted view amongst the general population about the meaning and necessity of higher education, of which college sports is simply a microcosm.
Edited on May 8, 2012 at 7:22pmApr '11
Re: Ban College Football?
I think you all underestimate how much loathing and contempt nerds can have for jocks. We all plan our slow and petty vengeance from our basement layers with Lex Luthurian meticulousness. Angry that people don't recognize our encyclopedic knowledge of numerous esoteric fields and subjects.
Everyone always fawns for a bunch of testosterone pumped grunts running with a ball! But, when you need new medicines and technologies who do you turn to? Yes, you come to us to give you jobs, and a better life...We suffer all throughout high school the abuse of the athletic jocks, our chess clubs, and D&D sessions mocked...all in the knowledge that we will go to collage where our kind holds sway.
Yet, what do we find when we get there? More sports! Everyone still cheers for the 2.0 GPA senior basketball player and no one even knows the obscure 4.0 Chemistry Major....
I say let sports die. Not just collage sports, but all sports!
Bwuahahahahahaaaa!
(Break)
May '10
Re: Ban College Football?
We took that one step further in Alabama, and played it after dark. Called it "Nightball." Kept at it until well into high school...
Aug '10
Re: Ban College Football?
Valiuth:
I say let sports die. Not just collage sports, but all sports!
Even tournament D&D?!
Apr '12
Re: Ban College Football?
Aaron Miller said "Burn him at the stake!" That's a succinct way of bringing up an important issue, and that is freedom of religion. I don't know about Yankees, but in the South there is One True Religion, and that is college football. While folks might go to a church on Sunday, they do their best praying and worshiping on Saturdays during the games. So, you want to ban college football? That might as well be a declaration of war. Try banning Islam first, pal. It's safer, too.
Nov '10
Re: Ban College Football?
Ronaldus Maximus
MMPadre
Equally valid? Do you truly think the industry that is college footbawl is on a par (heh) with college golf? Basketball, yes: once again, a free farm system for the pros, and a similar list of ills we associate with that other game. But chess? How many millions do the schools invest in chess? Where is the professional chess track that these "student-athletes" are being groomed for? Where the millionaire coaches? To be sure, if people want to pay for this stuff, I say let them. But spare me the paeans to the noble virtues allegedly enshrined between the goalposts. The callous and even ugly realities of this branch of the professional sports industry tell another story. · 37 minutes ago
So sports that lose money for schools are to be valued but not those that make money?? Please explain this logic? · 3 hours ag
Perhaps --in the list of pathologies associated with professional college sports-- we should list the denial that routinely possesses the many fans that are left unable to follow a train of thought or get a point. What part of the word corruption do you not understand?
Re: Ban College Football?
Joseph Stanko
We played the same game, though we had a far less PC name for it... · 1 hour ago
We called it the same thing, Joseph. I didn't want to bring it up in case I was alone.
May '10
Re: Ban College Football?
Tommy De Seno
Joseph Stanko
We played the same game, though we had a far less PC name for it...
We called it the same thing, Joseph. I didn't want to bring it up in case I was alone.
Smear the... Democrat? Yes, I'm sure that was it.
Aug '10
Re: Ban College Football?
Tommy De Seno
I didn't want to bring it up in case I was alone.
The lament of the conservative in Obama's America.
;-)
Mar '11
Re: Ban College Football?
Tommy De Seno: Then ban the chess club, because football and chess are similar endeavors.
There are differences that favor football as the more intellectual aim.
In chess each participant moves one piece at a time and has an enormous amount of time to study his opponent's formation.
In football you have to move all your pieces at the same time while your opponent is moving all of his. You have only seconds to recognize your opponent's formation and attack his position - said position changing during the course of his move.
Football is chess with faster thinking.
Anyone who thinks a person can be stupid and play well on a football field is wrong.
There are various yardsticks for intelligence. There is no reason to exclude understanding the complexities of well played football as one of them. · 3 hours ago
The problem isn't with the game, or even athletic activities in college. Mind, body, and spirit all should be nourished. No one is saying that the game is "anti-education". The complaint is that the current system is a corrupt money making venture that has nothing to do with education at all. And those criticisms are right.
Mar '11
Re: Ban College Football?
Cue the jokes from Auburn fans about Bama fans praying to Bear Bryant on Sundays. And lest you think I'm kidding, there's a BBQ joint four blocks from my house with a print of Bear Bryant, wearing a Biblical-looking robe over his suit and houdstooth hat, holding a playbook in his hands, and parting a "crimson sea", a'la Moses. The analogy is pretty clear.
Sep '10
Re: Ban College Football?
Douglas
The problem isn't with the game, or even athletic activities in college. Mind, body, and spirit all should be nourished. No one is saying that the game is "anti-education". The complaint is that the current system is a corrupt money making venture that has nothing to do with education at all. And those criticisms are right. · 13 minutes ago
If such criticisms are right then they should be aimed at the modern university as a whole, not narrowly to collegiate football or basketball. Many, if not most, major universities value research and the millions that are involved in the federal and state grants over actually educating students. More money and more corruption is involved in college-based research than college football or basketball.
Aug '10
Re: Ban College Football?
Douglas
No one is saying that the game is "anti-education". The complaint is that the current system is a corrupt money making venture that has nothing to do with education at all.
On the contrary, that's EXACTLY what Buzz Bissinger is arguing in his article:
Sep '10
Re: Ban College Football?
Nov '10
Re: Ban College Football?
Please spare us the maudlin encomium to college football's alleged virtues. What about the other things college football "teaches" us? That if a kid's got a good arm, he can get away with almost anything --somebody will cover for him. (Whoever had a felony buried because he was a hot "superhero studies" prospect?) That the football program is sacrosanct, and thus above scrutiny no matter what criminality the staff gets up to. That athletes are meat, and when your arm goes, so do you. Tell me: what would you say to a kid who didn't make the pros and didn't get an education either; who got nothing?
The virtues you claim for athletics are edifying when they are complemented by other virtues, not when they are used --as is all too often the case-- to excuse the deficit thereof. The bottom line --and the example you give of the comradeship of extra-mural rough play only underscores this-- is that as long as college sports is a billion-dollar industry, corruption will follow in its wake. Reform it, by all means --make it noble-- but please don't B$ me about it.
Jun '10
Re: Ban College Football?
Douglas
The complaint is that the current system is a corrupt money making venture that has nothing to do with education at all.
Is it corrupt because it's a money-making venture?
MMPadre
as long as college sports is a billion-dollar industry, corruption will follow in its wake. Reform it, by all means --make it noble-- but please don't B$ me about it.
Does this same logic apply to all billion-dollar industries? Health insurance? Oil companies? Wells Fargo? Walmart?
Are they all in need of reform because of all that filthy lucre they generate? Would they be more noble is they could just be cleansed of that unseemly profit motive somehow?
Jan '12
Re: Ban College Football?
No way. College football is as American as apple pie. OK Apple pie isn't American but that doesn't alter a thing. If the colleges can't afford it then get the faculty to cut their wages. There's plenty of Asians and Eastern Europeans who can do their jobs. If the faculty don't like it then they can go get a real job.
Dec '10
Re: Ban College Football?
And tomato sauce is not Italian.
Apr '11
Re: Ban College Football?
Our version included wearing cowboy boots and dress shoes with the added bonus that kicking was allowed.
We also played "killer ball" where all players massed in a group and one player stood on the outside and threw a softball into the mass. If you got hit you went to the outside. The game became quite a challenge when 30-40 were on the outside in a circle throwing a softball at you as hard as they could. Oh, the teacher usually started on the outside. He didn't throw softly, he figured you'd learn to get out of the way.
If nothing else these games taught you to stand up for yourself, grow a set, life isn't fair, succeeding was usually a struggle, and perseverance paid off.