GET OUT!

It’s an organization I wish existed. The acronym represents Get Every Thug Off Our Teams, and is a reaction to the disgustingly commonplace news of so-called student-athletes’ arrests and convictions for a great range of crimes. More disturbingly, very often the criminals have been hired, by means of athletic scholarships, which are publicized, and often bonuses and perks, which are clandestine.
The Oxford English Dictionary definition of “university” is rather simple and refers to two classes of people, students and faculty; athletes are not mentioned. Looking at the world, in fact, shows that the American model of a university as a training ground for professional athletes, many of them scarcely associated, aside from ubiquity, with their institutions, is rare. In most countries, universities have no teams, none at all. Athletes with no interest in education may attend sports colleges, where those are the subjects taught, or join sports clubs, devoted to particular endeavors of that sort. Another option for them, of course, is to secure athletic scholarships in the U.S., and quite a few do just that.
Despite the fact that athletics have no definitional part in colleges, I have absolutely no objection to them. I have exercised regularly all my life, have enjoyed watching some university athletic contests, and my children were intercollegiate athletes. I object very strenuously, however, to participants’ being paid to perform, and, regardless of what euphemism is attached to the payment, that is what it is.
For what are called major sports the universities function as no better than minor league teams. The usual, specious argument to justify this is that athletic scholarships permit some that otherwise would not, to “get a college education.” For the major sports this is entirely laughable. Trivial courses and feeble, useless programs of study are formulated for those whose presence is solely for the purpose of running around the fields and courts. For many, the most popular major must be Student Union, because, when not indulging in their professions, that is where many are often to be found.
The actual reason for the practice is, as with much corruption in this country, money. Buying more capable players helps XYZ U to win, which attracts television money, bowl game money, ticket and souvenir revenues, etc. Most of this return, naturally, goes back to athletics, and winning teams gratify old grads, the pecunious of whom will donate money to XYZ to propagate the cycle. One has only to review the graduation statistics for athletic scholars in the big money sports. How many graduate in reasonable time? How many graduate at all, and, if so, in what – Playground Management or African or Women’s Studies? Observe what a lie is the “get a college education” excuse for importing them.
If you’ve spent any time around a school with a large athletic “program,” which designation is appropriate, since it’s all entertainment, you’ll have noticed that the athletic department budget is an enigma, a sacred cow, the horns of which never get trimmed. When financial troubles develop, the Library will have to eliminate research materials the faculty need, whole academic departments may be erased, staff and faculty forego raises, but football never takes a hit. It’s also important to recognize that at some schools the abuses are not with basketball and football, for hockey, lacrosse, and other sports are the big attractions at other places.
I shall describe the sensible way for university athletics to work. Students take entrance exams and present other academic credentials. If accepted for a valid course of study, they matriculate, and, in interested, try out for the team(s) of choice. They are first students, secondly athletes – just as the bogus, hyphenated term indicates – and receive no special consideration for that activity. It’s the same as the Knitting Club, an amateur drama group, or the Mechanical Engineering Society – extra-curricular activities taken up by those with the interest, ability, and time for them. What is better than this about the uncontrollable monster of the semi-pro to full-pro system we have today?
Next, to the subject of crime. It is far from uncommon that some of those engaged to represent the schools, with which they are so tenuously connected, are criminals. The ways by which university administrators – also not mentioned in the definition – deal with the phenomenon bear examination.
Some months ago news reports from the University of Montana, a place not ordinarily construed as a football factory, told that part of the team broke into an apartment to steal some of the illegal drugs in use there. Whether the whole squad is armed or not is unknown, but these representatives were, and in the course of the felony a woman was slugged over the head with a revolver barrel.
The school’s president determined that the root problem was not having thugs in to play football, but rather that the criminals had not been provided adequate “mentoring,” to employ his own, fashionable terminology. In short, the felonious behavior was the university’s fault! Consequently, a new, salaried position was added to the budget and a person engaged to attempt to inculcate civilized behavior upon any barbaric student-athletes. If this is representative of logic at places of advanced learning, we should bail out after eight years, and, by the way, do you think high schools are less tolerant of high-performance, low morality student-athletes?
The University of Texas is an institution more closely identified with major league athletics, so it was less startling to see it distinguished in a column headed “Book ‘em, Horns” and leading off with reference to its new honor system; “Yes, your Honor.” “No, your Honor.” After six weeks of a season the Austin team had four wins and six arrests. The crimes included burglary of a vehicle; aggravated robbery and tampering with or fabricating physical evidence; aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon; beating up a witness to one of the foregoing crimes; driving while impaired; and drug possession. How did the team deal with the offenders? Hardly with rigor; one criminal transferred to another, lucky school, two were suspended indefinitely – meaning?, and two were reinstated after three-game suspensions. Wasn’t that severe?
After the University of Florida won it’s so-called national football championship, it had had nine players arrested by the middle of the following season. Want additional evidence? Just open your newspapers.
To digress a moment, parents of children shopping for colleges should be cognizant of incidents like these, whether on or off the confines of a campus, and should also research the institution’s crime data, which schools are never anxious to advertise but which federal law compels them to gather and make available.
Let’s assume that a school is so eager for glorious victories and the even more glorious dollars as to perpetuate the present system of paid amateurs. It is still possible, in fact, simple to operate in a sane, circumspect fashion.
The first step is to ascertain more carefully the backgrounds of candidate recruits, because it is unlikely that exposure to a university and the “college education” that explained his presence converts a civil young person into a thug. People with histories of behavioral problems or previous police records should be avoided. Concurrently, much grief can be avoided by the obvious tactic of utilizing existing information. List the chief attributes of athletes that have been guilty of crimes, discover the types that have caused trouble, and refuse to offer any inducements to bringing them. Universities are well staffed with statisticians and information technology specialists to make the development of such a system an easy task.
Further, those that hire university athletes should be made responsible for their decisions; if a person that available information marks as a risk proves to have justified that label, then whoever brought him or her should be fired. This policy would immediately ensure more sensible recruiting of athletes, and university presidents, boards of regents, and the like should promulgate it. In the Montana example, some football coach should have been kicked out on his ear for indirect responsibility for the muggings and larceny. A firing or two, and we’d not find such unacceptable nonsense peppering our newspapers. Like it or not, anyone that pays taxes pays to support the operations of one or more universities. Make yourselves heard. “GET OUT!” should be a battle cry.