It is increasingly difficult to avoid the perception that athletic programs have begun to influence educational agendas in a fashion that is far out of proportion to their scholastic worth. In years gone by, physical education validly served as a way to assure that classroom bound students were temporarily released from their indoor perches for what was literally a breath of fresh air. In a time when there were no community soccer pitches or baseball diamonds this served a vital function for the student’s physical health.
All of this is now past and yet it seems that athletic programs have begun to utterly dominate both the priorities and mentalities of even the largest academic institutions. The huge financial impact of a given school’s athletic success or lack thereof is often entirely out of proportion to its reputation for scholastic excellence. The validity of commercial sports’ consuming vast resources in television programming and financial expenditure for our society can be delegated to another debate. The diminution of academic excellence in the face of playing field prestige cannot.
The disproportionate quantities of teacher time, class attendance and institutional funding being diverted at the behest of sports programs represents a significant and appalling drain upon the already limited budgets of our schools. The dismal state of education in America and the concomitant poor performance of American students is common knowledge throughout around the globe. The phenomenal wealth of America could easily fund schooling on a level far in excess of the remaining civilized world. While this country contains what are undoubtedly some of the planet’s finest schools, the almost unique emphasis on collegiate sports programs demands scrutiny.
We have already seen a Christian university president resign over grade tampering designed to allow a key basketball player’s crucial inclusion in that school’s post season tournament participation. Gardener-Webb’s Runnin’ Bulldogs went on to “win” the National Christian College Athletic Association championship. I say “win,” because without the nearly one thousand points per season shooting of Carlos Webb (no relation) who’s academic transcript was “adjusted” by Dr. Christopher White (the school’s president for over a decade) it is very unlikely the Runnin’ Bulldogs would have won the tournament. I can only sympathize with all the other teams who were cheated out of their legitimate ranking by this blatant subterfuge.
Let’s examine the facts surrounding this incident. Combined faculty and student protests have led to investigation of the school by the NCAA. In a supremely ironic twist, the president himself is perceived as blaming these dissenters for the ensuing imbroglio. The linked article quotes him as saying;
“I am sorry that what I did two years ago out of fairness to a student has led to such turmoil and controversy, … But what causes me even more sorrow is that the harm of the past few weeks has been self-inflicted by men and women of the Gardner-Webb community to the detriment of our students whom we are here to serve, inspire and educate in accordance with Christian values.”
This Christian college’s board of trustees maintains that they did not request the resignation of their school’s president (why not?) and continued to “praise” Dr. White’s record (why?). The same year that this grade-fixing occurred, Gardner-Webb’s Student Government Association successfully campaigned to have framed copies of the university’s honor code hung in every classroom on the campus. Perhaps an additional copy should have been conspicuously installed in the president’s office.
The student in question had been caught cheating on a final exam for a religious course (more irony) and was appropriately given a F as his final grade. According to school regulations, this F could not be erased from the student’s transcript and therefore prohibited the pupil from playing in any athletic programs for the following year. Faculty members who initiated the complaint against Dr. White’s grade tampering were demoted (further irony) and a vote of confidence in the president failed 63-39. To cap this entire incident, Steven C. Perry, the dean of Gardner-Webb’s business school and its first endowed professor resigned in protest even as the trustees continued to support the president.
This single incident serves as a bellwether for the overall state of academic athletics. If a Christian institution, many of whose faculty and students specifically attend “because of expectations that it would foster a more spiritual, moral atmosphere than a public school” has trustees reluctant to censure its own president for clearly violating their own honor code, what hope is there that other schools will feel any more honor bound? Rampant incidents of amateur athletes being given perks of cars and off-campus residences only serve to point up the over-importance placed upon collegiate athletic programs.
A more recent finding in California further highlights the entire problem. Some $56 million in taxpayer money is being diverted to finance physical education programs in the state’s Junior College system. At least 188,000 high school athletes are enrolled in these “classes” which sometimes amount to nothing more than off-season training programs or regular season practice sessions. The students receive college credit for attending these “activity classes” that often have no tests or written assignments. Some local high school coaches who teach these “classes” can receive up to $10,605 per semester from the colleges in addition to their regular high school coaching pay. The colleges receive $200 to $315 for each student involved and can count these pupils in their enrollment figures.
Described as a “win, win, win” situation by one high school coach it seems to be more of a lose, lose, lose predicament for the state taxpayer whose hard earned money is supporting fluff “classes” that have very little to do with academic excellence. Claims that these students are being introduced to a college atmosphere notwithstanding, this is a sterling example of the overemphasis placed upon academic sports programs. Too often, the diversion of ever-shrinking budgetary allocations towards such blatantly non-scholastic endeavors simply damages the entire educational system and its primary beneficiaries, the students themselves.
While many recent programs make a student player’s inclusion on sports teams dependent upon their grade point average, the willingness of school officials to circumvent ethics and honor codes to permit such participation confounds these laudable efforts. A full-scale revision of academic sports programs needs to be implemented on a nationwide level. So long as American students continue to post such poor performance in the classroom, across the board de-emphasis of academic sports programs should be implemented.
The sordid spectacle of “successful” student sports players graduating from school as functional illiterates is more than a disgrace to our nation. It threatens the very foundations of our society to proliferate a mentality that elevates temporary athletic prowess at a direct cost to the true productivity and long term livelihood of an individual. That so many students who do not participate in school sports programs should suffer the immense diversion of funding desperately needed to improve scholastic achievement is nothing short of criminal.
Any remedy to this dilemma is sure to be met with strident opposition. For every parent who reads to their child each night hoping to foster their academic future, there is another out on the little league field arguing or physically assaulting the referee or coach over a perceived bad call. The disproportionate importance placed upon sports at, what is often, direct cost to the schooling of our youth is a national disgrace. This nearly fanatic obsession with athletic performance is mirrored in the twisted viciousness of soccer hooligans, Olympic kneecapping and post-game riots of vandalism and destruction by winning or losing fans alike. A top to bottom realignment of personal, social and philosophic values is the only solution to this issue. Yet the very possibility of such a reconstruction is regularly starved out of educational curriculums by the continuing diversion of school budgets towards athletic programs.
There is no logical reason for these two pursuits to be in opposition. However, there is a distinct psychological and philosophical dichotomy manifest in this needless competition for resources. Society, as a whole, no longer encourages or demands intellectual excellence. The impoverished state of our public school systems overwhelmingly proves this simple fact. The established value of arts and letters in promoting good study habits is utterly ignored by a “culture” agog over the spectacle of unearned wealth and unmerited fame.
Lowest common denominator television programming has gradually undermined any fascination or regard for original thought. The incessant stream of recent major movie releases based upon comic books or decades old television shows stands as a monument to Hollywood’s creative bankruptcy. While excellence in sports can embody intellectual achievement, too often the element of brute force carries the day. The recent phenomenon of a “win-at-any-cost” mentality that both encourages and rewards blatantly illegal fouling to prevent an rival player’s scoring personifies this entire malaise. No team can ever truly “win” by attempting to legitimize unsportsmanlike conduct as a valid playing strategy. This sort of mindset is nothing short of thuggish misconduct whose presence on the playing field is a complete disgrace.
Sports has become institutionalized in our culture to such a degree that it is now perceived as a “shortcut” to the wealth once often available only to truly productive and industrious elements of society. It is precisely this “shortcutting” that has short-circuited academic excellence and creativity in our modern “culture.” The enormous profits or endowments generated by both commercial and collegiate athletic programs needlessly erode the very base of their own capital.
As America devolves into a service based society, where will the gigantic monetary outlay come from to promote and maintain the national obsession with sports? A more sterling example of a bubble economy is difficult to imagine. The billions of dollars spent annually on this abiding fixation makes the recent Internet bubble economy pale by comparison. When this athletic economy’s bubble bursts, the philosophic and economic implications of its collapse may well portend a return to misery and toil too often dismissed as unthinkable in our modern age. This is the potential toll taken upon our society by diversion of academic budgets to athletic programs. Correcting this fundamental reversal of priorities may well prove critical to our future as a nation and society as a whole.