First Fan Strikes Again: Obama on Vick

American presidents preside over the religion of sport in America. Richard Nixon suggested plays to his favorite teams. Dwight Eisenhower moved golf from a rich plaything to a mainstream activity. The Bush clan played football, baseball and sailed as well as owning a baseball team. President Obama follows in a long established tradition as the resident high priest presiding over the liturgy of American sport; the President as First Fan.

President Obama has embraced this mantle with relish. He fills out a mean NCAA bracket that he can actually explain. He had to pass a basketball test to woo Michelle and plays for keeps picking up12 stitches in a simple “pickup” game! Some Presidents may collapse while jogging or get dunked by killer rabbits, but Obama sheds blood for sport. He weighed in on the discussion over a national college football championship. Not since President Nixon has a President enjoyed and embraced this role so much.

Now Obama has added homilies, private and personal, to the celebrant of sport position. On vacation he called Philadelphia Eagles’ owner Jeffrey Lurie to congratulate Lurie for his alternative energy plans for the Eagle’s new stadium. During the conversation he praised Lurie for giving Michael Vick, convicted felon and dogfighter, a second chance. Amid considerable controversy Vick, himself, unveiled a storybook season of skill and maturity. At the same time he has relentlessly crossed the country speaking out on his own moral culpability and warning against animal abuse.  Vick has demonstrated by his behavior and unrehearsed words a consistent remorse.

The liturgy of sport provides rituals and narratives that many Americans use to make sense of life. The redemption story is etched into the American psyche as a foundational narrative; one that we tell ourselves again and again both to explain and redeem our own lives but also explain our success as a culture. This culture permits and encourages second, third and fourth chances in the economy and life.  Media consultant orchestrated apologies and promises to do better may toughen us to some of this, but the possibility of accepting responsibility, learning from moral failure and redeeming one’s life lies at the core of American identity.

Obama’s comments upon Vick were very specific and need to be addressed as such. He condemned Vick’s callous and inhumane treatment of animals as well as Vick’s pride and belief he was above the law. But he congratulated Lurie on giving someone who had served his time a second chance. Lurie emphasized how passionate Obama was about giving people who paid their dues a second chance.

As First Fan Obama’s homily invoked second chance, redemption and a reviled and redeemed sport figure as a model. Of course his “private” conversation went viral. Animal rights activists clamored on both sides of the issues. One warned Obama there are more dog lovers than football lovers. Interestingly  one activist made Obama's point by arguing that Vick would not have been given a second chance if he could not throw a football. That is Obama's point.

 Vick illustrates writ large that second chances require people willing to risk giving them, and this seldom happens to people who have served time. This reluctance perpetuates the cycle of crime-prison-recidivism. Many questioned the appropriateness of his comments. Others invoked the heinous nature of Vick’s treatment of animals hinting strongly nothing could redeem such behavior. Fox News chimed  in predictably through mouthpiece Tucker Carlson who asserted that Vick should have been executed, thus making dog cruelty a capital crime.

Obama’s point remains powerful and on point. If Americans believe in the possibility of a redeemed life; if Americans believe that going to prison pays back to society the debt owed and morally balances the life; If Americans believe that people who make moral mistakes but own up and pay for them and prove this by behavior over time are redeemed, then Obama’s conjuring up Vick’s example is right on.

Obama’s invocation of Vick’s example not only to calls to mind our belief in redemption but reminds us that that redemption requires people who will grant those second chances.

Surfing, Sport. Joy

Surfing, Sport and Joy

I spent last week in Hawaii and trekked to the north shore of of Oahu. There I watched the great waves of the Banzai pipeline. The churning waves two or three stories tall bobbed with surfers. They watched, waited and broke into sudden frantic paddling, scramble up and catch a wave. Most fall, backs arced, the board shoots one way, their body the other while bound together by the umbilical chord connecting them.

The surf pounds them and hides the screams of fear and joy. They swim back out, recover their boards and bob and weave, then catch another wave. Some ride high and slow, a few cut back and slice down again and again extending the rides. Most flop,flail and roll before they finish their runs, then do it again, and again and again. Some, laughing and tired, straggle from the foam, new surfers, young and not so young, usually males with some intrepid females stride into the fickle waves.

I laughed watching them and remembered my failed attempt to learn which ended with a surf board stuck up my nose, don't ask. Then my attention riveted on some huge arcing near waves.

A few bend, balance, glide and finish their runs, then return to the waves. Twice I had the pleasure and honor to gape at a rare surfer, knees flexed, arms balanced, flowing successfully through a pipeline.

I smiled out loud. Surfing reminds me of why we love sport. Quite frankly, bobbing in the ocean with a board and jumping onto tons of piling ocean water that has traveled several thousand miles and crashed into a the north shore of a Pacific volcano makes no sense. Quite loony actually. Unlike many sport or athletic activities, it does not grow from warrior or work practice. Surfing has no practical value or purpose and no guaranteed outcomes, thank god.

Surfing developed independently in Africa, South America and Polynesia. The sheer joy of taking on whatever nature presents drives the surfers. No groomed trails or manicured greens masquerading as nature; surfers take then ocean neat with no chaser. Raw, unpredictable, massive, careless water cascading over and around the surfer beckon, each wave, each moment incomparable.

Surfers never know. Each wave will be a unique never repeated challenge. Every morning dawns fresh and presents an absolutely new test and experience. Every time a surf mounts a wave, no one know what will happen, that is the singular beauty of doing it.

The surfers I watched did not surf for money nor did they compete in rankings except among their cliques. They test their eye, reflexes, balance and courage or foolhardiness depending upon your point of view. They surf in pure exuberance feeling the strength of their bodies and reveling in a perfectly useless but demanding action. Each wave requires a combination of spontaneous skill and judgement attuned to each.

Sport at its core is not utility. It is play. Surfing exemplifies this.

Play refines and trains and tests us. Play can be hard, even dangerous, and play requires work and mastery. Humans often invest their play with ritual meaning, even turn play into professional competition. In parts of Polynesia surfing was reserved for the nobility or required prayers to the sea gods with whom the surfer would contend.

The essence remains the play, the pure clear risk of one's body, mental focus and skill against the ruthless test of of the sea. Anyone can risk and train and try. Some will be smitten, and the sport will become a life long passion woven into the texture of their identity and community.

They will surf for challenge, joy and love, the distilled essence of sport.

The Dominance and the Myth of College Football I & II

With Bowls cascading down and coaching blood leeting upon us, it's time to set back and take a look at college football. Interestingly the NCAA has kindly provided an MRI of its present state. The NCAA report on Revenues and Expenses: 2004-2009 for NCAA Division 1 Intercollegiate Athletics feels boring and dry.  But the report reveals the genetic makeup of modern athletic departments with its microscopic examination of NCAA finances. Three conclusions  leap from the report: 1) College Football dominates college athletics in a way nothing else does; 2) Colleges exist in a highly economically segregated world dominated by a very few wealthy programs; 3)  College football does not pay for the other sports, but often may take away from them.

Football remains the most desired,  watched and visible symbol of athletic prowess at the college level and probably in America. Schools that have no business being in the business continue to support money losing programs, and more schools grasp for  the perceived glory and visibility and launch football programs. Schools clamor to enter the Division 1 level much as they clamor to become certified AAU schools in academic circles. Yet the median loss for college sports programs is 12 million dollars and for midsize programs that have no real TV revenues, the subsidy/loss can approach 20 million dollars.

For senior college administrators, the general public and many students, being a recognized a Division 1 football power generates a high level of prestige and recognition. College football forges a brand identity for many schools. These values drive a school's desire to have football programs.  Too many people think a simple cost benefit analysis should explain college sports. It does not.  

Modern American universities inherited the anomaly of the wedding sports and universities, but the Presidents, students, alumni and media have exploited this in a way that being stewards of intercollegiate sports is now an  integral aspect of the culture of college life. It began a hundred years ago with breathless newspaper coverage of college events and the emergence of colors, nicknames, stadiums and rituals surrounding the games.

Many of the original college teams barnstormed as pros during the summer and went to school and played college ball in the autumn/winter.  By the thirties jokes about football and college could become a Marx Brother's staple as well as movies on college sport nobility and corruptions. This wedding grew from a deep Greek ideal  that perfection of  mind and body manifest a deep form of education of the soul.

Given the centrality of sports to university identity and community as well as marketing, the dominance of football is not surprising. For a decade college football has been the most avidly followed sport in America. On an average week 28 games will be televised. This intensity of interest dwarfs other college and professional interest. College football creates a perfect storm of identity for alumni but also geographic inhabitants that unites memory, identity and enjoyment of a truly fascinating and dangerous spectacle.

In Part II, I will discuss the economic implications of this for college programs.

The dominance and size of football matter even more given the overall condition of college sports. First, costs continue to outstrip revenue increases  by a rate of 6% to 14%.  The median "loss" or difference between revenue and giving and expenditures averages over 7  to 12 million dollars depending upon accounting tricks and grows at a rate of 9%.  The real loss/subsidy for mid size programs with no real TV contract and no strong endowments can approach 20 million dollars. Football accounts for the vast majority of the costs and losses. 

The football infrastructure is stunning. It requires a stadium that can only be used 6 times a year and has few other purposes. Although the NCAA publishes immense data proving that no correlation exists between facilities and winning, no one believes it and ten stadia have been built or refurbished in the last 5 years. Athletic administrators and Presidents refer to it correctly as an "arms race" they feel powerless to prevent. Check this map for a google maps overview of D1 stadiums.

Football  requires 80 scholarships which at an average school of cost of attendances of $20.000 is 2.4 million dollars.It must also provide uniforms and support for up to 105 student athletes. The 80 scholarships remains the equivalent of 6 basketball or volleyball teams or 12 mens' soccer teams.  It requires 11 coaches plus graduate assistants plus offensive and defense office coordinators plus video coordinators plus clerical staff plus 5 conditioning staff plus trainers plus half a dozen managers plus medical support, plus weight and conditioning room, plus travel arrangements to move a small army. (Just a minor anomaly, but at the ultra elite  programs the head coach's salary usually exceeds the entire scholarship expenditure by 2 million dollars.)

But the spectacle of football demands more, and most schools add on cheer groups that can amount to 20 people and bands that add another 70-200 people. This does not include the costs of maintaining the stadium and the informal work force needed for game days and managing parking and safety and concessions and broadcasting. Then you must police the tailgating and students, but the sobering reality for many programs remains half filled stands, very small TV contracts and money hemorrhaging programs. If D1 college football programs filled the stadium every game, they would still lose money and most do not come close to filling up their stadium.

The lopsided structure of football grows from two dimensions:

• First the sheer size of the enterprise builds in its own momentum and creates its own stature and fixed costs. This is allied to tradition and age. Most athletic programs began with football and its visibility and importance was well established by 1920, so much so that it took Presidential intervention by President Theodore Roosevelt to clean up the sports corruption but also the killing fields that football had evolved into. He demanded reform, and the NCAA emerged from this. Today new universities claw for recognition and take the example of South Florida as a harbinger of success. Regional universities trying to gain prestige and compete with state flagships rush to seek football success as a way to imprint their identity.
• Second the confluence of booster interest, student interest, money generation and above all potential TV exposure drives football. Basketball obviously offers much of the same at lower cost, but it cannot offer the sheer visibility spectacular dimensions and pride of place that football offers. For most athletic departments, dropping football  would be tantamount to an admission of failure and withdrawal from serious consideration as a sports school. More than a few struggle to add it on despite the data suggesting what a terrible bargain it is.

The football data highlights the nasty secret of football and college sport: the world segregates by the vast majority of haves-sort; some sort of haves; and a super elite of absurd abundance, rather like the modern U.S. wealth distribution system. A staggering 94 percent of college football programs lose money; their revenue streams do not cover the costs of the program. This refutes the often cited claim that football pays for the rest of the athletic program. In a very very very few programs, maybe 10, football may generate enough surplus to help support other college  sports, but in the vast majority of programs football programs vacuum up 85 percent of the expenditures and do not cover their costs.  

The ultra elite schools that generate profits live in a different fiscal and sport universe. At the University of Texas where they keep the number of sports low, the expenditure  per student for athletics is over 300,000. The average expenditure per student for Division 1 schools comes to 78.000 but that is median and ignores the distributional pull of the Texas, Georgie and Alabama schools who generate real surplus from football.  While all  the publicity focuses upon these schools, the drudging reality of the other 300 plus schools in Division 1 is that they lose money and football sucks up most of expenses and costs. 

It is a myth that football pays for the rest of the programs.  I cannot emphasize this enough. Football does not pay for the rest of the programs. In most of the mid level Division 1 programs, if anything, it puts a cap on the number of "olympic" sport because the football program takes up so much funding and fund raising. Under economic distress the need to keep football plus the escalating coaching salaries means that football costs push other sports to the periphery. Keeping football in most schools marginalizes other sports even more.   

The sheer scale of football and scholarships guarantees this reality. Given the economic climate today with huge cutbacks across the public universities, tuition raises of 9-14 % a year assures football will gobble up more and more of the funds. The "market" in football coaches guarantees that at the ultra-elite salaries for heads but also assistants will escalate even though the percentage devoted to salaries remains relatively stable. In some ways this hides the fact that often salaries may be off line in terms of TV shows, extra compensation for events and gifts that pad the salary but keep it off the university books. 

This tuition increase and salary escalation will continue. Interestingly the salary escalation has migrated to many Olympic sports. Bear in mind the Olympic sports never make money, will never make money, have no real professional rainbow at the end of the competitive rainbow for the student athletes, but  the raw nature of competitive athletes takes son its own dynamic.

With the emergence of national awards given to overall athletic excellence, athletic departments who are ferociously competitive, now invest heavily in emerging superstar coaches in sports like Lacrosse, Soccer, rowing etc. In its own way this is good to see the "minor" sports and men and women who dedicate their lives to student athletes get real compensation increases, but it also helps ensure that cost containment strategies will fail.

TV exposure, regional and institutional pride will continue the momentum of college sport and football. I believe college sports are a defensible moral and educational endeavor, but the economics of football make the entire world surreal and unsustainable for most schools. I don't see a solution, but we need to face the reality.

The Dominance and the Myth of College Football I

With Bowls cascading down and coaching blood leeting upon us, it's time to set back and take a look at college football. Interestingly the NCAA has kindly provided an MRI of its present state. The NCAA report on Revenues and Expenses: 2004-2009 for NCAA Division 1 Intercollegiate Athletics feels boring and dry.  But the report reveals the genetic makeup of modern athletic departments with its microscopic examination of NCAA finances. Three conclusions  leap from the report: 1) College Football dominates college athletics in a way nothing else does; 2) Colleges exist in a highly economically segregated world dominated by a very few wealthy programs; 3)  College football does not pay for the other sports, but often may take away from them.

Football remains the most desired,  watched and visible symbol of athletic prowess at the college level and probably in America. Schools that have no business being in the business continue to support money losing programs, and more schools grasp for  the perceived glory and visibility and launch football programs. Schools clamor to enter the Division 1 level much as they clamor to become certified AAU schools in academic circles. Yet the median loss for college sports programs is 12 million dollars and for midsize programs that have no real TV revenues, the subsidy/loss can approach 20 million dollars.

For senior college administrators, the general public and many students, being a recognized a Division 1 football power generates a high level of prestige and recognition. College football forges a brand identity for many schools. These values drive a school's desire to have football programs.  Too many people think a simple cost benefit analysis should explain college sports. It does not.  

Modern American universities inherited the anomaly of the wedding sports and universities, but the Presidents, students, alumni and media have exploited this in a way that being stewards of intercollegiate sports is now an  integral aspect of the culture of college life. It began a hundred years ago with breathless newspaper coverage of college events and the emergence of colors, nicknames, stadiums and rituals surrounding the games.

Many of the original college teams barnstormed as pros during the summer and went to school and played college ball in the autumn/winter.  By the thirties jokes about football and college could become a Marx Brother's staple as well as movies on college sport nobility and corruptions. This wedding grew from a deep Greek ideal  that perfection of  mind and body manifest a deep form of education of the soul.

Given the centrality of sports to university identity and community as well as marketing, the dominance of football is not surprising. For a decade college football has been the most avidly followed sport in America. On an average week 28 games will be televised. This intensity of interest dwarfs other college and professional interest. College football creates a perfect storm of identity for alumni but also geographic inhabitants that unites memory, identity and enjoyment of a truly fascinating and dangerous spectacle.

In Part II, I will discuss the economic implications of this for college programs.

Cam Newton Decision: Moral Right; Institutional Wrong

Cam Newton earned his Heisman; how long he will keep it will be another story. His legacy remains cloudy and complicated in light of the universally reviled decision of the NCAA to award him eligibility. At the same time the NCAA acknowledged that his father had put him up for bid to attend college after leaving Florida and a junior college.

The decision did not have the grandeur of Solomon. It stunned those of us who fear for the NCAA's ability to defend the tarnished integrity of college football and basketball. The corruption that swirls around recruiting and agents for players never ends, and the corrupters always adapt to new regulations. In the war with corrupters the NCAA just declared unilateral disarmament.

Mark Emmert, the new NCAA President, has vowed to proceed with an aggressive defense of NCAA amateurism. He rode the strength of the major penalties against USC as a critical leverage to bring coaches on board around agents. The disaster at North Carolina has reinforced this. Now, this decision to confirm that Newton's father initiated a pay for play scheme, actually an open bidding scheme, and yet permit the son to play unleashes nightmares for everyone. Emmert acknowledges this, as does every coach in the land.

The world of college recruiting resembles the world of nuclear deterrence or what was called MAD theory, Mutually Assured Destruction. As long as I refrain from not doing something irrevocable, you will too because we all know that a mutual war over recruiting will result in annihilation for everyone.

Unlike college basketball with its code of silence around cheating, football coaches aggressively watch and report on each other. Everyone knows that unbridled corruption in a pay for play world would upset the existing balance of power and lead to even more power for fanatic boosters. The boosters would extend their power because they would foot the bill and and concoct the deals because the coaches have to be insulated from knowledge. This new world destroys any incentive for coaches to recruit players based upon character or ability to get educated. It places immense temptation before parents already invested in their sons and relying upon their success to ensure family economic welfare.

No one doubts that the institutional implications of this decision are disastrous for an NCAA aspiring to educate and create championships with integrity. It would be controlled by a black market, dominated by very rich boosters and shady deals. Even the SEC with its continuing history of brown paper bags full of money squirms at the end result.

This demonstrates a total failure of the NCAA eligibility people to understand the implications of its decision for the rest of college sports. Emmert has provided a sort of defense pleading that the NCAA will figure out an agency-based theory to extend its anti-agent issues to recruiting. It could also extend the new rules around basketball recruiting that limit contact and relations with parents or advisors. It has several legal options to extend rules, but must act immediately.

BUT: the Newton decision does have a strong moral foundation. Student welfare has driven NCAA eligibility decisions for the last five years. If Cam Newton did not know that his father was shopping him around; if Cam Newton made his decision to attend Auburn based upon his affinity with the school and coaches; if Auburn did not know about or get involved in the bidding, then Newton honestly has no moral culpability. It makes little sense to impose an Orwellian obligation upon student athletes to investigate the actions of their parents and report on their parents' possible NCAA violations.

We do have to remember that Cam Newton is not a naive 17 year old. He is 22, left Florida after lying about an alleged theft and academic issues. He spent a year in junior college. But the NCAA had no evidence that Newton participated in the scheme, had knowledge of the scheme or had an obligation to monitor or report on his father. He is morally innocent; the NCAA is right to declare him eligible based upon what they presently know. The dilemma lies in the tension between his moral status and the institutional disaster the precedent creates.

Emmert is right. The NCAA Board of Directors must act on emergency legislation. They can extend agency coverage to recruiting or follow the basketball approach. They can require schools to immediately report such contacts with no consequences for the school and they need to extend the analysis based upon implausible ignorance based on the USC precedents. They did the right thing by Newton, but now they must recover from the institutional disaster of doing the right thing.

"Coach in Waiting" is a Bad Idea

Will Muschamp, the Texas Head Coach in Waiting (HCIW), just bolted Texas to replace Urban Meyer at Florida. His actions along with recent history of the position proves again that appointing a coach in waiting is a bad idea.

It's all the rage these days. Colleges fixate on the idea as a way to lock in high powered assistants, usually coordinators, and provide some guarantee of continuity to recruits. Texas, Oregon, Florida State and Maryland represent the major schools who recently tried it; none went well.

The idea fails because it compromises the unity of command and accountability a football coach and team need. It invites ongoing controversy and divided loyalties in the team and creates a trip wire designed to maximize pressure and undermine the head coach.

The NCAA had to develop special rules to treat Head Coaches in Waiting just like head coaches in the recruiting process. Having the Head Coach meet a recruit or parents is a big big deal, and Head Coaches have restricted time on the road. However, if you have two head coaches, then the college could bring the cache of the "head coach" visiting a recruit or school twice as far. Other colleges quite justly complained and wanted the same recruiting restrictions on HCIW.

No matter how you cut it, guaranteeing a top assistant that they are now HCIW makes no sense. First, having a hydra heading coach undermines all leadership principles about unity of command and accountability. It undermines relations among the other assistant coaches by closing off opportunity for advancement at the school or creates divided loyalties among assistants since they must worry about whether the HCIW will keep them after the existing head coach leaves. The assistants and players now have two bosses and are not sure where their real loyalties lie.

Second, at a deep level appointing a coach in waiting violates the push for diversity in college football coaching ranges. With the exceptions of James Franklin, the HCIW at Maryland, all these agreements involve the good old boy fraternity reproducing itself. It bypasses a real search process and undermines the fairness of the search. It makes a mockery of the opportunity and obligation to look at strong minority coaching candidates.

Third, the HCIW places places a loaded gun at the head of the head coach. At Florida State University the regents used the HCIW, Jimbo Fisher, to not so subtly push out Bobby Bowden. Bowden publicly opposed the idea and was pushed out one year after Fisher became HCIW. At Maryland Franklin has a contract that pays him 1 million dollars if he is NOT appointed head coach in 2012. Yet present head coach Ralph Friedgan has announced he wants to stay on and continue coaching, so the team is torn by divided loyalties and leadership especially since Franklin is the top recruiter. After Oregon locked in their unique offensive coordinator Chip Kelly as HCIW, the university pressured head coach Mike Bellotti to step down and take on an AD position which he did not want and which he left within a year to become a fine ESPN analyst.

Fourth, as Muschamp leaving for Florida illustrates, the whole approach is a fraud. HCIW gives the illusion of continuity to recruits and programs, but two headed monsters seldom work well for very long. The heads start to snap at each other. The Texas situation provided a very interesting case. Mack Brown, a robust and ultra successful 59, had no intention of retiring, although he played with the idea. Nonetheless, Texas locked in Muschamp, the hot assistant de jour as HCIW. Not only did Brown have no intention of leaving any time soon, but his prior two defensive coordinators had gone on to be Head coaches at Syracuse and Auburn.

However as soon as Texas stumbled this year, internet mavens and fans turned with brutal suddenness and yelled for Muschamp to replace Brown. The marriage of a vibrant successful head coach and a coach in waiting is guaranteed to not last and perpetuate the cycle of non-minority hires.

It only takes two to three years to unravel. At FSU, Oregon and now Maryland it all came apart. Now Muschamp is leaving Texas because he is ambitious, good and courted. He will replace Urban Meyer after Meyer's second retirement in 12 months and inherit the 35 arrests and team in disarray. The point is that a restless, ambitious and good assistant will not stay locked in the shadows and will not wait too long. They will either precipitate a coup as at Oregon or FSU and possibly Maryland, or they will leave.

The Head Coach in Waiting concept is a bad idea that cannot work smoothly. The younger or more vibrant the Head Coach, the lousier the idea. Appointing a Head Coach in Waiting violates every good principle of leadership and a commitment to diversity and fairness in hiring. It is a bad idea.

The Little Black Uniform

The little black dress never goes out of style. Women have known this for years. Black defies fashion crazes and sets a background against which the wearer evokes strength and confidence without flash. It slims and enables elegant line and clarity in the person. For the elite, black never goes out of style.

Maybe this explains the trend of last several years of black to supersede traditional school colors as teams dress in black regalia regardless of  traditional colors. It certainly helps slim down football players. In the last two weeks I watched Oregon football play (yellow and green) wearing black uniforms with "carbon" feathers and "carbon" matte helmets so they looked just like a SWAT team with feathers. I watched Stanford women's volleyball (cardinal and white) wearing black volleyball uniforms with cardinal trim. I watched the UW football (purple and gold)  team finally get longed for black uniforms for a "black out" night on ESPN TV. They wore formidably all black uniforms with purple numbers.

Recruits, men and women, love black uniforms, and having them is now a major draw for coaches selling programs. Granted that Oregon can offer football players 128 different combinations, its the ultra cool black/carbon combination that rules. Even when a school wears its traditional colors, the warm ups are now often black. Why black?

I will ignore the obvious and cynical answer that Nike and Underarmour make millions creating new uniforms and marketing paraphernalia.

Well, why do ninjas wear black? Why did the original assassins wear black? Why do SEALS and SWAT wear black? Why is the black knight an archetype of medieval legend?

Black conveys power. It projects danger and ferocity. Wearing black. warriors can act with stealth and secrecy. Darkness enables surprise, and the unrelenting nature of the black intimidates. In culture across culture, the darkness connotes that aspect of the human soul that roils with ferocity and anger and violence. What better way to tap into that aquifer of ferociousness than align the uniform with the emotions. As one Stanford player said, "when you wear black you have a different attitude."

If an athlete wants to feel powerful and relentless, colors like red and white or blue and white or orange or green and gold  just don't do it. These colors express tradition and link to the people in the stands and fans and graduates. School colors like pinions of the medieval warriors express color and symbol to rally around, and their livery enable troops of one side to identity each other. If everyone dressed in black in the field of battle, things could get awfully confusing. At the core, of course, it does not matter. One Washington player pointed out, "we were  hyped for the uniforms, but I'd play in polka dots as long as I can play."

Old school colors carry great weight for teams and players and coaches. They build on tradition and marketing, but the desire to feel and be powerful and to stamp their own identity on their team marks modern college players. In the dominant sports, the vast majority of athletes come from different backgrounds, darker hued backgrounds where black exists not just as a color of clothes and style but as an identity. The emergence of the little black uniform not only reflects the long tradition of black with warrior ethos, but the cultural stamp of a generation upon the traditions they now carry.

Bowls Don't Matter, Right?

I know bowls don’t make any sense. 35 of them, absurd! They proliferate like fruit flies. No longer real creations growing from communities, like the Rose Bowl still remains, but media concoctions generated by local sports commissions and voracious media conglomerates stuffed with corporate logos and sponsors who might not exist next year. Half filled stadiums that camera’s pan away from. 

6 – 6 qualifies for bowls games. The Big 10 has 8 teams bowl qualified and the ACC is not far behind. The bowls contract with the sixth place team from the IAUD conference to play the fourth place team from the MUIT conference at the Dungeness Crab bowl in Tukwila. I know the problems and the absurdities of it. Each year more cities confect bowls and besiege the NCAA for a meaningless certification.

The process grows sillier when you realize that most teams that travel to bowls lose money on them!  Beyond the big guarantee BCS bowls, most bowls barely cover expenses and require invited teams to buy a mandated block of tickets. NCAA certification amounts to little more than verification that bowls can actually meet guarantees which some have failed to do. Cities see them as loss leaders and expect not to make money but don’t want to hemorrhage money. Most bowl travelling teams subsidize the trips. The schools see them as marketing opportunities, rewards for alumni and a chance to get some extra practice time in and create one more pitch for recruits.

I know all this.  BUT.

I think bowls can and do matter to the kids, sorry I mean college players. Football season grinds on for along time. Football generates a brutal bruising hard season full of injury, pain, work and exhaustion. No one sees the hours in the conditioning and trainers and doctor’s offices. No other college sport exacts such a cost or imposes such danger. The players manifest a physical, mental and emotional courage on a daily basis to go out and play a sport they often love and hate in equal measure. At the end of a long demanding hurting season, a good trip somewhere to celebrate and play makes a lot of sense.

Most bowls do not have high stakes. This makes them more attractive to the student athletes at the end. Sure they would like to play for the national championship, but the bowls actually represent a more pure amateur ideal. The conference or bowl championships are not on the line. All the big money is passed out and all the big games slotted. Now the teams play, literally, just to play.

I have watched our Washington program for a number of years. We have not done well in football burning through four coaches and suffering a 0-12 season just 20 months ago. The endless losses grated on the team and wore down the morale and joy of the players. This year I was surprised listing to the players talk about how exciting going to a bowl would be. The team struggled with a 4-6 and at present a 5-6; the idea of making it to a bowl energized what could be a desultory end to another mediocre season. 

The idea of actually have a reward at the end of season attracts them. It infuses meaning into what could be another meaningless 5-6 or 5-7 season. Suddenly game 12 in a struggling season matters. This happens all over the country. Teams on the cusp  have a meaning and purpose for the last third of the season.

Bowls do for college football what the endless expansion of playoffs in pro ball does; they create incentives to make what could be joyless meaningless games worth something. College athletes are generally not jaded pros, and they respond to this. All over the country, bowls affect meaning and purpose for teams. This is a good thing for players and teams and coaches.

Bowls can be fun, the players get to go somewhere nice (hopefully) and stay at a great hotel, eat lots of meat eater dinners  (are there any vegan college football players?) and have a prepackaged but nice time at the end of the season. I like the idea of this reward at the end of the long harsh seasons. My wife points out to me this whole approach rewards mediocrity—I mean a bowl for 6-6! And certainly is not something other students have access to. Agreed, but if I have to find value in the bowls, it lies providing a reward and time to play for the sake of playing to college athletes. 

Finally part of me revels in bowls defiance of the obsessive focus of media pundits upon “there can only be one” demand for a national championship. Student welfare issues be damned, let’s extend the season to NFL length, let the injuries proliferate, but at least we’ll have a Highlander like ascension at the end. I guess it makes sense to a pundit who confuses the NFL with the NCAA, but bowls remind us that sport is played ultimately for student athletes to enjoy the sport, not satisfy the cravings of pundits. Let a thousand flowers bloom for the student athletes.