The Strange Hard World of College Football Coaching

The yearly bloodbath has begun. 11  major college coaches have been fired of 120 plus Division I-A football teams. Not an unusual number. Lower than last year's 18 but a 10 percent annual turnover rate tells us more than we want to know about coaching college football.

College football coaches are usually the highest paid public servant in any state. Their name recognition ranks above governors, senators and business elite. Steve Mangino arrived as a savior for the Kansas Jayhawk team. He has been widely praised and admired for the team's turn around, despite his 400 pound bulk and unique (read pyschotic) coaching style. He won national coach of the year honors three years ago. Charlie Weis arrived  to save Notre Dame and restore their glory. After two bowl wins Notre Dame awarded him a ten year extension now worth 18 million in buyout money. Bobby Bowden brought fame, glory and national championships as well as endless athletic scandal to the Florida State for over 30 years. Until Urban Meyer arrived to redeem Florida, he remained a deity among the folks of Florida. All three are gone now.

Mangino, still winning, was brought down by cascade of charges of abusive style and demeaning conduct. Weis simply failed to win enough. Bowden proves the adage of what have you done for me lately. For years immune from effective oversight and Presidential control, he finally outlasted his stay with the powerful boosters and board of regents by not winning enough and going to mediocre bowls. All are millionaires; all famous celebrities; all just football coaches of colleges.

All but 14 (the numbers here are really squishy) Division 1-A schools lose significant money on the sports teams. Of the few that make money, football drives the profits and usually finances the rest of the sports program. The programs that hemorrhage money are two categories. In the first,  football brings in serious revenue but not enough to cover costs and the other program, but football keeps the deficit from terminal status. Second, most football programs hemorrhage more money than all the rest of the programs combined. The decisions of  Northeastern and Hofstra to end football this year or Western Washington last year reflects what most sane schools should do. Football seems to buy prestige but what it really does is doom most athletic programs to red ink, Title 9 maladjustments and consistent mediocrity.

The visibility and symbolic importance of football combined with its national stature as TV's  most popular market guarantees schools will continue to chase the bass ring. But the ring can't be financed by revenue so the schools rely upon boosters and commercial endorsement deals to fund the salaries. Most coaches have base salaries that seem sane, but you add up TV contracts, endorsements, and housing allowances and it adds up. While the vast majority of coaches make good but not absurd salaries, as they rise to elite ranks where the TV dollars really matter, the salaries escalate accordingly. The millions can pay off as any correlation of coaching salary to national rankings makes clear.

Coaching is a hellish life. 24 hours a day are consumed by endless recruiting, endless tape watching, endless grinds of working with 18-22 year old males, many undisciplined and barely educated; endless attempts to try and ensure the 18-22 year old males actually go to class and do get educated against their wishes; endless fundraising and smoozing with boosters and representing the university at bad barbeques and worse golf events. It is hard, consuming, thankless and unseen work.  Coaches spend more time on airplanes than at home . They must woo and fight for the affection and loyalty of 14-17 year olds. Modern coaching is supported by an army of nomad often lowly paid assistant coaches whose lives resemble army officers with their constant two and three year stays and then moving on to another billet for a bit more money, a bit more responsibility and finally a chance to become a head coach.

Coaches don't enter the insanity of coaching for the money. They enter it for love of the game; love of the kids; love of the comraderie and competition. If they seem like mercenaries, it's important to remember they are not; they love, know and respect the game, that is why they coach. The market and incredible job insecurity pushes them to be mercenaries, not their joy at doing what they love.

Endless consuming work with complex and difficult young men ends with either victories filling stadiums and bringing TV coverage or not. Even OK records like 7-5 or 6-6 will often not fill stadiums and may attract occasional second tier TV coverage. Many fired coaches over the last three years actually had winning records or had just slipped a little.

Their actions are minutely scrutinzed before and after each game. Their pronouncements dissected like oracular sayings. They live lives of superstars, lionized, worshipped, admired or despised, disputed and villified. Their decisions provide fodder for 24 hour sport talk radio devoted to nothing but dissecting sports, and college sports looms large. In smaller college towns, their children and spouses cannot escape scrutiny and face adulation or heckling.

In a world with no job security, constant scrutiny, fickle adulation or villification all depending upon the actions of 18-22 years old boys, coaches struggle to stay balanced and sane. Nothing remains forever and two bad seasons wipe out a lifetime of success; one crazy incident involving a student can wipe out a lifetime of rectitude. Every coach lives on a razor's edge, although some may have bought a little breathing room or success by past. Mangino had been national coach of the year two years earlier; Weis was awarded his outlandish ten year contract two years ago; Bowden had been to bowls for a decade.

Yesterday only buys a coach so much. In cases like Notre Dame and Florida State yesterday actually haunts today's coaches like being basketball coach at UCLA.

This world makes it no wonder that coaches respond when the brass ring is offered. The salaries are outlandish, but Universities make the offer, not the coaches. The coaches take the money when they can because they know how fragile their jobs are and how meaningless the "love" of fans really is. Only the love and respect for the game and  reality of the young men they have touched matters in the end, to be honest. Coaches have to be like Princes and trust no one's love.

The final irony for these individuals living in high pressured take no holds world is that they coexist, barely, with tenured faculty in universities. It is hard to imagine a more brutally polarized world. Tenure faculty cannot be fired; tenured faculty keep tenure long after they have quit producing meaningful scholarship or effective teaching; tenured faculty possesses remarkable freedom to take intellectual chances and can invest years in projects to create a book or research project protected by their tenure. The insulated and isolated and protected faculty are the coaches' harshest critics, sometimes for good reason, sometimes out of despair and envy that their university is tied to the craziness of college football. In the end, the faculty have no conception of the world and lives the coaches live.

I don't envy the life of modern college football coaches. They live at the crossroads of two worlds that live uneasily together. They live on a knife's edge at the mercy of kids and the fickle whims of boosters who have no loyalty to them, only to winning. The best ones still live in this world working to teach the game they love and to help young men grow not just into athletes but better person. They deserve a better lot.

Fallen Idols and Mortal Athletes

Tiger Woods welcome to the world of mortals. Welcome to the world of Alex Rodriquez and Rodger Clemens and Rick Pitino and, yeah, Eliot Spitzer and Bill Clinton and Martin Luther King. Men who squandered professional accomplishment and reputation for sexual peccadillos.

Americans create heroes of their athletes for well over a century. We see the teams as aspects of identity and memory but also as ways to identify with excellence and achievement. We point our children towards athletes as models of character and achievement. More cynical minded critics of sports would argue that we only do this to augment our egos and only identity with winners to augment our own lives of quiet meaninglessness. We make them heroes, we make them idols.

The problem with hero worship and idolatry is that no human is perfect. Excellence in one area of life does not translate into probity or in personal life. Artists, politicians, doctors, lawyers, business people all can leave wreckage in their personal lives for success in professional life.  The relentless demands of professional excellence erode the time and focus upon domestic life. Constant travel, constant time away, constant exposure to fawning fans and hero worshippers throw temptation for sexual escapades in the way. The time and focus devoted to work hollow out time for family or the energy needed to maintain intimacy. No one has quite figured out why men, and it is largely men at this stage, seem to believe that as public figures under intense scrutiny that their sexual liasons will somehow escape notice, but they do. And the trangressions come to light exposing the all too human mortality, weakness and sheer gall or stupidity of the powerful people, in this case athletes.

Thoughtful or angry athletes always insist they are not role models. Alan Iverson and Charles Barkley have been defiant if inarticulate defenders of this position. "We're basketball players, not role models." They are correct and no sane person would expect that NBA players serve as role models, but some do. But the situation is more complicated.

Athletes inherit obligations whether they want them or not. First, children and especially adolescents, inspired by media exposure and fathers identify with athletes and see them as possibilities and people to emulate. Kids walk, talk, dress, swing, shoot and use the same steroids the athletes use. Second, the athletes sign contracts and become celebrities supported by media companies to sell products. They even create their own lines of clothes, like Tiger,  or accessories so that hero worshipping fans can not only buy their numbered jerseys but their shirts, shoes or colognes. Children, corporations, merchandising promote athletes to cultural icons and avatars of consumption.

This exposure drives narratives. Sometimes being a bad boy heightens the marketability so being a negative role model sells hoodies and shoes to rebels or wannabe "homies." Tiger took a different rode. He spoke at Obama's innaugration; he embraced a role as a bridge across races; he embodied a fierce work ethic and excellence; he overcame physical adversity; he had a story book marriage; he served as the face of everything from his clothes to international consultancies like Accenture. This narrative paints a seamless and heroic picture of Tiger as a paragon. He shouldered it well if uncomfortably.

I believe private lives should remain private and that we are not responsible to the public  for them, unless we make our private life an aspect of our public celebrity or persona. Or unless we use private world to shield illegal or abuse behavior. Politicians who run on their family probity or business leaders who demand domesticity from their employees make their private lives legitimate points of inquiry.

Tiger never sold or lead with his private life. He always lead with his professional athletic excellence. The media narratives were fascinated by his life and celebrated it, but he sought to shield his life as much as he could. Still he can't escape the question of whether you want to wear the cool clothes of the best golf player of all time or an accused compulsive philanderer?

The media will hound and berate and exploit this for weeks. A media frenzy bringing down a hero is ugly to behold. It will waste hundreds of precious hours of TV coverage while the battles over Afghanistan and Health Care languish on page 2. We as viewers and makers of heroes collaborate in this distortion. The scandal sells, always has and will. Tiger Wood's own anguished but deliberate comment
"Personal sins should no require press releases and problems with a family shouldn't have to mean public confessions," is correct but won't stop the media ghouls or the voyeurs from exploiting his pain and humiliation.
 .
This is a lesson we never seem to learn. The Greeks knew better. All their heroes had tragic flaws. The ability to overcome the flaws and still excel was an essential aspect of their heroism. We expect too much of heroes. All I ask is that they be human and we enjoy the gift of excellence they bequeath us.

(Photos courtesy of: uptownlife.net; rhasodyinbooks.wordpress.com; lamesport.net)

Dancing on Notre Dame's Grave

Notre Dame's recent loss to Connecticut (yes that football  powerhouse) caps off another failed season and puts a stake through Charlie Weis' new thousand year reign as Notre Dame's latest designated savior. Weis is 35 and 26 in five years. The program has not won more than 60 percent of its games over the last 12 years and has lost 9 of its last 10 bowl games. I'm not a vindictive guy, but watching the collapse of the Notre Dame program gives me abiding satisfaction as only a midwestern Catholic can feel.  Even famed "touchdown Jesus" can't help. Why?

Hubris and hypocrisy--this is a program that has played by its own rules due to the unique convergence of the Catholic immigrant experience and ND's rise as a representative for many American  Catholics. It carried the torch of identity for an economically disenfranchised and discriminated against religious minority. Now the program represents a much more comfortable and powerful integrated constituency. Neither its players nor its TV arbiters reflect that constituency.

The national legacy enabled Notre Dame to function as the last of the independents on the college scene as Penn State, Florida State or USC have integrated into conferences (its a whole other story about how the Big 10 remains the Big 10 with eleven members including Penn State). Notre Dame's mystique and its national fan base guaranteed a TV audience for games and helped ND stand aloof from the rest of college football. The BSC treats Notre Dame is like a separate conference and compensates them as such in the television realm with its NBC 10 million a year contract.

This unique status and legacy is now distorted into a hubris that infects the program and boosters.  The program's penchant for trigger fingered firing of successful coaches reflects this. Most egregiously the Board of the Regents staged its own coup and fired Tyrone Willingham after three years over the objections of the President and the Athletic Director. This is a University that prides itself on its Catholic heritage and has integrated values into its professional schools in a unique and powerful way, but that does not extend to football. Having disposed of an honorable man, the Board raced off and entered the Urban Meyer sweepstakes. As NCCA lore has it, they lost him as he flew off in Florida's private jet as Notre  Dame's private jet was landing.  Charlie Weiss's failure resulted directly from the Board usurping control, granting him an absurd 10 year contract and assuming that he would be save the program. Now five years in, his winning record is less than either Tyrone Willingham or Butch Davie his fired predecessors. This is moral comeuppance for the arrogance and hypocrisy of the Willingham firing.

Second, this reinforces the point that programs are not great, only coaches. If their jet had landed in time, they might have Urban Meyer and not another failed NFL genius who can't make it in the college ranks. The present fates of Michigan and Washington and even Florida and Texas before these present rebirth reinforces the points. Great programs are great because they have the tradition, media exposure, booster base and money to steal or buy (sorry I meant hire) great coaches who then arrive and make the program a winner. The rise of Oregon and Oregon State or Cincinnati are entwined with coaches and smart leaders who invest wisely and protect their coaches once they hire them.  As the Yankees prove and Notre Dame reinforces, resources are not enough. You need smart leadership investing and directing those resources to align great programs with great coaches. When a great coach retires, is stolen or starts to lose, great programs hire well and sustain their greatness. But there are no guarantees, think of North Carolina basketball between Dean Smith and Roy Williams.

Third, the Notre Dame model is not sustainable. The mediocrity of the program since the Lou Holz years eroded their stellar fan base. The rabid Catholic core is now less Catholic and more integrated with many more dual loyalties to their own institutions and localities. The  model is collapsing under the weight of a decade of mediocre football. Their ratings have plummeted this year and NBC Universal now charges 40 percent less for commercials. The TV contract provides Notre Dame with 10 million per year and treats Notre Dame as if it were an independent conference. No one is sure whether Notre Dame, except for how well its boosters travel, is a gift or problem for a bowl game. Parity and conference loyalties and glamor will continue to erode their arrogant independence.

The rest of ND's teams nestle comfortably in the Big East and win some and lose some, just like everybody else. The football program is a dead man walking but no one can afford to admit it because TV and NCAA and even other schools on their schedule have too much invested in the mystique. When ND, like the Yankees, comes to town, ticket sales go up. Who knows the overweening  Board of Trustees might even strike it right with a good hire. But ND has exposed the raw truth that integrity and winning are not the same.

Even with the stake through Weis, the program might rise again like the undead, but it will remain a hollow man even touchdown Jesus cannot redeem.

Selling your Soul to ESPN

ESPN just kicked off intercollegiate basketball coverage with a 24 hour game blitz. Typical stunt, good publicity and as one might expect done with absolutely no concern for student athlete welfare. What's more interesting about a stunt that hurts students is that schools scrambled to get coveted windows in the event sacrificing sleep and classes for exposure.

ESPN monopolizes college sports. It dominates bowl coverage. It shapes the dreams of players who want to be on highlights. It controls national and regional exposure for teams. It's "windows" are desperately fought over by conferences and teams eager for exposure for their teams and the recruiting advantages that such exposure brings.

The fundamental point to remember in all this is that ESPN does not  care about student athletes. Despite the palaver and player of the game scholarships and pious platitudes and the great NCAA commercials, ESPN wants PRODUCT and ENTERTAINMENT. (Please excuse all the capitals, it's not my normal style, but this is IMPORTANT, blast it.)

Product and entertainment--can ESPN produce good product to gain eyeballs and market share. This translates into profits for ESPN and visibility and recruiting success for the schools and conferences. Fair enough, except for the fact that for ESPN they are not students, barely athletes, only product and eyeballs. Have you noticed the proliferation of football games to every night of the week. And during basketball season, you have Big 15 Monday; Little Midwest Tuesday; Atlantic Whatsit Wednesday.

Mens' basketball and football are the two most academically challenged and vulnerable teams in collegiate sports. Missed class time is disastrous for these teams. One of the strong advantages of the Thursday - Saturday or Friday - Sunday schedules for basketball is that it minimizes lost class time. The great advantage of football on Saturdays is that most teams travel on Fridays and minimize lost class time. Helping under-prepared student athletes get an education requires focus, investment and continuous effort to socialize them into being students and not seeing them or treating them just as athletes. Their futures depend upon their ability to change their identification from athlete to student and from athlete to human being. ESPN does not care about this; ESPN does not care about missed class time; ESPN does not care that they make money off the most vulnerable and potentially exploited population of student athletes. They care about money, profits and maximizing the ratings. This drives coaches and Athletic Directors to care about maximizing exposure and taking the windows that ESPN offers; missed class time and student athlete welfare be damned.

The ESPN monopoly has entered a new phase with its groundbreaking contract with the SEC. This year each SEC teams receives over 11 million dollars off the top, before any season starts, to reimburse them for the rights to ESPN-SEC.  This ginormous contract dwarfs anything seen before and maybe after for a conference. It answers the Big 10's initiative to create its own TV channel dedicated to Big-10 sports. Over the next three years the Big Easy, the ACC, the Big12 and the PAC-10 all come up for TV renewals.  All will flirt with starting their own networks; all will use it as a ploy to pry more money from ESPN; very few will succeed since none have the fanatic market base the SEC has. But ESPN will remain the broker of intercollegiate sports, and the status of missed classes and the vulnerability of at risk student athletes will continue to suffer compared to the chance to get access to ESPN's windows.As I mentioned above, in the "second annual" (espn generates new traditions every week) 24 hours of basketball, schools lobbied and fought to get time slots like 6 AM designed to ensure students were exhausted for the rest of the day, and of course ESPN chose a class day, Tuesday, but teams scrambled to miss class time and get the exposure.

The devil always offers what you most want. College sports programs want exposure, money and glory; ESPN offers all three, all you have to do is give them your soul.


(Images courtesy of secblogger.com & betweenthepoles.wordpress.com)

Why Can't a Woman Coach a Man?

When my boy's volleyball team got mashed by the St. Catherine's team, the boys had no problem. They just got whupped and knew it. It did not matter to them that St. Kate's team was coached by a tall lean mother of one of the boys. They did not know she was one of the best high school coaches in the state or had played volleyball in college. All they knew was that a better coached and better lead team had beaten them. It said as much how good their coach (that's me!) was and about how good the other coach was then it said anything about the gender of the other coach. Too bad that attitude stops at grade school.

In college and high school sports the percentage of men coaching women is actually rising. The recent appointment of Nancy Lieberman to head the Dallas Maverick's development league team represents a rare exception where a maverick owner will take chances and appoint a woman, a highly skilled, successful and accomplished player and coach, to coach a men's professional team.  It should not be this way--nothing about coaching skills to spot talent, motivate, teach skills, integrate players and skills into a team concept, scout and create game plans or react and adjust during a game suggest women cannot coach men.

All over America women--moms or ex-college or high school players--are coaching boys teams. Sometimes out of necessity--no one else would step forward so a mom desparately is reading books for how to coach soccer or volleyball (what the heck is header anyway?) the night before. Boys are growing up in  world where they are used to being coached by women--except football which remains resolutely an all male bastion given the attractions of its organized mayhem and soul destroying violence.

Women have been breaking, slowly, but surely glass ceilings all over. Men flourish with female bosses. The military succeeds with female generals. Women start more new businesses than men. So why do we face such an interesting assymmetry in elite sports at college and professional level where no women coach men but lots of men coach women. Women leaders in government, business and nonprofits are garnering successes and creating highly effective modes of leading. They expand the talent pool and range of leadership styles. Their successes represent one of the great moral successes of the last fifty years.

So what makes the authority structure of sport immune from moral progress that now infuses so many other areas of life?

It's not completely grim. Women's sports have grown up along side men's sports. Immense explosions of female participation have occurred at grade school, high school and college level sports. Largely driven by Title nine demands, this growth was spawned by top down opportunity. Title 9  forced some significant cross subsidization from the major revenue sports. Most of the energy for progress for women has focussed upon gaining women's teams, creating viable markets for them and slowly moving more women into women's coaching ranks--women coaching women. Many sports simply transferred the dominance of men coaching men's teams into coaching women's teams. In some sports like Volleyball, men migrated from a dying sport, men's Volleyball, to an emerging sport women's Volleyball.

The landscape of women's sports from age 6-22 is transformed. The number of good women's coaches has grown exponentially and strong pipelines are growing within women's sports, but unlike men coaching women; very little cross over occurs with women coaching men beyond grade school. No groundswell of movement occurs, the energies still focused upon growing women's sports and teams.

But the authority structure matters. The patterns of authority revealed in sports echoes and inlfuences perceptions an fans. When men coach women, it sends a strong signal reinforcing deeper authority archetypes. When women coach men, it transforms the possibilities and teaches the players and the spectators that old shibboleths like men won't take orders from women; women aren't strong enough (no one argues smart enough anymore) to earn the respect of men; women can't raise families and devote the time to coaching; women' don't have the experience. It also opens up more lucrative economic opportunities for women given the wealth disparities of men and women's sports.

None of the arguments holds water especially now that strong pipelines of trained, knowledgeable and successful women players and coaches exist. But the resistence will be fierce, not necessarily from players--if the women coaches lead well and they win, players will go along and many of them have been coached by moms and women earlier. The  resistance will come from boosters, fellow coaches, and politically powerful groups. A classic court settlement in 2003 reflected this when a local high school ignored their very qualified girl's basketball coach and hired a less experienced man to coach the boy's high school team after intervention from the school board.

Oddly enough I think the breakthroughs will come at the pro-level and high school level before college with its supposedly liberal biases  (although if you believe this you don't hang around many football coaches). The demand to win fast is too great. The pressures of recruiting open new coaches to negative recruiting all the time, and coaches will use this mercilessly against an "other" coach especially a unique target like  a women trying to coach in a male only club. The politics, the recruiting dynamics, the media vulnerability of colleges all militate against it. Only in very rare cases, like Rick Pitino hiring Bernadette Locke Mattox as an assistant coach at Kentucky form 1990-1994. She contributed to a national championship run. Mattox later coached Kentucky women's program to the NCAA and now coaches in the professional league. But with a few random exceptions, nothing followed. Nonetheless I'd like to see superb women coaches recruit for men against men; I'd like to see how mothers of players would respond to a female coach who could win and develop the player, all other things considered--who would you trust your child with?

If women are to coach men in the high profile sports, it will start in the professional ranks, not in college. If it does start in college it will happen, as it does now and then, in Olympic sports like the picture of the Swarthmore Head coach of men and women's swimming at the start of this piece. It will grow in high schools as much for economic reasons or moving the known experienced coach from girls to boys teams.

The proven talent pool of qualified  coaches exists. The ability to change public expectations already exits. The symbolic power and frame of the change would be appropriate. All we need is courage and vision from the ADs and Owners.


(Picture courtesy of Swarthmore.edu)

The Silence at Season's End

It's gone. The emptiness fills the early evening. The TV blanks, the radio silences. The buzz and blooming comfort of the game has receded. Now only silence and blank screens--baseball season is over.

Sports carves out seasons. Sports provides starts and finishes to seasons. During the season, the ebb and flow of competition provides a continuity of life and interest. You follow the game the night before. You check the standings and read the article about the game you watched or listened to the night before. You talk with your family and friends about the Mariners, Royals or Tigers or  Giants. Now into the great silence.

Baseball begins in February and extends to November. The real season extends from April through September. During those nine months, the sounds and sights fill life. It provides a focus for interest, a way to commit to the outside world. A topic for conversation. A source of joy or sadness. It provides a sense of renewal. The games open connections across differences of geography, profession, race and sometimes gender.

The sheer length of the baseball season and its daily unfolding creates emotional and intellectual landmarks. It gives you reason to celebrate or suffer. The rhythm of games generates emotional substratum to life. You can drive listening to games without endangering your life. You can converse or work while watching the careful emergence of a baseball game.

The silence descends like winter. Winter brings death and stasis. It brings an open sense of quiet. No movement; no action; no rising and falling in life. Maybe the silence is an invitation to rest. Maybe it is to be still.

The silence of the season opens up other life. To every time there is a season and to every season a purpose.  The purpose is to remember how much fun and joy the game is itself. The purpose is to remember other aspect of life. Then as my wife reminds me, the silence is a time to get a real life!

(Pictures courtesy of: impwards.com & best horror movies.com)

Achilles Choice--II

In the Odyssey, Odysseus travels to Hades and meets the shades of great Greek heroes. In his encounter with Achilles, we hear Achilles' verdict on his own decision to choose a brief life of glory over a long life on earth. "I'd rather slave on earth for another man....than rule down here over all the breathless dead (Fitzgerald translation)." At what point does overcoming pain and injury become a journey to Hades for athletes?

People forget that Achilles died ignominiously shot by the coward Paris from behind. Pain and injury accompanies the physical demands and risks of success at sports. Overcoming them and competing and achieving reflects human spirit and courage. We praise an celebrate overcoming adversity in all aspects of life.

At one level playing sports involves a risk tradeoff  similar to other areas of life. People make decisions to devote energy to an activity because of satisfaction, achievement and goals. They give up other activities; they may fail and their efforts bear no fruit. They may succeed up to a point, and then give it up or pursue other activities. In many other areas of life the probabilities of succeeding at least at a professional level are much higher and the opportunities much greater. This accounts for the huge fall off in athletic participation as people grow older. But in America, college educations can be won with sports achievement and for a very few elect, they might have brief careers as professional players, but most of even the best will be finished by the age of 27.

The numbers of people actually affected by sports trauma narrows to a very very small band of people by the time most of them are 18 and to a miniscule by the time they are 23. Fewer than 400 play professional basketball; in the entire history of baseball there have been fewer than 17,000 players. But the way to get there is littered with injuries and cumulative traumas from repetition. An epidemic of knee injuries plagues youth soccer and basketball especially for young women. The body of a twenty-five year-old gymnist evinces the wear and tear of a 40 year old. Many high school and club players have struggled with pain, injury and damage. Most elite college athletes deal with some significant damage. We just don't know the long-term cumulative impact for most of these sports; linear clarity of impact upon their later health is not always clear. Doctors, however,  know enough to be able to warn athletes of the long-term impact of arthritis or debilitating injuries or repeated attempts to come back from injuries. At this point the role of doctors and parents becomes critical to ensure decisions to continue on are informed and made rather than simply taken for granted.

Unfortunately what modern sport gives athletes is glory, if they are good enough, and a long life full of debilitating injury. A recent NFL study suggests that football players who have suffered number of concussions potentially have a much higher chance of suffering early dementia. This data  meshes with compelling studies by the U. S. military of the cumulative impact of IED explosions on soldiers in Iraq. Proposed rules of engagement limit exposures to three and prohibit soldiers from returning to combat. Football and other sports have not reached such conclusions.

The cumulative impact on cognitive functioning differs in a profound way from the cumulative impact upon bodies. Individuals can adapt to physical injury and limits. Most people maintain their own character intact as they grapple with physical injury. But brain trauma from cumulative impacts erode the core personality and cognitive functions. The way the brain works changes, personality changes, people become shadows of themselves, they arrive at Achilles fate.

But athletes, especially young athletes, did not make a bargain with gods. They play for love, joy and accomplishment. They play for the experience of being with other  athletes. They play for their parents and coaches. A few play for dreams of being a professional. At some point, they grow into adults and make their own bargain with the game and their fate. But as youth, they depend upon others to protect them from the shades and shadow world that could await them. The more we learn, the more we need to be alert to protect the young athletes from the permanent injury to their soul that can await them.

What does it mean for people like me who enjoy and admire athletes and athletic competition? What does it mean to pay money and enjoy athletic contests that can be slowly sapping not just the body but the mind of the players? I have not been able to watch boxing for years. Over 28 percent of boxers suffer serious cognitive disability. I can remember the beauty and glory of Mohammed Ali. I recoil with physical and spiritual dismay when I see what his sport has done to his body and mind. We will not outlaw football; we will not find technical solutions to the mounting hidden epidemic. I honestly do not know how to react to this knowledge. How can I revel in the next explosive hit or block, knowing that each hit, each smash contributes to the loss of a mind?

Modern athletic glory is fleeting. Modern athletes are fungible marketing commodities. Even the greatest gain their momentary glory and their treasure, but they gain not eternal glory but a long life after the glory, a life of slow loss and suffering. This may be a deal for adults, but not for children.

See Part I.

Achilles' Choice--Athletics and Injury I & II

In the Iliad Achilles, the greatest of all Greek heroes, makes a choice offered by the gods--a long, quiet, productive life as King or a brief and glorious life as a warrior. Achilles chose a brief and glorious life. His song would be sung; his life remembered.

Modern athletes are offered the same choice, but the ethics of the choice is far more problematic. Athletes in most sports run a much higher risk of serious injury than a "normal" life. Worse, they risk long-term debilitation as their knees, ankles, hips, backs and necks give out in their thirties and forties. For many, old age strikes in early middle age.

The dangers of athletic endeavor come from the fundamental physicality of sport. Athletic achievement relies upon the body, upon the trained, disciplined and intent guided bodily action. The marvelous human body can be driven to incredible feats, and this is one of the glories of sports and athletic accomplishment. The human body, however, remains a mortal coil, a magnificent but brittle and fragile entity.

Athletics involves the disciplined application of force and constant practice and focus. The force reverberates back on the body. This occurs in violent sports like football but force reacts upon the body in "noncontact" sports like tennis, volleyball  or rowing. The impact of athletic actions accumulate through trauma and repetition. The trauma involves injury beyond normal force applied to the body. This covers collision and impact in football or soccer or distress inflicted upon an arm and elbow of a volleyball or tennis swing. The trauma can ripple through back, legs and torso in gymnastics or swimming. Endless and relentless repetition in practice and competition steel the body against the pain of the trauma but also compound the impact over years of action.

Injury signals the body to stop and heal itself. Pain is the body speaking to itself to warn of danger to the body's integrity. All humans learn to read and in some ways master pain. We could not survive without that capacity. But a trained athlete learns early, very early, that succeeding in athletics incurs levels hurt and pain entwined with the achievement and joy of playing and succeeding.

Immediate severe trauma to the body in some ways is the safest. It stops the body from performing and forces the athlete to stop. It even forces the coach to take the player out because the pain and injury limit the player's effectiveness. Leaving aside team doctors or trainers who will sometimes "shoot up" a player to dull the pain and enable them to play when the body tells them no, the true injury forces stopping and healing. Sometimes it ends a career, sometimes it demands months of rehabilitation to recover and return to the sport. Many athletes--amateur, elite, professional--have lived through multiple damage and injuries that accumulate. They learn to play with pain, not through pain. Often they come back from the injury to play more.

Athletics is a young person's domain. A few pros may make it to late thirties, but most end their careers long before that. The danger of injury seems far away to a twenty year old. It does not even exist for 6 year olds and seems irrelevant to 13 year olds.  Given the ages athletics starts for children, we rely upon parents and coaches to protect players from this trauma and make decisions to protect their health.

Young athletes know they are immortal. They play for the joy the game and of competing, satisfaction at experience of body and achievement, and pleasing their parents, coaches or teammates. They take risks, few sane adults would take, and consider them normal. They come back from injuries and broken bones and ACLs and hernias and hamstrings and concussions and keep playing.

Young athletes are resilient physically and emotionally. They can heal and come back; they often choose to. The immediate and large injuries are clear to them, but none of them sees or understands the long term and nagging injuries that will accompany them for the rest of their lives.  Parents understand but humans are not well designed cognitively to act upon such long term low probability outcomes. These probabilities do not play well with adults when facing the joy and longing of kids to play as well as parents own complicated relation to their children's athletic achievement.

We shouldn't ban children from playing sports. We shouldn't will ban all sports; the logic of trauma and repetition dog all athletic accomplishment. Athletes sort themselves over time as many drop out of competitive athletics or find play at levels appropriate to them. As they stay in the competitive track, the risks of long term impacts arise, but most of them seem manageable and the pay offs for the young athlete feel real and immediate.

We all live with choices with hidden long term costs we cannot envision even if we "know" they exist. Adults often make choices to pursue dangerous activities a person excels at or loves or both. But the defense fails when athletes are young; we rely upon adults--parents, guardians, coaches, doctors to protect and defend the athlete's future. The dilemma arises when the young athlete wants to play, even if the wanting is infused with parental pressure or desire to please authority figures or be with teammates.

The glory and joy of athletics lures young athletes; only parents and coaches stand between them and the accumulating costs of trauma and repetition.

In the Odyssey, Odysseus travels to Hades and meets the shades of great Greek heroes. In his encounter with Achilles, we hear Achilles' verdict on his own decision to choose a brief life of glory over a long life on earth. "I'd rather slave on earth for another man....than rule down here over all the breathless dead (Fitzgerald translation)." At what point does overcoming pain and injury become a journey to Hades for athletes?

People forget that Achilles died ignominiously shot by the coward Paris from behind. Pain and injury accompanies the physical demands and risks of success at sports. Overcoming them and competing and achieving reflects human spirit and courage. We praise an celebrate overcoming adversity in all aspects of life.

At one level playing sports involves a risk tradeoff  similar to other areas of life. People make decisions to devote energy to an activity because of satisfaction, achievement and goals. They give up other activities; they may fail and their efforts bear no fruit. They may succeed up to a point, and then give it up or pursue other activities. In many other areas of life the probabilities of succeeding at least at a professional level are much higher and the opportunities much greater. This accounts for the huge fall off in athletic participation as people grow older. But in America, college educations can be won with sports achievement and for a very few elect, they might have brief careers as professional players, but most of even the best will be finished by the age of 27.

The numbers of people actually affected by sports trauma narrows to a very very small band of people by the time most of them are 18 and to a miniscule by the time they are 23. Fewer than 400 play professional basketball; in the entire history of baseball there have been fewer than 17,000 players. But the way to get there is littered with injuries and cumulative traumas from repetition. An epidemic of knee injuries plagues youth soccer and basketball especially for young women. The body of a twenty-five year-old gymnist evinces the wear and tear of a 40 year old. Many high school and club players have struggled with pain, injury and damage. Most elite college athletes deal with some significant damage. We just don't know the long-term cumulative impact for most of these sports; linear clarity of impact upon their later health is not always clear. Doctors, however,  know enough to be able to warn athletes of the long-term impact of arthritis or debilitating injuries or repeated attempts to come back from injuries. At this point the role of doctors and parents becomes critical to ensure decisions to continue on are informed and made rather than simply taken for granted.

Unfortunately what modern sport gives athletes is glory, if they are good enough, and a long life full of debilitating injury. A recent NFL study suggests that football players who have suffered number of concussions potentially have a much higher chance of suffering early dementia. This data  meshes with compelling studies by the U. S. military of the cumulative impact of IED explosions on soldiers in Iraq. Proposed rules of engagement limit exposures to three and prohibit soldiers from returning to combat. Football and other sports have not reached such conclusions.

The cumulative impact on cognitive functioning differs in a profound way from the cumulative impact upon bodies. Individuals can adapt to physical injury and limits. Most people maintain their own character intact as they grapple with physical injury. But brain trauma from cumulative impacts erode the core personality and cognitive functions. The way the brain works changes, personality changes, people become shadows of themselves, they arrive at Achilles fate.

But athletes, especially young athletes, did not make a bargain with gods. They play for love, joy and accomplishment. They play for the experience of being with other  athletes. They play for their parents and coaches. A few play for dreams of being a professional. At some point, they grow into adults and make their own bargain with the game and their fate. But as youth, they depend upon others to protect them from the shades and shadow world that could await them. The more we learn, the more we need to be alert to protect the young athletes from the permanent injury to their soul that can await them.

What does it mean for people like me who enjoy and admire athletes and athletic competition? What does it mean to pay money and enjoy athletic contests that can be slowly sapping not just the body but the mind of the players? I have not been able to watch boxing for years. Over 28 percent of boxers suffer serious cognitive disability. I can remember the beauty and glory of Mohammed Ali. I recoil with physical and spiritual dismay when I see what his sport has done to his body and mind. We will not outlaw football; we will not find technical solutions to the mounting hidden epidemic. I honestly do not know how to react to this knowledge. How can I revel in the next explosive hit or block, knowing that each hit, each smash contributes to the loss of a mind?

Modern athletic glory is fleeting. Modern athletes are fungible marketing commodities. Even the greatest gain their momentary glory and their treasure, but they gain not eternal glory but a long life after the glory, a life of slow loss and suffering. This may be a deal for adults, but not for children.

A League of Their Own--A Review

"There's no crying in baseball!"  Jimmy Dugan yells at one of his players in the iconic movie A League of Their Own. A failed major leaguer, Dugan played by Tom Hanks has just dressed down a player who stands isolated and crying--fairly typical male bluster facing female sensitivity? But the player recovers and  Rockford Peaches of the All-American Girls Baseball League win the game and  go on to the world series of girl's baseball in 1943.

I have lousy taste in movies, at least my children think so. But I have always loved sports movies and they remain a consistent vehicle through which Americans establish and explore our moral and  cultural stories, challenges, battles, failures and successes. They reflect the aspirations, realities and possibilities of our culture refracted through our most enduring metaphors of individals and teams, challenge and competition, victory and defeat. The dynamic of team and individual, of talent and effort, of outsider versus insider lies at the heart of America's own cultural contradictions. Sports stories provide a fallow and safe field to harvest the change. Periodically  I'm will review sports movies I like and believe illustrate the morals and culture of America in their story.

A League of their Own chronicles the beginnings the Rockford Peaches of the All-American Girls Baseball league which existed for three years during World War II when men's professional baseball was shut down by the war and the draft.  In the movie two sisters from Wilamette Oregon join the league. Through the course of the season they help the team and league build an intense following. The team overcomes the jeers, skepticism and catcalls of the "fans." They build a brand of baseball that is competent and enjoyable to watch.

The movie highlights the rural home of most of the players as well as the demand to have the women sequestered by a den mother.  Each player gets beauty lessons to appear their best in their short skirted uniforms (obviously not designed with sliding in mind). At the same time the lure of marriage or domestic life stalks each layer especially the star player Dottie (Geena Davis). At the end of the movie the team makes it to the "world series" of the women's teams. Dottie's younger sister and rival, Kit (Lorrie Petty) comes to bat for the Racine Belles and rips a game wining hit to win the first league championship. Kit had battled the entire time to move beyond Dottie's shadow and her intense rivalry had broken the sister bond. Kit had been traded to the Racine Bells when the rivalry started to fracture the team. Dottie says, "it's part of the game." The movie is framed by Dottie leaving her house and grandchildren to go to Cooperstown for a Hall of Fame exhibit celebrating the the league and the women's pioneering roles.

Many women who play and follow modern sports regard the movie as ionic. It captures the rarity and difficulty of playing in the shadow of men's professional sport. The derision and distrust of the ability of "girls" to demonstrated athletic excellence saturates the screen and the players. Yet the players earn the respect of fans but also the grudging respect of ex-major league manager played. It does not falsify the opposition and the sexual based marketing of the league. The women wear short skirts and have makeovers to make them more marketable. One player is initially rejected because she is not attractive enough.  For many of the women this is their way out. Finally the movie etches all too clearly the sequesterd double standard where the women have to be chaperoned and protected while marketed for their sexual allure. The movie hits home the never ending tension and theme of whether a woman of talent and excellence in sports or any field must give that up to be a wife and mother. The best player Dottie Hansen chooses that option as does the best hitter. For Dottie it truly remained just a game she could never take quite seriously her talent and skill compared to her true task of building a home.

The players are the sports  equivalent of Rosie the Riveter. The exodus of males during the war opened up the need for women in many areas of society where they would be denied or persecuted before. The window closed, and in the fifties many worked hard to expunge the memory and possiblity that women could do a "man's job." The movie reminds us that athletic excellence is not gender bound, despite what American society might prefer. It reminds us that once upon a time windows opened by war and disaster and into that window women not only stepped to run the economy, but to provide comeptitive sport. They seem odd or misfits, and the best may choose to return to the farm when her husband returns from the war, but the fact remains. The movie ennobles it in fiction and now the Hall of Fame enshrines it in memory.

The movie revives a dream, a memory, a possibility from which emerged a reality. When I watched ESPN televise the entire NCAA Women's Softball tournament, I watched skill, excellence and achievement born in the dreams of the Rockford Peaches.

Athletics, Race and Limbaugh

The internal NFL opposition to Rush Limbaugh as a  potential owner of the St. Louis  franchise was a good thing. The fact that the bidding group dropped him was even better. It represents one more chapter in the long history where America plays out its cultural and moral issues through sports.

Sports can nudge and push the moral dimensions of American race relations. All sports teams have histories of reactionary owners. In one of sports' finest moments, however,  Branch Rickey of the Brooklyn Dodgers signed Jackie Robinson to a contract to play professional baseball. Together they plotted to  break the color line in America's most popular pastime. The brutal and heroic journey of Robinson generated immense uproar, confusion and  cultural progress. American sports has never been the same. This is the way owners should act. To have accepted Limbaugh's would have dishonored the NFL and the pathfinding role sports can sometimes play in the culture wars.

Limbaugh expounds an especially dangerous rhetoric for American sports and race relations. He attacked with a double-edged sword. If black males do succeed at exceptionally high rates in sports, he insinuates that this is where they belong in a world of physical intelligence and violence and force. When he carps that the African-American players can't really play the "smart" positions, he reinforces this insidious approach. On the other hand, if they do not earn this by "merit," then their preponderance represents one more episode of discrimination against beleagured whites. Either way he intimates African Americans do not really belong in mainstream American middle class or professional society. He turns the victory of talent and persistence into a social cage.

Many American ideals and myths around race and difference play out in sport. The core of the ideal is the vision that players of different ethnicities and races can meet together in common respect for talent and achievement. As a team they unite their talents around a common cause of action. It's the same ideal and myth that makes the military so central to integration and the American racial fault lines.

Because many Americans invest identity and morality in their sports competition excluding black players was central to cultural notions of white superiority. College basketball and football exemplified it in coaches like Adoph Rupp at Kentucky and Bear Bryant at Alabama.  Ultimately it was not moral suasion but competitive disadvantage that lead coaches like Bryant to change and recruit black athletes. But the competitive pressure could not exist unless owners and leaders permitted players to play.

Today the ideal and the myths are alive and frayed. The fraying occurs from the preponderance of extraordinarily successful and talented black athletes in professional football and baseball. The talent represents the triumph of a great experiment in integration, an extremely transparent meritocracy, where talent almost always wins out since it is tied to winning which is tied to money.    This is America after all. Money drives action. The battle continues at the level of coaches and ownership. It was the opted self-adopted NFL Rooney rule that forced owners to interview African American candidates for coaching positions. In  football instant, the rule transformed the knowledge and hiring profiles of owners.

More interesting the NFL Players Union voiced their opposition to Limbaugh's bid. Successful black players often remain apolitical to protect their marketability. Teams encourage this to preserve their ability  to attract fans regardless of affiliation. In fact, sport affiliation is one those crucial American identities that can cut across political affiliation. The Limbaugh case broke that reluctance.

But the opposition of owners and voice of the union represented the right voice and the right step. But the battle to live up to ideals is far from won. The ambiguous  role of sports as a surrogate for American morality dramas continues.

(Pictures courtesy of: Library of Congress; synstuff)

Ken Griffey, Jr. & the Importance of Team Culture

117 Games 387 AB 83 Hits 19 HR 214 BA 324 OBP

Not a great stat line. A quantitative analyst would predict this player was a total bust and should be replaced. Seattle columnist Art Thiel would call these "stats without meaning." This line represents Ken Griffey, Jr. who made incalculable contributions rebuilding the performance culture of the Seattle Mariners. This year the team made one of the ten biggest turn arounds in major league history going from 101 losses to 86 wins. Griffey her relentless worked to rebuild a culture of support, professionalism and fun that enabled a young and largely untested team to achieve this milestone.

By stats analysts, all players are fungible, and it makes no sense to keep an underperforming statistical player in the line up. You should replace the player with a cheaper but higher producing player. Like most pure statistical analysis of players and teams or any institution, the statistical analysis misses vital qualitative categories of leadership but above all of culture.

Culture captures the beliefs and norms and interpersonal relations on a team. Culture expresses the trust, respect and support (or lack thereof) that a group of athletes demonstrates in their daily action. Culture captures the peer pressure and sanctions and motivations that flow from the role models of elders and the degree to which authority of coaches is heeded. Group norms mean players learn from each other either good or bad habits and responses. Rookie Mariner's Coach Don Wakamatsu calls it a "belief system."

Last year the Seattle Mariners collapsed in a maelstrom of recrimination, incompetence, underperformance. In the end the players quit; packing boxes sat before lockers a week before the end of the season. The best player Ichiro was vilified in the press and attacked anonymously by team members. No one chided or lead the younger players, and budding superstars like Felix Hernandez stuttered in their growth. They lost 101 games and left with barely a word to each other.

This year the Mariners turned in one of the top ten turn arounds in baseball history by winning 85 games. The last game ended with players hugging each other, markching around SAFECO field throwing out gifts and players impromptu hoisting Griffey and Ichiro on their shoulders. This was not a penant win, this was the end of a third place season. You don't see this type of loyalty from fans often these days. You almost never see this joy and community from profesional players.

Ken Griffey, Jr. stood at the center of this renewal.. The greatest player in Mariner's and perhaps Seattle history. He returned to the city of his professional genesis and greatest years. A city he gave his knees to on the cement field at the Kingdom. A city where he hit over 400 home runs and electrified people with his catches and passion for the game. A city that embraced this complex and interesting and joyous warrior. '

Griffey provided something much more important and interesting that helped rebuild the club, he worked relentlessly to help instill the "belief system" in players. Talent is not enough, neither is money. A dysfunctional culture can destroy teams--the Yankees proved it for years.

Culture take work. Managers can't do it alone. A few players who have respect and authority have to work hard to set informal standards, teach new team members, push people to perform and help others out of their slumps. Griffey performed this for the Mariners. He also took the media spotlight off of Ichiro who is not personally designed as a leader or one who can carry the emotional tenor of a team.

It was a great ending for a complex career. I'd like to see it end this way--Griffey still a hero with a unique and beautiful swing on the shoulders of his teammates with tears in his eyes. They celebrated his last accomplishment, not home runs or spectacular catches, but helping lead and create a winning culture on a losing team. This is the way to end.

(Picture courtesy of Seattle Times)

A President's Responsiblity-- the SUNY Binghamton Mess

President Lois DeFleur made a devils gamble. She lost. Now everyone is losing but her. The entire ethical culture of college sports rests upon strong Presidential accountability and she embodies the exact opposite

It's the devils' bargain for a college. You're a good university but unknown, unloved and looking for visibility. The route in America? Not Noble prizes, not higher SATs and GPAs, but college sports. SUNY Binghamton is fine bucolic standout of the SUNY system, but it wasn't enough. President Lois DeFleur wanted more. As the picture demonstrates, she wants money for her campus. But she wanted more. Ignoring a faculty vote, the President moved the program to NCAA Division 1 and set out to build a winner.

The cheapest and best way to accomplish this is through college basketball (except for the South and Texas where only a football matters). 12 kids, actually 8 good ones, an aggressive coach and chance to make it to the big dance, the NCAA month long party and constant mentioning on ABC and ESPN. If it works, you get money for appearing, more visibility and higher enrollments. Gonzaga, a small decent Jesuit school in Spokane, Washington (where was that again, Spokane, I said) parlayed its teams into national notoriety. SUNY succumbed to the same siren.

You can do it right or you can do it quick. Gonzaga built up the program over two decades; SUNY did it in four years. The President and her athletic director Joe Thiro hired Kevin Broadhus a Gerry Tarkenian type coach who specialized in taking cast offs and second second chance guys.

College sports' own devil's bargain in all revenue sports is the recruitment of under prepared young men, mainly minorities from socially disorganized backgrounds, and using them to populate their football and basketball teams. The only way the system works and avoids exploitation is if the colleges invest immense effort in recruiting for character and work ethic that can help the young man navigate an educational system. They also need decent academic support to give them a chance. Without both, the system becomes exploitation and falls apart.

The Binghamton coach brought in a range of young men who needed second chances, not academic chances, but character chances. When the Faculty Athletic Representative fought the admissions, the President replaced him. When faculty remembers complained about harassment from the Coach and Athletic Director, the President ignored them. When athletes piled up arrests for assault, cocaine dealing or stealing, the President and athletic Director ignored it. After all, the team, known made it to the NCAA tournament by winning the designed for the NCAA tournament America East conference.

Now the program has imploded with scandals. The players were not supported or lead as students. The President permitted them to exist only as unregulated athletes. As misdemeanors, arrests and harassment piled up, neither she, the coach nor the Athletic director acted. Now six players have been dismissed. The AD has been thrown to the wolves (actually reassigned to the Provost's office). More is coming, but she remains unscathed. This ignores the real issue--she sponsored and abetted a program in violation of academic standards and the integrity of the university. In modern NCAA ethical standards, the President is directly held responsible for the programs.

There may be no NCAA violations but this epitomizes what the NCAA calls loss of institutional control. In this case, however, there was none to begin with. The President launched the program without the necessary academic support and safeguards and ignored all the warning signs. She wanted a winner, she wanted visibility. Well she got the winner and the visibility along with disgrace and embarrassment. She should resign.

Basketball on Football Violence!!

Why can't University of Kansas football and basketball teams get along. For the second time in two days fights broke out between the two teams on University of Kansas campus. In the first fight involving up to a hundred students, starting guard Tyshan Taylor guard had been sent to the hospital and will miss six weeks of the season. One day later another brawl erupted, but this time the basketball team seemed to walk away, which makes sense when you think of the odds.

I'm not sure why any basketball team would take on a football team. I mean--14 against 80? Point guards against defensive ends? It's simply not fair, actually it borders on just plain dumb.

These fights cut against one of the deepest myths and achievements of college sports, the ability to bring together many and diverse kids and forge a team identity among them. The ability to forge unity through from aggression. This is not the pros where few players are not willing to invest any strong identity in the team they are playing for. After all they may be traded to the team across the field tomorrow, or they may be signed by them as a free agent in a couple years. Pro sports dilutes the passionate team loyalty that college sport depends upon. This esprit de corp accounts for many of the unexpected victories that college sports springs upon us.

The emotional bonding with teammates helps rebuild the identities and self worth of the young players on these teams. In revenue sports, many come from socially disorganized backgrounds where religion, gang and sport may be the only affiliations that enabled them to survive.

The team affiliation and loyalty help structure an alternative identity that enable them to make use of aggression and violence in productive ways. Fellow members becomes guides and models of how to self-control. They also support academic work since modern NCAA rules make playing contingent upon progress towards a degree.

So the team versus team violence in Kansas challenges us all to remember how this loyalty can cut both ways. Team loyalty should be a way station, a means to help young men organize their energy and aggression in a productive way that can graduate them to wider affiliations and loyalties to their school, profession and society. They are midwives for growth.

But team loyalties like all tribal loyalties can engender resentment and anger towards the "other" the outsider, the other team. Few pros buy into their "they are the enemy" but 19 year olds do in their lives, in their games, in their armies and in their sports. So violence flares between the two teams both of the same school, wearing the same colors and same loyalties.

It all seemed to start from simmering anger over a girl who switched loyalties or teams as it were. The switch became a collective insult that spread across both teams. They are kids who have each others back. The anger and insults spread to internet and bar taunts. The fights remind us again and again that the colleges in revenue sports recruit young men from rough backgrounds, exploit that aggression and anger and generate glory, stature and money from it. But this spills out into real life and we need the team loyalty to provide the matrix of discipline and focus to channel and graduate it.

When it turns on itself, we get football on basketball violence in our own colleges.

Myles Brand--an Unsung Legacy

Myles Brand, philosopher, University President, President of NCAA died on Wednesday. Accolades are justly showered upon him. But time and again one story is mentioned, he fired the loony and untouchable Bobby Knight as coach of Indiana. This focus is incredibly unfair to Brand as a person and leader. It touches on one moment that proved a President could stand up to a star coach. I cannot hope to do justice to him and his wide accomplishments but I want to mention three hidden aspects of his legacy that live on in the daily lives of students and members of NCAA.

First, he pushed hard for the academic reforms that permeate NCAA colleges and universities right now. After decades of exploiting student athletes with low graduation rates and perfunctory eligibility, Myles Brand and the Presidents asserted a critical level of control and implemented a series of reforms that are producing results and limiting some of the exploitations.

The reforms produced an alphabet soup of acronyms APR, PTD, GSR etal. The gist of all these reforms is that they were driven by data that identified the critical leverage points for ensuring that student athletes progress toward a legimate degree and graduate. They force colleges to monitor the quarterly, semester and yearly progress of student athletes. They demand that college athletic departments ensure the students are garnering 6 hours of credit, getting 27 and 36 hours per year and are choosing a real major as juniors. Most importantly the reforms align the interests of coaches with academic progress by imposing penalties upon teams that do not meet set graduation expectations and have students who leave the program ineligible.

None of these are perfect but from the ground level it means coaches have to take academic progress seriously to keep students eligible to avoid losing scholarships. The reforms ushered in a sea change in investment in academic support and coaching interest in moving students forward. At the day to day level where athletic support staff and faculty athletic representatives wrestle with coaches, students and athletic administrators to ensure academic significance, the reforms produces true leverage for academic proponents for the first time.

Second, he created an institution that is devoted to data collection. The NCAA is home to statisticians and huge data fields. He insisted that policy not be driven by anecdote, the latest mess or demands of lobbyists. Wherever possible, as befits an academic institution, policy was driven by what data identified as problems and as possible avenues of change. It made the solutions sometimes Byzantine but also transparent. It pushed the organization to collect data,think about issues and move forward. The data sets also hold a treasure trove for serious scholars of athletics and academics.

Finally, he relentlessly promoted diversity and racial and gender equity in intercollegiate athletics. The corporatist governance structure of th NCAA spawns large numbers of positions and requires balanced representation of many interests. The selection committees are under constant pressure to ensure racial and gender balance in their appointments to the governance structure. Numerous training and advancement programs have been sponsored to generate pipelines for younger minority and female administrators. He helped further a pipeline of diverse leaders and one of his most bitter disappointments was the NCAA's inability to increase the diversity of football coaches.

No one sees these daily activities. Cumulatively these unsung changes have nested in the heart of bureaucracies to advance the uneven cause of data driven policy, serious support for students who happen to be athletes, and social justice. For that I honor and miss him.

(Photo courtesy of Chronicle of Higher Education)