Comment
January 13, 1997
The Faculty Voice -- New structure offers opportunity for faculty
BY PERCY BATES
University of Michigan
As faculty athletics representatives, we should rethink our roles as we embark on the journey into the uncharted territory of a restructured, federated NCAA.
First and foremost, the faculty representative functions in the best interests of student-athletes and sees both sides of the life of the student and athlete. Others may consider the interests of students or the interests of athletes as a part of their decisions, but as a faculty representative, I see the welfare of each student-athlete as central to my concerns.
This being the case, how can the faculty representative not be an integral part of the restructuring process?
Defining the role of the faculty representative already has been one of our main tasks during the past few years. The brochure published recently by the Faculty Athletics Representatives Association is a product of this effort. I am sure this brochure will elicit many different reactions. Some will say the faculty representative cannot carry out all of the tasks described, while others will say that these are the things that we are doing and should be doing. Still others will see the responsibilities outlined in the brochure as an inventory of possible tasks for the faculty representative but not as a list of expected responsibilities.
Whatever your reaction, we hope that you will agree that it is necessary for the faculty representative to carve out a niche during the reshaping of the NCAA so that faculty input and involvement becomes an integral part of the new structure.
If there is one thing that we know about the role of the faculty representative, it is that it varies a great deal from campus to campus and that some faculty representatives do a great deal while others report that they do very little in the role. Those faculty representatives who think that they are already doing too much may be happy to have their role reduced from current levels. Those faculty representatives who think that we can do more than we have been doing may find it difficult to accept a reduced role in the restructuring. Some argue that it is not neces-
sary for the role to be consistent from campus to campus, and this writer would agree.
However, it is necessary for faculty representatives to be effective on each of our campuses.
It is my hope that, at a minimum, we will continue to oversee the academic progress of student-athletes on our campuses and be diligent about issues related to student-athlete welfare. While we are modifying structures and changing the way we will do business in the future, we still will be dealing with intercollegiate athletics and working with student-athletes.
There are those who believe that in the new federated structure, the faculty representative will have a reduced role. I am not one who holds this belief. I believe that the new NCAA structure will demand more, not less, faculty involvement.
In Divisions II and III, the one-school, one-vote mode will remain, while Division I moves to a representative governance structure. Whatever model we find ourselves participating in, it still will be necessary to assess our future roles.
For the faculty representatives in Division I, more effort and greater dedication of purpose will be necessary.
The new structure will also involve greater participation at the conference level, since the Division I Board of Directors and Management Council will consist of conference-appointed representatives.
In this regard, some conferences have indicated that to the degree possible, faculty members will be included among their representatives to the Management Council and the appropriate cabinet positions. Other conferences have not made this level of commitment to faculty participation.
Whether you fall into the first or second category, your expectation of faculty participation should not be altered. In the event that you are not directly involved in Association governance, perhaps greater on-campus involvement should be the order of the day.
In either case we must not reduce our involvement on our individual campuses. It is here that we can have the greatest impact on the lives of our student-athletes.
The main purpose here is not to indicate what the role of the faculty representatives should be in the restructuring process but only to indicate that there should and must be a role, not a lesser role but a stronger and more involved role.
So as we arrive in Nashville to participate in the 1997 NCAA Convention, perhaps the last Convention of this kind, let's think about our roles and responsibilities as faculty athletics representatives in the newly federated NCAA.
Percy Bates is faculty athletics representative at the University of Michigan, where he is a professor of education. He is a member of the NCAA Division I transition Management Council.
Comment -- Athletics and the aims of education
BY PAUL J. ZINGG
California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo
A basic set of assumptions underscores the place and role of intercollegiate athletics in American higher education.
First, student-athletes attend college in order to become educated and to pursue the opportunity of participating in a competitive athletics environment. Second, colleges and universities recruit athletes in order to develop successful -- that is, winning -- sports programs that favorably reflect upon their universities. Third, and certainly the most troublesome, there is a compatible relationship between the first two.
The validity of these assumptions constitutes much of the debate about the value of intercollegiate athletics. And each year, critics gather outside locker rooms and athletics department offices to seize on any evidence to suggest that what intercollegiate athletics programs really foster are not stories of success, but seasons of shame.
Barely halfway into the 1996 fall term, the firing of University of California, Los Angeles, men's basketball coach Jim Harrick for alleged misuse of institutional funds and the dismissal of several Boston College football players for gambling ensures that the current academic year will not be without scandal, controversy and further soul-searching into the meaning of this multibillion dollar enterprises on our campuses.
I do not deny that abuses exist in this world where stereotypes ("dumb jock," "football factory," "majoring in eligibility") are impossible to avoid and hard to overcome. I also recognize that excesses in recruiting, the search for victory at any cost, suspect academic programs, double-standard (or no standard) admissions policies and other continuing plagues on the integrity of intercollegiate athletics emphasize the need for vigilance and appropriate reforms.
It is easy, though, to cast about for demons in the ranks of coaches or the offices of deans or the parties of boosters. And many do find intercollegiate athletics to be a convenient target to vent their deeper cynicism about the ability of higher education (and specifically their own institutions) to achieve the values that they purport to champion.
To these individuals, intercollegiate athletics violates the right rules of conduct of the academy, rather than supports them.
Criticism misses the mark
It is ironic, though, how shallow such criticism can be, for it lacks the kind of honest interpretation and open inquiry that is at the heart of true learning. Bringing these exercises to bear on competitive athletics will reveal that this world of sweaty hedonism and intellectual challenge shares one of the most fundamental goals of a good education -- to promote self-discovery.
Finding out about ourselves, a process that is as much an act of discovery as an expression of will, occurs in many ways. Reading, thinking, making friends, meditating, exploring foreign cultures or unfamiliar experiences, each of these activities causes us to look at ourselves in different ways. No less so, observing how we do in moments of stress when we have been pushed to our mental or physical limits reveals much about who we are.
I think this accounts, in some measure, for humankind's grim and furtive fascination with war, because men and women always have been curious about how they would behave in extreme circumstances.
Are we heroes or are we cowards? We really don't know until the moment of truth, when the shells are falling all around us, either actually or metaphorically.
Sport provides an infinite variety of these moments. Down by a point with only a few seconds on the clock, the outcome of a basketball game rides on your pass or pick or shot. Seeking to extend the deciding set, you're hitting your second serve at 30-40. A match all square on the 18th green, you face a slippery, side-hill, four-foot putt to halve.
Can you keep your mind functioning clearly enough so that you can perform at your best in these tense moments? That is a real learning experience, a lesson in self-discovery and self-mastery, for every contest is as much about overcoming oneself as an opponent. The ultimate adversary is within.
If one of the reasons we play sports is to help us find out what kind of person we are, another is to help us become the kind of person we choose to be. Sports participation is both revelation and rehearsal.
Another perspective
Given this way of looking at athletics competition as an exercise in self-discovery, I have come to think of my opponent in sports in a different way. The guy across the net, or on the first tee, or lined up against me in the over-35 basketball league is now less an enemy to be vanquished than a kindred spirit on his own mission of self-exploration. We are partners in self-discovery through contest, and we have more in common than we have in dispute.
My opponent and I have a tacit contract that must rest at some level on mutual respect and integrity. Just as life in my family, my community, my university, my country is a matter of mutual obligations, so too my opponent and I owe each other something. Principally, we owe each other our best efforts within the bounds of the rules; otherwise we will not be fully extended to feel tested, to reach that point where we may have the opportunity to learn something about ourselves.
The same is true with teammates. The real joy of teamwork comes during those iridescent moments when the existential loneliness of our fate is transcended by 11, or nine, or five, or even two individuals who have subordinated their personalities to achieve a common goal. They work not only for victory but also to chip away at the wall that separates individuals from one another.
In the post-glory world of touch football, half-court basketball, golf, tennis and other contrived activities that allow adults to maintain some contact with competitive athletics, there is not much call for a crisp trap block in making a real estate deal, and "reading the defense" takes on new meaning as a prosecuting attorney. But there is enduring educational value in the more limited competitive sports arena to which all intercollegiate athletes will eventually graduate. It accrues through the benefits or fair, hard play and the success of our colleges and universities to teach this lesson well.
If these lessons do not always produce championship seasons and all-star performances, they should foster respect and integrity. There is no firmer basis for a life of continued self-discovery and reach meaning, nor a surer purpose of the academy.
Paul J. Zingg is provost and vice-president for academic affairs at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo.
Opinions -- Recent football season leaves playoff talk in its wake
William C. Rhoden, columnist
The New York Times
"While the polls' voters are making up their minds, I've changed mine. Until this week, I despised the guesswork, the subjective criteria associated with determining national rankings and ultimately a national championship. But the last 48 hours of college football have changed my view and made me realize that bowl life, for all its excesses, has carved a distinctive niche for itself.
"Watching Army nearly overcome a 25-point deficit against Auburn only to fall a field goal short, watching Ohio State claw back and upset Arizona State -- it all carried me back to Aunt Catherine's living room on New Year's Day. Greens for good luck, lots of family. The bowl games as background music to a larger celebration of family, fresh starts and high hopes. No need, no interest in bowl sequels the following weekend. The games were played, the celebration was consummated, the New Year was safely brought in.
"Now, however, there is a fierce hue and cry for a national football tournament in big-time college football. For the longest time, I led the charge. But after watching what the pressure -- and the limelight -- does to athletes, how it adds another mercenary layer to a mad sports culture, I'm backing off. The proposed national tournament simply pulls us further rather than closer to savoring the intrinsic joys, the simple pleasures, of competition.
"The other day, someone asked Danny Wuerffel, Florida's quarterback, about criticism that, for all his accolades, he wasn't good enough to play in the National Football League.
"Wuerffel's performance (in the Sugar Bowl) will quiet his critics, and his response to that criticism should become the preface of the NCAA rules manual.
" 'If I never play a down in the NFL, my life will not be affected at all,' he said. 'There will be other opportunities in other areas where I'm sure I'd be just as happy. If money was the only thing I was looking out for, then that would be a big disappointment because there's money in the NFL. But life to me is much more than money' ....
"A national-championship tournament in big-time football is inevitable. When it arrives, it will transform the bowl tradition into a more highly intensified experience. After Arizona State's loss, a dejected Jake Plummer, the Sun Devils' heroic quarterback, said, 'This is tough to take.'
"Imagine how tough it would have been if the Sun Devils had been upset in the first round of a national tournament. By contrast, the bowl games are a one-time, one-shot reward that marks the end of a successful season and, often, a playing career.
"Everything does not have to be the ultimate. Ohio State does not have to put it on the line again next week against Florida State or Florida. This is it, the deed is done. Who's No. 1 today? Nobody. Everybody.
"Enjoy this moment."
Karl D. Benson, commissioner
Western Athletic Conference
Tulsa World
"The current system puts the WAC at a disadvantage at the top and bottom. They (the alliance) have created a system and they're benefiting from it. Hopefully, we can appeal to their academic integrity. Or, there is still a possibility of legal action."
Donnie Duncan, associate commissioner for football
Big Twelve Conference
Tulsa World
"As a conference, you have to decide what's best. This league has bowl opportunities for six teams, so there is a chance to make even more. I think the system is working quite well.
"The beauty of the alliance is that it has incorporated the tradition of the bowls with a national-championship game. From top to bottom, schools in the Big Twelve are going to make more money. I can't see anybody pushing for a playoff system."
Women athletics directors
Charlotte West, associate athletics director
Southern Illinois University at Carbondale
The Associated Press
Discussing her reaction to being passed over years ago for the athletics director position:
"I think I got over the frustration a long time ago and have been very realistic about how difficult it would be to succeed. Our football team went 1-10 one year, and I would never have survived that....
"I probably will have a longer life. I certainly have lived with considerably less stress. I'm not a copout. I was willing to deal with that stress ... but I probably would have a harder time surviving, because there are people who wouldn't want you to succeed."
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