National Collegiate Athletic Association |
CommentJanuary 5, 1998
Guest editorial -- Why can't we find a way to get along?
BY DERRICK GRAGG What is the hottest topic of debate today? Affirmative action policies? Who killed JFK? World peace?
OK, everyone, take a deep breath and ask yourself, "Why all the fuss?" As a Southerner who was born and raised in a region where football is an even bigger king than Elvis, I understand that this question may be sacrilegious to many. But really, what kind of messages and examples are we setting for our youth? I can see it all now: "OK, Little Johnny, if you don't win the 'Big Man on Campus Award' this year, you should get mad, stomp your feet and yell like hell in protest! Forget about the fact that it's your team and teammates that really matter, because you're the greatest and you, not that other bum, should win all the big prizes!" Something tells me that this is not the message we should be sending to the youth of this country. Catch your breath again and -- quick! -- blurt out the name of 1993's (just four years ago) Heisman winner. I'll make it a little easier for you. Who won the Heisman just two years ago? Those of you who didn't spit out the names of Charlie Ward and Eddie George, respectively, should be getting the point by now. My guess is that if you ask former Heisman winners Gino Torretta, George Rogers and Andre Ware (remember them?), they will tell you that life does not begin and end with the Heisman Trophy. As soon as the decision was announced December 13, sports columnists in the South began labeling the trophy as "the Heistman" and the "Heis-sham" award. Threatening phone calls and faxes overran the Downtown Athletic Club in New York, which presents the award. A spokesman for the Heisman claimed that in the five years he has been associated with the honor, he has never received even one phone call before this year. This is ridiculous. Whatever happened to sportsmanship? I will be the first to admit that we all have our biases, our opinions and our favorites. I was raised in Alabama and I know firsthand how strongly people feel about certain topics. Some things seem to never die in the South, where there is still a huge debate over whether the Confederate flag should be flown atop state capitol buildings. Biases are alive and well and are a part of all of us. I played football at Vanderbilt University. My former teammates and I will forever view it as one of the top programs in the land. As an Alabama native I consider the Alabama-Auburn football game as the biggest, nastiest, wildest, most popular contest of any given year. Of course, people here in the Midwest feel the same way about the Michigan-Ohio State rivalry. No matter what your opinion may be, the bottom line is that a truly gifted student-athlete (who is a gentleman like Peyton Manning), who is the best player on a top-ranked team, won the Heisman Trophy. He, too, is the top-rated player in his conference. He has overcome obstacles to reach this point, and unlike some winners of the past, he accomplished the feat without a lot of fanfare and promotion from his university. The entire country has a Heisman winner of which it can be proud. Both Woodson and Manning deserved to win it, but only one person gets the award each year. As adults we need to set better examples for the children -- athletes and nonathletes -- across the country. If you survey the top "superstar" student-athletes of all sports in the U.S., most, if not all, of them will tell you that they would prefer to win team accolades such as conference and national championships rather than individual honors. I would hope that both Charles Woodson and Peyton Manning would be at the top of the list of such student-athletes. Let's just get through all the rhetoric surrounding this and move on to other topics of concern. Can't we all just get along? Quick, who won the Heisman three years ago? Gotcha again. (By the way, the answer to the question is Rashaan Salaam). Derrick Gragg is a former student-athlete at Vanderbilt University. He has served as an athletics administrator at both Vanderbilt and the University of Missouri, Columbia. He now serves as assistant athletics director for compliance at the University of Michigan. Letter to the Editor -- Is there a point where Nike goes too far?Maybe there's something wrong with me, but I found the guest editorial in the December 15 issue of The NCAA News less than convincing. In fact, I was embarrassed for the author. Maybe it's because I work at a Division III university where we don't have to sort through the moral implications of a bazillion-dollar contract with Nike, but I can't help wondering at what point North Carolina and the other universities who take the big bucks from Nike say, "Stop. You've gone too far and we can't continue this association." It appears the answer may be "Never." I hope the author didn't really believe what he said in his editorial: "Nevertheless, responding to such criticism requires that we educate our publics about the economies of developing countries. We must be able to explain that countries can ultimately benefit by using their own low-cost labor to ratchet up their economies and standards of living." I've always believed that low-cost adult labor and child abuse were two different issues. Maybe I'm wrong, but in the meantime I'm not wearing Nike stuff no matter how great it looks.
Thomas F. Harris Opinions -- Academic advisors' role has changed over last 15 years
Mark Genrich, editorial writer "Kenyon College, perhaps known more for swimming than soccer (the school has the longest NCAA string of national championships in history -- that's any school, any sport, any division), nevertheless has an awesome Division III soccer program. "Last year, the Ohio school came within a game of a national championship, and this year not quite as close. "Disappointment? Certainly. "But soccer, in addition to a game of early morning ritual, is also a sport of season-to-season perseverance and understanding of what is important. "Placing the game of soccer -- and the emphasis on winning -- in perspective is what Kenyon soccer coach Jack Detchon did not long ago when he sent his retirement announcement to the Kenyon College community: " 'Soccer mirrors life. The good guys do not always win, and one has to accept that. Soccer and, in my opinion, all sport is not about winning. " 'It is about trying one's hardest, straining every sinew to win, preparing mentally and physically to do the best of one's ability and then giving one's all. " 'If, after that, you lose, there is no dishonor. You've done your best! " 'Rudyard Kipling encapsulates perfectly my position on winning and losing: 'If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster/And treat those two impostors just the same ... If you can fill the unforgiving minute/With sixty seconds' worth of distance run, Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it....' " 'The people we play against are not enemies. Sport is not war in disguise. It is a competition between worthy adversaries, honorable and doughty opponents, who at the end of the game should be greeted as such. " 'Losing a game is not a reason for tears, it is not a bereavement. It is a serious dislocation of wish fulfillment, and that's all.' "If coaches, assistants and parents can brand that perspective into their soccer season, their players will surely succeed -- walking away from that gray, damp field as winners, regardless of the score."
Latrell Sprewell incident
William Banks, African-American studies professor Discussing the suspension of NBA player Latrell Sprewell for attacking his coach, P. J. Carlesimo: "If a black coach kept coming after Sprewell after he said to stop, he would have been hit, too. "But a black coach probably would have known better, would have understood that the Vince Lombardi age is over and that some current players are operating on street rules. It's too bad there were no senior African-American players on the Warriors with the wisdom and standing to rein in Sprewell. "I think the racial aspect of this story is more in the reaction than the act itself, which was a spontaneous thing. "Younger Blacks, at least out here, think Sprewell was provoked. Older blacks like me know you just don't do that sort of thing without consequences. And most whites just see this ungrateful, dumb, dangerous street guy with corn rows who isn't like Mike."
Competitive advantages
Editorial Writing in response to news that three college wrestlers have died recently from activities related to rapid weight loss: "From Penn State University...comes a report that about one high-school girl in 40 has used steroids at least once, some frequently. Twice as many boys use them, in hopes of building muscle. Girls use them for muscles or to lose weight. Never mind that boys using the hormonal drugs can fail to develop fully, experience breast growth and testes shrinkage, and go bald prematurely. Never mind that girls may develop facial hair, deep voices and small breasts, and that masculine traits they induce may be irreversible. "Why do steroid-poppers risk their health in hopes of gaining muscle mass? Why do wrestlers risk their lives to enable them to compete at an abnormally light weight? In competing with men for a place in the sports spotlight, must women also adopt the same unhealthy excesses? "Have we so idolized sports heroes and Barbie dolls that we've persuaded the wannabes that health is a secondary concern? Have we made winning so exclusively important that obtaining a competitive advantage is worth any risk? "The culture of the pill is a factor in most such excesses. We have become so used to leaning on drugs to help us sleep or awaken, get high or get low, speed our digestive processes or slow them, suppress our heart's rate or stimulate it, that we expect there to be a pill for any purpose. You can build muscle and/or gain or lose weight through diet and exercise, but pills are so much less bother and effort. A joke circulating before recent Olympics had it that the most significant competition of the Games would be the urinalyses. "Schoolboy wrestlers use diuretics and laxatives, work out in rubber suits, dry out dangerously and starve themselves to make weight, then gorge themselves after they step off the scales to regain strength. That nonsense could be largely eliminated through ringside weigh-ins just before the match. No wrestler would try to compete at a weight he weakened himself to achieve. In short, shift the emphasis back to athletics ability rather than weight-dropping ability. "Breaking young athletes of the pill-popping habit as a muscle-builder, on the other hand, is a different matter. It involves persuading them that winning isn't everything. And too few adults believe that to convince the kids."
Glass ceiling for women
Wendy Selig-Prieb, acting owner "So often, when you come to the ballpark, the arena, you see the players are all men, the managers, the coaches. That doesn't give you an accurate depiction of what's going on in terms of women. Look at the offices. Women are at the highest levels, at least in baseball, in most areas -- broadcasting, public relations, legal, finance, almost everywhere. Women established in their positions. It clearly has changed in the past decade or two."
Phyllis Merhige, senior vice-president "I've risen pretty steadily, pretty rapidly. For off-the-field jobs I suspect that while it might be a little more of a struggle for women, I really don't think there's a glass ceiling."
Donna Lopiano, executive director "It (the glass ceiling) is still there and will be for another five to 10 years at least, until the current layer of predominantly white males retires. A lot of this isn't a question of whether a woman can get hired. It's that there aren't as many positions at the top and they don't turn over as frequently."
Eating disorders
Dr. Howard Moore, orthopedist "The thing we need to do is dispel the myth that low body fat is the key to physical performance. Also, we need to de-emphasize the idea that there is an ideal body build and weight for different sports."
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Wrong! Try the Heisman Trophy debate -- a debate so powerful that a high-ranking government official of Tennessee, Gov. Don Sundquist, even got involved. After the Heisman decision was announced, Gov. Sundquist said: "I think it stinks. I think the Heisman award has been diminished," because University of Tennessee, Knoxville, student-athlete Peyton Manning did not win the trophy. ESPN reported that a petition was circulated in the state of Tennessee in protest of the Heisman voters' decision that made Charles Woodson of the University of Michigan the 63rd winner of the award.