The disparity between myth and reality is obvious in many areas of human endeavor, but in few places is it so evident as in intercollegiate athletics. The myth-making occurs on an almost daily basis and in it, otherwise ordinary human beings are elevated to super-human status because of their ability to hit, catch, shoot or throw a ball.

All of us are familiar with the claims that intercollegiate athletics makes about the value of participation. The mantra is repeated, almost in the same form it took in the 19th century, with little attention given to how things have changed, both within and outside of the university.

Athletics, we are told, promotes all sorts of intangible but nonetheless extremely valuable habits of mind and character -- habits and characteristics that cannot be learned through any other activity. Among those are an appreciation of the value of teamwork, an increase in self-knowledge, a heightened tolerance of pain and frustration, the importance of hard work and dedication -- traits usually lumped together under the heading of "character."

There are, however, many who feel uneasy about the current state of college athletics; they sense the gap between myth and reality growing every day, but they feel like they are struggling against a hard wind. They, too, often are portrayed as spoilsports, people who can't stand to see others enjoying themselves, people who must find fault.

Complaints of this sort are not borne out by appealing to experience. More and more, many people who in the past were among its most ardent supporters are criticizing athletics. Many of these critics are people who either participated themselves or are lifelong fans of their respective alma maters. They are complaining not about athletics itself but about what athletics has become. They have seen the gap between what athletics is and what it claims to be widen dramatically.

Much of what has happened can be laid at the doorstep of the universities themselves; it is they who have made many of the decisions

that have made possible and even encouraged the present state of affairs.

Many of the difficulties stem from the uncritical acceptance of athletics mythology, a set of beliefs regarding sports that often stir our hearts, but hardly represent actual reality. There are at least three main areas of difficulty:

* A failure to distinguish between the activity and the institution.

Football, for example, is a wonderful sport. Intercollegiate football, with its huge stadia, its bloated budgets and its often questionable recruiting practices, is not so lovely a thing. Big-time athletics is now in many places nothing more than a farm system for professionals. We hear coaches bemoan the departure of athletes into the professional ranks before they have completed degrees; however, many of us feel that it is a good thing. It is finally an honest acknowledgment of what is the truth of the situation. These early defectors believe they are ready to "graduate" to the "next level." Why should coaches complain?

To many observers, big-time athletics looks like a monomaniacal year-round activity characterized by excessive cost, excessive specialization and questionable accountability -- hardly an exercise in "character building."

* Wretched excess everywhere.

It is not that athletics is unimportant; it's that there simply is too much of it. There are too many people involved in sports who do not view it as part of the educational enterprise. On many campuses it devours a disproportionate amount of the resources. The economic plight of faculty at many institutions is as bad as it has been in 20 years, but the salaries of big-time coaches have reached levels no one would have believed 20 years ago. The money paid to coaches and professional athletes is beyond all relation to the intrinsic value of the activity in which they are involved.

* Athletics does not contribute to educating the "whole person."

Of all the myths about athletics, this is perhaps the most damaging. But, at the same time, it must be pointed out that athletics is less guilty on this point than the universities themselves. Why should athletics care about something the university at large doesn't care about? Most students major in narrowly defined courses of study characterized by rigid (and often repetitive) sets of requirements. Over the past few years, the arts and sciences component of higher education has been pretty well decimated. Very few voices were raised in protest, yet this is the nucleus of the college curriculum -- the place where such matters as "educating the whole person" are discussed and understood, where these intangibles are purposely considered.

And, we must all remember athletes are not recruited as students; indeed, there is an organization that wants to drop the word "student" from "student-athlete." It's hard to imagine a big-time coach sitting in the front room of a prospective athlete singing the praises of an institution that attempts to educate "the whole person."

The public would be better served if it were generally understood that most universities abandoned the concept of educating the whole person years ago and that picking a major these days means "immersion."

The amount of time required of athletes in big-time programs entails a loss of perspective. Practice time is excessive, off-season training is excessive and all of the seasons are too long. Many of us wonder when seasons in all sports will last year-round. Baseball already does for all practical purposes.

To claim that this kind of focus has anything to do with balance or with "educating the whole person" is laughable. The evils of excessive specialization have distorted everything. There was a time (or so we have been told) when athletics was considered as an activity, a useful adjunct complementary to what goes on in the classroom. It sounds silly even to say it now, doesn't it?

And it's more than a little ironic that athletics is still making claims for itself that many universities don't claim is happening for the ordinary student. The curricula at most state universities are heavily vocational in the narrowest sense of that word, and whatever character building might happen along the way happens in spite of the average student's recommended program of study, not because it is a priority.

The claims made by athletics -- and the disparity between them and reality -- serve to highlight that this myth-making is not confined to athletics. Athletics claims that the values that attach themselves to athletics competition are, in some cases, more valuable than what students learn in the classroom. But, these values are provided only to persons with exceptional skills; they alone are to have access to the wonderful things athletics teaches. Even if we grant that these wonderful benefits are available, we also must remember that they are available primarily to people who are 6 feet, 9 inches, or weigh 300 pounds. The rest of the student body need not apply. Character, or so it seems, is reserved only for those who have exceptional physical gifts.

But let us not be too hard on intercollegiate athletics. No one is better at promising things they do not deliver than the average large state universities. They pay lip service to all the talk about educating the "whole person," but the fact is that they don't care nearly as much as they say they do.

If they really believed these things were important, they would not have allowed the diminishment of the arts and sciences component of a university education. The elements of a traditional undergraduate education are largely gone; athletics at some big-time state universities serves as a useful distraction away from what is happening to universities at large. As recent events show, in a confrontation between athletics and the "academic" side, academics will lose. They sold their soul a long time ago.

Mike Wenzl is the faculty athletics representative at California Polytechnic State University.