Perhaps it is a Venus-Mars psychological thing, or a red state-blue state cultural thing, or just a matter of values, but whatever, there is an athletics-academics gap (call it a chasm, division, conflict or battle, as you wish) on college campuses.

Both sides sense it and often its various manifestations consume our energies. The gap isn’t so wide that we don’t know who’s on the other side, what they are doing over there and what we think about it. But athletics administrators and faculty skirmish over academic standards, test scores, class attendance, booster behavior, coaches’ salaries, amateurism and all of the other wedges, and it sometimes gets in the way of progress in intercollegiate athletics matters.

Indeed, as the emphasis on “integrating” athletics into higher education intensifies, it might help to understand the perspectives that produce the so-called “intellectual/physical” biases.

From a faculty point of view, it’s pretty easy to go after athletics excesses and find Mark Twain’s “pen warmed up in hell” handy in the effort. We all know there is a ready audience for that sort of thing.

Alternately, as a worn out old student-athlete and ACC/NCAA “official,” I could write as a missionary delivering the gospel of athletics to the uninitiated and skeptical.

Either (or both) courses might be entertaining, but in the end, so what? It would really be just picking a familiar sermon to aim at a chosen choir, and goodness knows, we already are well supplied with platitudes on the subject. I thought about trying to vet the issues clinically, but found the matter full of slippery notions and contradictions that defy simple expression, especially from my conflicted Division I faculty athletics representative perspective.

But here are some thoughts...

First, the perspectives of typical coaches, faculty and students emerge from different athletics/academic experiences. Maybe it’s “only a game,” but the physical and psychological demands of high-level competition require life-altering intensity and commitment. Consequently, when so much has been invested, disappointing performances bear heavily on the psyche, and success often distorts values. Saturday morning tennis games between friends, even for intense competitors with short tempers, don’t come close. On the other hand, academic goals calibrated to satisfy minimum eligibility standards are not equivalent to passion for a discipline or a commitment to the life of the mind. Commitment coupled with ability, though, leads to accomplishment, and higher education draws accomplished individuals from both camps. It also separates and concentrates them across the gap, and noticeable distinctions of style, manner and aspiration emerge.

For example, athletics folks (coaches in particular) and faculty differ when approaching deliberative matters. Faculty will debate issues at length, often just for the sport of it. Coaches, though, seem to view discussions as contests with losers and winners and they want to settle matters then and there, once and for all. Further, both sides feel that when the others disagree, they aren’t paying attention. Nevertheless, we have important things to say and hear. Perhaps listening is the key.

Divergent aspirations reflect different values and inclinations and often yield conflict — for example, the familiar tension between competitive success and scholarly achievement. Sadly, it can be more than free will and simple choices. The role of student-athlete engulfs some young people, sweeping them along in a current that is hard to navigate or escape. They land eventually where they land, and only then find out where they have been going. I am aware of tragic examples. It’s a complex matter that deserves some attention.

Second, our way of funding athletics brings its own particular problems and intensifies others. To quote a prominent Division I business officer, “Athletics can eat only what it kills.” That means filling seats, showing up for TV when the media dictates, logo loyalty, venerating boosters who can write checks with lots of commas and zeroes, and selling everything that sells.

We all advocate academic integrity, student-athlete well-being; red, white and blue; and apple pie, but there is no advantage in a losing football program. We have to win, and we have to pay for it, so we exploit popular culture, media obsession and commercial interests. Sometimes we win; sometimes we get public floggings and eruptions that overwhelm presidents, trustees and agendas. But to exploit these things, we must feed them, and therein lurks Catch 22.

As the stakes rise, positions harden, debate sharpens, and the gap grows deeper and wider. Principles erode, control diminishes and cynicism flourishes. Yet we have good people everywhere laboring away, motivated by noble purpose.

Both sporting endeavor and scholarship persist as honorable ideals. The challenge is harnessing and redirecting troublesome pressures in ways that narrow the gap. Doing so requires convergent goals and common aspirations, together with a measure of courage and maybe craftiness. Platitude or not, that’s the trick.

As we pursue integration of the intellectual and physical, I hope we can keep in mind (and body) the fundamental justification for it all, well-prepared graduates — all of them ready to take on the world and make a difference doing it. Perhaps that can be a unifying aspiration.

Cecil Huey is the faculty athletics representative at Clemson University and chair of the Division I Student-Athlete Reinstatement Committee.