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Something's Rotten in the Ballpark
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14895 |
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Section : |
EDITORIAL
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| Issue
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10 / 1988 |
953 Words |
| Author
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Morton A. Kaplan
Editor and Publisher |
It is no accident that in the age of free agency some sports stars earn more than two million dollars a year. I can remember when a .270 hitter was regarded as mediocre, but now some of those earn more than a million dollars a year, a princely sum. Even given the low probability of making the majors in any sport and the shortness of careers, this is more than satisfactory pay. Such a wage scale is possible only because of the American people's love of sports. I share that love, but still, there are more important things in Life. And sports could be used to emphasize them.
When former Minnesota defensive tackle Alan Page was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame this year, he was introduced not by a former coach but by a school-teacher. He chose her to emphasize that sports is not as important as other things in life and that the adulation of sports stars is misplaced. Page, now an assistant attorney general for the state of Minnesota, is, of course, correct in the message that he wants to communicate to young blacks in particular and to America in general.
Page is not the only sports figure with good sense, although, I believe, he is the first to use his induction in to the Hall of Fame to stress good sense about sports. My first year of teaching was at Ohio State University. Coincidentally, it was the first year Woody Hayes was coach of football there, and the team was not doing well in a city that was wild about college football. He was under tremendous pressure to quit. Yet, when I had lunch with him, he told me to flunk his players if they did not do well. He cared about academic performance. He also carried his players on scholarship even when their injuries would prevent them from ever playing again. Joe Paterno at Penn State also has good values in this respect. But they are among the exceptions. Many, perhaps most, coaches are corrupt.
The moral rot, however, does not start with corrupt coaches. It starts with corrupt coaches. It starts with corrupt presidents and boards of trustees at universities. There are varsity players at some colleges and universities who cannot read or write. Others get by in courses designed especially for them. On the field, they are encouraged to attempt to "fake out" the referee on some plays or to break the rules surreptitiously. Then, if they break the rules and get caught, as Paul Palmer, a running back, did at Temple, the university disowns them for practicing what it in effect taught them to do. The colleges and universities play these games to make money, not because they love sports, and the implied lesson is that anything
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