On May 8, 2012, I watched an Intelligence Squared (IQ2) debate on the motion, “Ban College Football,”
Malcolm Gladwell, The New Yorker staff writer and author of such bestselling books as Blink and The Tipping Point, and Buzz Bissinger, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of the bestselling book Friday Night Lights, argued for the motion; Tim Green, Football commentator and former (college and NFL) player, and Jason Whitlock, nationally acclaimed sports columnist, argued against it.
It wasn’t even close. Gladwell and Bissinger won by riffing on two unassailable and obvious points, which I proffer in my own words as follows:
- College Football is a big business that exploits (mostly Black and poor) kids for what amounts to slave labor – complete with academic degrees that aren’t worth the paper they’re written on.
- College Football is not just contrary but counterproductive to the declared mission of every institution of higher learning. After all, this sport consists primarily of players giving and receiving blows that cause repetitive brain trauma (or Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy). Which is as contrary and counterproductive as educating kids by having them repeatedly bang their heads against the wall in their classroom, no?
Alas, it would not surprise me in the least if you’ve heard nothing about this. Frankly, you’re far more likely to hear news reports (or read tweets) on what is said on an episode of Honey Boo Boo than on what is said during an IQ2 debate.
This is why I was so encouraged when I saw Gladwell reiterate many of his debate-winning points on yesterday’s episode of Fareed Zakaria GPS on CNN.
Here, for example, is the brilliant parallel he drew between Michael Vick’s dog-fighting hobby, which incited so much public outrage, and College Football – pointing out the self-righteous hypocrisy involved:
I mean you take a young, vulnerable dog who was made vulnerable because of his allegiance to the owner and you ask him to engage in serious sustained physical combat with another dog under the control of another owner, right?…
We take young boys, essentially, and we have them repeatedly, over the course of the season, smash each other in the head, with known neurological consequences.
And why do they do that? Out of an allegiance to their owners and their coaches and a feeling they’re participating in some grand American spectacle.
But as persuasive as Gladwell’s points about the neurological (and psychosocial) impacts undoubtedly are, I find the universal principle of quantum meruit (i.e., getting paid for services rendered) even more so. Not least because, if college students are old enough to assume the risks of going to war, surely they are old enough to assume the risks of playing professional Football, no?
On the other hand, here’s how I presaged the points Gladwell made not just during his appearance yesterday, but even during his debate last year:
There’s nothing amateur about College Football. It’s a multibillion-dollar business for Christ’s sake! More to the point, the people generating its revenues are not the college presidents, athletics directors, or coaches who, incidentally, make millions of dollars in salary and endorsement deals. Instead, they are the poor black athletes whose raw talent colleges exploit to pack 100,000 fans into their stadiums on game day.
I have always felt that it’s tantamount to modern-day slavery for colleges to recruit poor and, all too often, uneducated Black athletes just to play Football (considering they rarely get an education) and not compensate them for their services…
The hypocrisy inherent in this is beyond shameful. Colleges should be required to compensate student athletes in direct proportion to the way owners of professional Football teams compensate their players.
(“Reggie Bush Forfeits Heisman Trophy,” The iPINIONS Journal, September 16, 2010)
Unfortunately, my iPINIONS plea for these kids to get equitable pay resonated even less than Gladwell’s IQ2 plea for them to be spared brain damage.
Therefore, I can only hope that with more appearances on network TV, Gladwell will prick public consciousness to the point where colleges using kids for gladiatorial sport becomes at least as morally reprehensible as Vick using dogs for the same.
In the meantime, I should clarify that I would readily endorse banning High-School and Pee-Wee Football for the same reason we don’t allow underage kids to do many things that are even less harmful.
Too bad if colleges would then have to spend the first semester teaching them the basics of the game. But if the Army can turn new recruits into lean, mean fighting machines in six weeks, surely colleges can turn freshmen into lean, mean playing machines in six months.
At least this way, the brains of little kids would have a good eighteen years of growth before being subjected to the bashing that causes so many players neurological problems later in life.
Related commentaries:
Reggie Bush…