Day 57

I have always held a soft spot in my heart for school athletics. I was an athlete through middle and high school, and many of my friends and classmates were, too. I grew up in a small town where the high school boys basketball team was the center of social activity, and generations of locals came to games to show support for the kids, often when none of their own were even on the team. Members of the community were joined together through a common interest and something to take pride in. I saw the lives of kids who seemed destined for a future in jail guided by coaches and saved by the rigors of practice and game schedules. GPA eligibility requirements kept them focused on schoolwork, and helped them earn diplomas they might otherwise have left high school without. While I was an undergraduate, I encountered a few privileged athletes whose admission to college was at best a total mystery, but I found many more athletes who were motivated by sports, and who were talented students due to their heightened self-discipline and time-management skills. While it is true that some college athletes have a questionable place in the classrooms of top institutions, most athletes are good students. These success stories are often lost in the conversation sometimes because students might play softball, rugby, swimming, or other sports not as popular on their campuses. Plus it is often far more tempting to focus on the negative anecdotes rather than the positive. In my college experience, sporting events were places for students to rally together, build school spirit and pride, and find common ground with classmates who were not long ago total strangers. I am not trying to excuse lax academic standards for popular athletes, nor am I endorsing the highly commercialized (and somewhat corporatized) college sports arena that in many ways just serves as farm teams for professional sports. I certainly appreciate and agree with some of the major complaints about the financial imbalances between athletics and academics. But I do think it is important to remember that college athletics has an important place on campuses--for the athletes, non-athlete students, alumni, and the surrounding community--and that while the system is seriously flawed, college athletics are not the antithesis of an institution's academic mission.

Burying the lead here a little bit, I say all of this because college athletics are under attack once again, and UC Berkeley is at the head of the conversation. We've made headlines because Birgeneau recently loaned millions of dollars to our athletics department, something the university has done several times over the years, many times forgiving the loans rather than requiring repayment. Stadium and athletic facility upgrades are moving forward despite our huge budget problems. Berkeley's faculty senate will be meeting next week to discuss putting forth a resolution to end the university's subsidies to its athletics programs, especially since we are facing pay cuts, increased tuition, and reduced course offerings. Pretty good point. Big athletics hold imbalanced priority on campus, evidenced by the fact that a handful of our coaches are among the top paid employees of UC Berkeley, with our football coach taking the number one spot over the Chancellor and Nobel Prize winning faculty (you have to flip through about a zillion pages of salaries listed from highest to lowest to find your first non-faculty, non-sports related staff person). Anti-trust laws prevent NCAA regulations on coach salary, so in the arena of competitive college sports, university presidents pay coaches top dollar so we can have top teams in response to the demands of alum and donors. According to a study just released by the Knight Commission on College Athletics, most college and university presidents at schools with top football programs feel somewhat powerless to end this out-of-control situation, in large part because of the huge amounts of money that these big programs bring in. (Remember that I said Birgeneau loaned money to the athletics department as a whole, not football specifically, a sport at Cal that brings in a lot of money through merchandise, TV deals, and donations.) Wouldn't it be nice if we could spend a little less on football, and use that income to fill in the gap with our other sports programs? As far as I can tell, that's kind of the idea, though the process is obviously broken. I'm not sure, however, that the students on the woman's water polo team deserve to have their program cut because the football team is spending too much money. I hope that the faculty senate uses the time at their meeting next week to work toward finding a sensible and fair balance on campus between academic and non academic activities (athletics are, of course, not the only "non-academic" activity subsidized by campus funds; think music, dance, theater, visual arts, volunteer projects, health and fitness programs, etc.) and that the faculty avoid merely attacking the campus sports culture that is important to so many by demeaning it and creating yet another "us against them" conversation with the administration and campus' sports enthusiasts.