By John Brummett
Big-time college football is orgiastic big business, pretty much a fraud as a legitimate component of higher academia, a cesspool of cultural over-indulgence, an outrage of misplaced jock idolatry and an often-deplorable exploitation of under-privileged youth.
It also is great fun on Saturdays in the autumn.
No other experience can compare to the pageantry, to the atmospheric electricity or to the collective pre-game aroma of the smoking and charring of assorted forms and cuts of animal flesh.
It is a basic truth, one of inverse proportionality: The less progressive and enlightened a place, the higher the salary of the university football coach and the better the team.
There is no need to call names, like Alabama and Saban, or South Carolina and Spurrier, or Arkansas and Petrino, or Ohio, especially Ohio, at least lately.
It is worthy of note, then, when a little liberal arts college of high academic standing that gave up football in 1961 chooses to re-enter football competition in a way that acknowledges the cultural imperative but seeks to keep the sport in rarefied perspective.
Hendrix College in Conway has announced that it will join a new athletic conference of similarly high-standard small colleges in the South and re-enter football competition for the 2013 season, doing so in Division III, which does not permit football scholarships.
It is especially worthy of note when the president of this elite little college, Dr. J. Timothy Cloyd, propounds as follows in a letter to Hendrix alumni: “Many outstanding high school students simply won’t consider attending a college that doesn’t offer football.”
Really? Are there significant numbers of male youth in our region’s high schools who are possessed of grade point averages in the high 3’s, and who top, say, 27 on the ACT, and who were thoroughly average defensive ends on thoroughly average high school football teams, and who might eschew the post-secondary opportunities of Hendrix, saving their folks a bundle perhaps, and pursue their studies instead at more pedestrian state schools where they might walk on for football or at least have the sport available on campus?
Actually, no. Cloyd tells me that such young men are more likely to go instead to small, high-end liberal arts colleges out of state that play Division III football — be they, say, Sewanee or Rhodes or Oberlin.
There are maybe 300 such Arkansas youngsters over a four-year period, he says.
It’s kind of like this, I suspect: Maybe you are a venerable automaker noted for fine, high-priced motorcars with engines that regularly hum for 200,000 miles and more. But, maybe, to attempt to hold your place in the market long term, you realize that GPS devices and seat-warmers are becoming ubiquitous, essentially expected. It remains true that you produce the best engine. But, that powerful fundamental aside, you must concede to the bell and the whistle.
Cloyd tells me the start-up costs and ongoing operational costs will be minimal, especially in this new geographically compacted conference.
We’re not talking about a vast stadium or a giant television screen. We’re talking about a field behind the Mabee Wellness Center bounded by what Cloyd calls “Hendrix bleachers, meaning a lawn chair and a blanket and a picnic basket.”
There probably will not be enough scoring to warrant an investment in an electronic board.
Without scholarships, football can pretty much pay for itself, even generate surplus money, Cloyd says, if it does as expected and spikes the Hendrix enrollment from the current 1,500 to the desired and presumably ideal 1,800.
So I look forward to the fall of 2013, to some Saturday when I’ll have a choice: Grab a lawn chair and a blanket and pack a picnic basket and drive to Conway where 5.5 speeds in the 40 will be on display, or bury myself in the easy chair for a high-definition screen presentation of two remotely controlled battles of obscene football factories masquerading as elements of a collegiate experience.
I suspect my heart might go to Conway, but that my posterior would sink deep in the easy chair.
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John Brummett is a columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock. His e-mail address is jbrummett@arkansasnews.com; his telephone number is (501) 374-0699.
June 9th, 2011 at 8:34 am
This comment is laughable: “The less progressive and enlightened a place”
Liberals think that the more progressive an institution is, the more enlightened it is. I believe the inverse is true.
Progressives are the most intolerant folks on the planet. For proof of this, look no further than our Universities, where progressives have implemented speech codes and have turned many campuses into centers of political indoctrination.
http://thefire.org/spotlight/
June 9th, 2011 at 9:30 am
here’s some right-wing tolerance for you: ttp://swtimes.com/opinion/you/article_ee43aea4-8545-11e0-8ba7-001cc4c002e0.html
June 9th, 2011 at 9:36 am
progressive and enlightened are not the same as tolerant. one can be progressive and enlightened in a general sense and be snobbishly intolerant of another’s arrogant know-nothingness. just sayin’. not calling any names.
June 9th, 2011 at 9:47 am
here’s that link again from letter to the editdor in sw times on right-wing intolerance about how i need to be shipped to china or russia for believing american is a free-religion country. i dropped the “ht” in the http before: http://swtimes.com/opinion/you/article_ee43aea4-8545-11e0-8ba7-001cc4c002e0.html
June 9th, 2011 at 12:13 pm
First of all, the writer cite did not say that you “should be shipped” to Russia or CHina, but that “you should move” – apparently of your own free will – to one of those nations.
Neverthless, even if that person intended that you should be forcibly deported – his/her opinion has no force of law.
As opposed to many Universities – in which students have been harrassed, discplined, suspended, or expelled for having expressed viewpoints which run counter to the prevalent Progressive orthodoxy.
June 9th, 2011 at 10:18 pm
My, my, it appears my favorite columnist was a bit touchy today.
“Progressive” and “enlightened” both depend on one’s perspective. At least I would say that for enlightened.
June 10th, 2011 at 8:17 am
mike masterson was touchy yesterday? how so? what’d he do?
June 10th, 2011 at 8:23 am
Masterson is a columnist? About like Wally Hall.
June 10th, 2011 at 1:29 pm
Brummett- There is a total double standard in our society today with regards to tolerance.
For instance, Chris Mathews on MSNBC said last night that Conservative Christians were “culturally backward” .. .Yet there was little outcry in the press because this rhetoric is acceptable to the Left
http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/geoffrey-dickens/2011/06/10/matthews-weiner-trouble-because-his-behavior-offends-culturally-ba
But comedian Tracy Morgan makes jokes about Gays during his routine (and lots of others people as well) and he is crucified by the Left and forced to apologize http://www.eonline.com/uberblog/marc_malkin/b246609_tracy_morgan_apologizes_gay_jokes_it.html
Which proves my theory that modern intolerance and bigotry is defined as that which offends the current sensbibilities of the Left.
i.e. Intentionally demeaning Conservative Christians is ok. But making jokes about Gays is unaccetable.
Bill Clinton is the “first black President” when we like him. But immediately becomes a racist when he opposes “Hope and Change.”
June 10th, 2011 at 2:19 pm
captain: apparently you teed this one up for me. otherwise, you have a major problem with proportionality and faux-equivalency. tracy morgan said he’d take out a knife and stab his own son if his son was gay. that’s more offensive, meaner, more violent, more harmful than for anyone, even bloviating chris matthews, to make an observation that conservative christians, or those claiming to be the latter, tend to be culturally backward. fear not, though. i tolerate you. i just want to help you.
June 10th, 2011 at 2:46 pm
I have actually attended Tracy Morgans act…. And he hammers eveyone from whites, repubicans, the handicapped, etc etc. His act is lewd and crude. But alas, it is just an act, not to be taken too seriously. I suspect that if Morgan had made the same exact comments about evangelical Christians, this would not be a story in the mainstream press. There have been a number of instances in the past where performers, Linda Ronstadt comes to mind- have made disparaging comments about Christians, and the MSM could have cared less.
There is a concerted effort in the entertainment industry and the press to stifle any dissent againt the Gay Rights movement. Joe Esterhas has written about this…and even bill maher has acknowledged this. Frankly, anyone who portrays a gay person in a negative way in the arts should expect a huge backlash within the industry. This is in sharp contrast to how Christians are oftened portrayed in entertainment….and anti-Christian portrayals are almost a sport in the popular culture.
June 10th, 2011 at 6:22 pm
I tend to think both extremes are wacko, but I kinda have to side with the capo on this one.
June 11th, 2011 at 9:14 am
captain, delta: both of you mystify me. i get the part about how the popular culture and liberal elites tend generally to advance a gay agenda and ridicule conservative christianity. that’s one thing, and we can put that in its compartment and consider it. but i don’t get, will never get, and refuse to get any assertion that these are equal spoken offenses — saying you’d stab your own child in the back if he was gay and saying conservative christians tend to be bumpkins. one is about committing a hate crime and the other somewhere between an insult and an observation. ok. more insult than observation, since it’s a stereotype.
June 11th, 2011 at 11:23 am
Brummett, I won’t die on a hill over this one. I concede that maybe you are right.
And I agree, that if both comments were taken at face value, Morgans’ comment is much, much worse than Mathews’ comment.
But I still distinguish between a statement made during the course of an intentionally raunchy comedy routine . . . and a comment made during the course of serious political analysis.
The former should not be taken as seriously as the latter.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
If, hypothetically, Morgan had made a joke about killing his daughters boyfriend because he was a white, Southern boy – I would understand that this was only a joke, and might even find it mildly humorous.
I also realize that a joke made about killing a white, Southern boy would not be national news. . . and that Tracy Morgan would not have been forced to grovel on bended knee and apologize for being insenstive.
June 11th, 2011 at 11:40 am
Thank you, sir, I have never mystified anyone before, until now. I accept your point that those two individual offenses are not equal. I still have to agree with the captain about a double, or at least an unequal standard.
June 11th, 2011 at 11:46 am
splendid discussion. points made. points challenged. broad middle ground tiptoed into. let’s move on, shall we?
June 11th, 2011 at 12:09 pm
The irony to the Tracy Morgan incident is that I suspect it makes the Left look intolerant and overly P.C.
I have been perusing the comments sections on various nonpartisan blogs, and the scorn being heaped on liberals for attacking a comedian for his routine surprised me.
And these anti-liberal, anti-PC comments are not coming from right-wing cranks like me . . . .but generally from younger, apolitical folks wwho don’t understand why Morgans comments are being singled out, when they have heard equally offensive (or worse) comments in comedy clubs.
June 11th, 2011 at 1:23 pm
Fair enough, I’m done. Hope you have something juicy for us tomorrow, Justin Harris is a bit of low hanging fruit.
June 11th, 2011 at 3:59 pm
you’re starting to tick me off, delta. low-hanging fruit, my patoot.
June 11th, 2011 at 4:48 pm
My apologies, that was a poor choice of words. I simply meant that a hypocrite like Harris is an easy target. I reached a little too far there.
I’ll bet Masterson wouldn’t have been so huffy about though…aw, yes he would. Never mind.