Losing Too Much

MY FAVORITE COLLEGE FOOTBALL TEAM is experiencing hard times, which means it isn't winning enough games to satisfy its greedy fan base, which means it isn't winning all of them. The millions of avid fans who love the team are in an uproar, demanding that the coach be fired, demanding that the athletic director be fired, demanding that the faculty be fired, and that the entire student body be expelled. Demanding, in a word, improvement. Petitions are circulating. Teeth are gnashing. Local sports talk radio programs are aflame with anger, indignation, vile, and spleen. Meanwhile, the university has raised ticket prices to all time highs, adjusted for inflation, concession stand items are priced as if the supply were on the verge of permanently vanishing, and taking a family of four to a football game can cost upwards of a thousand dollars. Scalping, in the hallowed halls of academia, officially sanctioned. Winning coaches are paid millions of dollars, and star athletes are "loaned" expensive sports cars, bar passes, pretty escorts, cash, and summer jobs which entail no actual responsibility. By doing all this, a university with a successful athletic department can make tens and even hundreds of millions of dollars, and administrators can line their pockets. About a hundred years ago brainy college administrators realized that a financial bonanza was to be had. The college athletic community jumped into bed with the corporate community, and a marriage was made in heaven, unto this very day, stronger than ever. The athletes themselves, meanwhile, get none of the huge pie. They get room, board, and free tuition, plus all the goodies that come under the table, but no legitimate pay. A couple of years ago the Northwestern football organized a labor union, with limited results. There is now the meager beginnings of compensation for athletes. the late great but tainted by scandal football coach Joe Paterno urged that college athletes be paid, and this, in an embryonic form, is starting to happen. within recent memory is the sight of star college athletes strolling from class to class, and seeing their names on the backs of sweat shirts, and seeing nothing but pocket change on their persons. Now that the great basketball scandal is upon us, we as a society might be motivated to step back, take a deep breath, and take stock. is it possible that we the American people place a bit too much importance on winning, and on being entertained? that we spend way too much money for it, and that by so doing, we are the driving force in a vast system of corruption, above board and below the surface? Is it perhaps time to reduce the amount of time we spend in front of our flat screens, and on the telephone ranting our disappointment that we missed that last second field goal, and lost by a point?