A good read by Mark Salter on the state of college athletics:
Among my many vices, I cherish most my obsessive regard for the Georgetown University men’s basketball team. In good seasons and bad, I want and irrationally expect them to win every game. I’m often angry when they don’t, and in my brief but intense disappointment, I don’t think about much more than why didn’t they rebound better or fight around screens quicker or get the ball to their best scorers.
In the aftermath of a hard-fought game. I don’t dwell on the life lessons Hoya players might have learned from losing or the good sportsmanship they showed in defeat. I don’t console myself with the knowledge that a fine group of young men represent my alma mater on the basketball court, and uphold the values of the school and the integrity of college athletics. My only hope is that they’ll win the next game because, as is the case for many sports fans, I care more about my vicarious experience than their real experience of wholly investing their bodies and minds in a game, and coming up short of expectations.
Selfishness is something college sports fans have in common with many university presidents and athletic directors and television networks. In our defense, selfish indifference to anything but a win by our school is only a temporary, if juvenile, reaction to disappointment. But Mark Nordenberg, chancellor of the University of Pittsburgh, believes selfishness as well as hypocrisy and dishonesty are the unavoidable requirements of his professional responsibilities.
He is hardly alone, as the entire world learned this week.
When the ACC raided the Big East for new members in 2003, Nordenberg, the most influential of Big East presidents in matters pertaining to football, denounced the move in the strongest terms, and encouraged the Big East to sue the ACC. Earlier this year, he encouraged the Big East to reject a $1.4 billion TV offer from ESPN — in expectation that the conference would receive more generous offers from other networks. He also led Big East efforts to attract new football members to the conference. At the same time, however, Nordenberg was secretly holding discussions with ACC officials about Pitt leaving the Big East for the ACC, along with Syracuse University, a move that is rumored to have been encouraged by ESPN in retaliation for the Big East’s rejection of their offer.
Officials of another Big East school, West Virginia University, denounced the Pittsburgh and Syracuse betrayal and promptly engineered the school’s own departure from the conference. Presently, West Virginia is suing the Big East to evade conference bylaws that require a 27-month waiting period before a member can leave so that its teams can start playing in the Big 12 next year.
In college athletics, football is king. To maximize football’s television revenues, school officials will abandon old and storied conferences for the greener pasture of super conferences. They’ll betray the interests of their other sports programs. They’ll dismiss the loyalty fans and athletes have to traditional rivalries within the conference, and the games that have for decades been the most anticipated contests of their season. They’ll turn a blind eye to recruiting violations. They’ll bestow scholarships on athletes who have no concern or aptitude for academics. In basketball, they routinely recruit kids who only intend to stick around a year or two to improve their stock in the NBA draft. They’re perfectly willing for their conferences to serve as development leagues for professional sports franchises as long as they keep making money.
The rest here.