Friday, November 26, 2010

A Beautiful Game Trapped in a Horrible System

By Joshua Duffy

I've got to admit I'm at a crossroads with college football right now.

To be frank, the sport is corrupt. This is not a new thing. Cecil Newton allegedly trying to pimp out his kid for 200 grand is only the latest example. Anybody who watched the ESPN documentary on former Oklahoma running back Marcus Dupree knows that the exploitation of young athletes has been a core cultural value in big time college football for a long, long time.

Really, this transcends college football, and even sports in general. Any time you have adults making money off of kids, you will have corrupt individuals serving their own financial interests. These kids aren't kids anymore to these people. They're raw materials to be used in the making of a billion-dollar product. They're a chance at some free cash. And anything else that gets in the way is ancillary to the goal of getting paid.

Compounding the issue is the complete hypocrisy surrounding the NCAA. While boosters and agents and runners flood the sport with cash, the kids themselves are upheld to impossibly high standards. Southern California running back Dillon Baxter was suspended last week for accepting a ride in a golf cart. Granted the school is on ultra high-alert for any signs of impropriety on the heels of the Reggie Bush fiasco, but when catching a ride in a golf cart constitutes an illegal extra benefit, the system is dumb.

Of course this is nothing new to any of you. We all know the issues. We all see the hypocrisy. And yet we tune in anyway. Why? Because the game is great. Just as there is no questioning the seedy underbelly to big time college sports, there is also no questioning the greatness of college football.

From spring ball through the bowl games, hundreds of thousands of fans cheer their guts out from the Deep South to the Great Lakes to the coasts of the Pacific. These people aren't stupid. They aren't just being tricked by a fancy media campaign to dig into their wallets. College football is as much a fabric of the American culture as baseball, and even more so depending on geography. And it's great. It is truly great.

And so this is where my crossroads comes in. I am disgusted by the exploitation that goes on in big time football. Really, it's sickening the way these adults take advantage of kids who have no clue what's going on. These grown men and women don't give a damn about the kids. They just want to serve their own interests, whether it's school prestige for the boosters, a new contract for the coach, a free car for a friend or cold hard cash for the uncle "with influence." It's grotesque, and it makes me want to turn away and never look back.

At the same time, I have to keep reminding myself that the stories we hear are such a minor part of the actual college football landscape. We have a tendency in today's media culture to take an anecdotal story and blow it up into a national trend. Now the anecdotes are adding up in big time college football. Something is definitely rotten. But that doesn't devalue all of college football.

When Army and Navy kick off on December 11, money will have nothing to do with anything. It will be just a bunch of kids playing for their school, their legacy and, most importantly, their teammates. It will be the same all over the country. Most of these kids didn't get offered a nickel beyond scholarship, room and board to go their schools, and many of them not even that. And most of them will never play a down of professional football. Their college careers exist solely for the experience of strapping on the pads, lining up with their teammates and seeing what they can do.

And that's the beauty of sports. When the kids get on the field, everything else disappears. Cam Newton may still be embroiled in the middle of a nasty controversy he likely had nothing to do with creating, but when Auburn faces Alabama on Friday, it will just be 22 kids on the field at a time, fighting for one another. And no matter how nasty the rest of the world gets, the purity of the game can never be truly tarnished.

And so like most of you, I'll continue to hold my nose and tune in. I may hate how college football is run. I may hate the greedy vultures who line their pockets at the expense of mostly poor unsuspecting kids. But I love the game. And on this Thanksgiving week, I'm grateful that love endures.