Class is in Session
I watch US college football on Autumn weekends. I have been a fan since I was a kid, but I am not proud of the fact I still do this today, NCAA football being perhaps the most corrupt sporting organization on earth – and in a world that includes FIFA, that is saying something.
There are lessons to be learned that go beyond the game itself, however. One is related to the sort of ads one sees during the broadcasts, a topic to which I will likely return. The other is that it allows one to gain some insight into post-secondary education in the US. The people we see on screen are almost all either students at, or employees of, PSE institutions, after all.
I was watching the Big Game of the week, #1 Texas in Tennessee to play the #14 Volunteers. The game was surprisingly close in the second quarter, the underdog Vols down only 10-3. However, the Vols quarterback had been knocked out of the game earlier, so things were looking grim, and I watched a play in which his replacement at QB tried to drop back and throw a 3rd down pass.
Everything went wrong, the QB running backwards with Texas players on his ass, until one of those players finally brought him down with a tackle that would have gone for at least a 15 yard loss. The Texas player then stood up over the fallen quarterback and pantomimed unzipping his fly, taking out his schlong, and pissing on the guy as he lay there on the ground.
Classy.
Well, it cannot be said the NCAA has no sense of dignity. Piss-head was called for an ‘unsportsmanlike conduct’ penalty, which meant that instead of Tennessee facing 4th down and 20+ yards to go, they had a first down some 30 yards forward of where the pissing pantomime took place.
I suspect the Texas coach as well as the other Texas players were not impressed by piss-head’s little act. But the question is – what could be done? In modern NCAA Division I football, piss-head is certainly on salary. The coach can bench him, but I doubt he can dock his pay. And let us not forget that the NCAA still insists on referring to piss-head and his fellow football players as ‘student-athletes’. Plain students don’t get a salary, of course, but those student-athletes do have a schedule of courses to attend and – presumably – must do the homework for and take the exams in. I wonder what happens if they do not show up for class or turn in assignments or take exams. Not much, is my guess. One used to hear occasionally that some star NCAA athlete could not play for a while due to not meeting the grade-point average requirement of a C set by the NCAA. That was years ago, I have not heard of such a thing happening in over a decade. I gotta think that many safeguards have been put in place by these fine post-secondary institutions to insure those students who are on salary as football players can avoid being disqualified from playing for anything as silly as low grades or uncompleted classes. You don’t let a QB or wide receiver who is pulling down $1million/year (yes, they do) be taken off the roster for that sort of thing.
The blurbs they show on TV all say the same thing, one way or the other –
Post Secondary Education and the NCAA: partners in producing tomorrow’s leaders.*
Like Mr. piss-head.
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* In fact, the NCAA, never shy about bombast, features this sentence on their website:
College sports are nothing less than the world’s greatest tool for human development.
Yewbetcha.