If you still aren’t sure about how completely big-money sports have corrupted universities, today’s WaPo rundown on how the University of Missouri-which is full of philosophers, sociologists, organizational behavior professors, furious students, and what-all other sources of insight-figured out it needed new leadership should knock some scales from your eyes.
Semi-pro athletes, our moral lodestars
By Michael O'Hare 531454 Commentshttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.samefacts.com%2F2015%2F11%2Fmoral-philosophy%2Fsemi-pro-athletes-our-moral-lodestars%2FSemi-pro+athletes%2C+our+moral+lodestars2015-11-09+19%3A42%3A20Michael+O%27Harehttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.samefacts.com%2F%3Fp%3D53145
AnBheal says
That's a double-edged sword you're swinging there. The university has problems it was failing to address, and the ones who had some leverage — admittedly disproportionate leverage — threw down the only gauntlet they had…..and wow, it actually worked! Not to say the resignation will end racism on campus. Quite the reverse, I bet there will be some very ugly fraternity and alumnae backlash, not to mention the current uproar in the Libertarian National Front media machine over allowing those damn scholarship n****rs to get rid of a Nice White Racist Man. But without the players recognizing the outsized influence of Division 1 Football, nothing whatsoever would have been done to start addressing the corrosive atmosphere on campus (and throughout the state, ahem).
So yeah, I guess I'm saying that thank goodness those semi-pro athletes were our moral lodestars. Think how many Curt Schillings and Roger Clemenses and Jack Kemps and Tim Tebows would never have used their influence to speak out.
MICHAEL_OHARE says
My point is that (i) if it took football players to fix this all the other governance and participatory systems must have failed big time (ii) if football players have this much clout compared to everyone else there, something is really messed up, never mind that they acted for a good cause..
AnBheal says
Claro, claro, I never misapprehended you to be suggesting "damn those pesky negro linebackers for potentially undermining the BCS rankings!" Still, there's a certain parallel with, let's say, Al Haig and Jeanne Kirkpatrick never saying a damn thing against apartheid, and boycotts by Sting and Elton John and futbol teams being more important to its demise, at a certain level. You can say that's damn sad that the U.S. government did diddly while pop spokespersons led the charge, but I'm not sure lamenting the power of shallow pop-stars is the best take-away. It's sorta shooting the messenger. I'm sticking to my guns here, slow clap for the football team.
KennnethJ says
Big time college football and men's basketball are seriously screwy and defective systems They are nominally amateur extra-curricular activities, but incorporate semi-professional developmental leagues, and a big-money sports industry to which most of our best universities are joined at the hip — some more enthusiastically than others. This strange system arises from a century-long slow motion blunder on the part of American higher education. It is, however, so deeply entrenched economically and culturally that getting to something better is just this side of impossible. Most "reform" proposals amount to rearranging of deck chairs, often suggested by people who don't even seem to realize that they are on a ship. The current Missouri events are just another symptom. Good luck to all.