Influence of Athletics in the University Community, The

Academe, May/Jun 2004 by Sperber, Murray

This sane and successful approach to college sports did not happen through magic: "Of first importance is the clear determination of the UAA presidents to maintain a right sense of balance between academics and athletics and to put in place policies and practices that would sustain this balance." Again, almost every college and university president in America claims to have found the right balance between academics and athletics. But only those who implement policies similar to the UAA's can support their claims with transcripts on the academic success of the majority of their athletes and other proofs that could pass Bowen and Levin's tests. Unlike other proposals for the reform of college sports, Bowen and Levin's do not exist in a vacuum but have been tested in the real world. They actually work.

Defense of Big-Time Sports

It is difficult to go from the well-ordered, carefully constructed world of Reclaiming the Game to the messy and idiosyncratic one of Football U. J. Douglas Toma discusses many important topics-chapter titles like "Home Games: Local Involvement in the Life of the American University" and "Loyal Fans: Institutional Identification at State U." indicate his interests-but, unlike Bowen and Levin, he proceeds in an ad hoc, anecdotal manner, with frequent repetition and overwriting. At his best, when he uses standard sources, Toma offers insight into the mass popularity of college football. Too often, however, he startles the reader with sloppy or incorrect evidence.

For example, he writes, "Try to purchase a souvenir of a visit to Omaha or Birmingham or Indianapolis at the airport there that does not have something to do with the state university teams. Football thus humanizes seemingly impersonal large universities for external audiences." I cannot speak for the Omaha or Birmingham airports, having never been in them. But I have used the Indianapolis airport about once a month for the last twenty-five years, and I can state unequivocally that I have never seen an Indiana University football souvenir there. In fact, the airport's large newsstand and souvenir shop sells mainly racing-car items-Indianapolis 500, Brickyard 500, and the like-and some National Football League and National Basketball Association paraphernalia. As in this example, too often Toma employs a breezy style and questionable evidence to try to prove his points.

Toma's main argument-that big-time college football has done and continues to do wonderful things for its host universities-also leads him to some absurd conclusions. For example, he writes, "The few prominent universities outside of the Ivy League that do not compete in highprofile football, like case Western Reserve, Chicago, Emory, Rochester, and Washington University, are an aberration in American higher education. They are also relatively unknown outside of academe. The University of Chicago, which disbanded its football team and high-profile athletics program in the 1930s, simply does not register for most people-even those in Chicago." So much for the university's seventy-five Nobel Prize winners, the site of the first nuclear reaction (it occurred beneath Chicago's abandoned football stadium), and all of the other illustrious, nonathletic events in the history of this great university. All of them are supposedly unknown because the school dropped out of big-time college sports!