A few years back we had the Portland Jail Blazers. Today we've got a University of Oregon football team filled with enough crooks and hoodlums on it to keep the bad news on the front page. What is Oregon's problem? Coaches without standards, for starters, in the notorious cases in question. Coaches who talk one way and act another. And part of it is the culture itself, creating a college sports environment filled with individuals who never, never, never would be on a college campus without an athletic scholarship, who do not belong on a campus without considerable personal change and growth. This is why my quick fix is ban all athletic scholarships and let college be about academics. Let the professional sports corporations then pay the price to build their own "minor league" network in which to develop players, like baseball does. You never hear about college baseball until the college world series, and even then the audience is relatively small. Baseball develops its players in its own farm system. Let football and basketball do the same.
Oregon also has admirable sports news, it must be said. Its track athletes, for example, are jocks to be proud of for their dedication and discipline. Oregon has a fine track and field tradition.
But these days it's the football team, a star quarterback being charged with theft, a running back with sexual assault, it goes on and on, and the coach is a wimp who talks discipline but does very little. Will the AD fire the coach? Probably not. He just got hired. It would look too bad. So the problem remains. I suppose the question is, OK, who is next to get arrested?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment