The Game Continues to Get Broken

(This post first appeared on my Substack on June 30, 2022.)

The latest shots in the escalating arms race in intercollegiate athletics were fired yesterday as news broke that USC and UCLA would be leaving the Pac-12 for the Big Ten in 2024. Apparently, plans went into motion after it was announced about this time last year that Texas and Oklahoma would be leaving the Big 12 joining the SEC.

In essence, a dick swinging contest between ESPN and Fox is continuing to take place. Avarice wins again, I guess.

Lip service was paid to the ideal of improving the welfare of the athletes in a delightfully trite statement released by the Big Ten that read, in part:

After receiving written applications from the two universities, Big Ten Conference Commissioner Kevin Warren, alongside conference athletics directors and the Council of Presidents and Chancellors, evaluated the applications based on a dynamic model weighting four primary principles with supporting criteria. The principles include academics and culture; student-athlete welfare, competition, and logistics; commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion in sports; and financial sustainability. The model allows the conference to analyze criteria in a strategic and effective manner

Sorry. Had to go get my eyeballs off the floor after they rolled out of my head.

Academics?

“Student”-athlete welfare?

This was about money. Money, money, money.

Cold hard cash.

Because if you leaders gave an actual damn about the welfare or even the academics of the athletes, you wouldn’t be doing this.

If no one else is added (which, apparently, the Big Ten is not done yet) before 2024, the two Los Angeles schools’ closest road game will be in Lincoln, Nebraska. Which is 1,500 miles away, give or take. Rutgers, the furthest outpost in the Big Ten right now, is about 2,800 miles away.

As someone who has spent the majority of my professional life working in higher education administration, I really want to get these people in a room, look at them, and ask:

WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!

Seriously, what is going on here? Who is really served by all of this besides ESPN, Fox, and your bank accounts?

Is the typical athlete that plays for your institution really served by this? Are they helped by having to travel literally from coast to coast to play games and matches that will cause them to miss class time? You know, class; the reason they are ostensibly at your hallowed institution. Even if you factor in the potential for NIL money, they are still not getting commensurate compensation in some cases for their services. And those who are in the Olympic sports in particular are going to bear the brunt of some of this travel. For who? For what?

All money ain’t good money. That is just a fact of life. And look, I am not a Pollyanna about this. However, that does not mean that I must like what is happening.

If the continued professionalization of intercollegiate athletics is going to happen, which is what this race to the Super Leagues seems hellbent on doing, not reforming the basic system of compensation that undergirds it is truly cruel. You are continuing to use teenagers to make money for your departments. That is not what these activities are supposed to be about. And while the departure from that has been going on for a while now, like many other systems in this country, things are truly getting out of hand now.

For those who work in education, you are a teacher whether you like it or not. You should be doing what you can to model values and act in a manner that you would ideally like your students to replicate.

If you want to have these high-minded ideals like you espouse in that cockamamie statement above, and yet you–as a conference commissioner–shanked a peer in the side the first chance you got less than a year after making a statement about how you were going to work with them and not poach members from each other, how are any of these athletes supposed to believe that you actually care about their well-being?

Look, I know things are not over yet, and there are more dominoes to fall. And I am not trying to be a pearl clutcher.

But these programs are nothing without the athletes. And the fact that they just don’t seem to matter at all in these realignment decisions, that they really seem to be an afterthought, just does not sit well with me. It hasn’t for a while.

At this point, though, maybe my standards for people are too high.