Post by Commissioner on Jan 8, 2024 18:04:21 GMT -5
Rachel Lu, a former philosophy professor at St. Thomas (MN) (she retired to raise her kids) and avid Notre Dame fan, has written an essay on the future of college football, but it could just as well apply to college hoops. Just substitute "basketball" for "football," "NBA" for "NFL." Some excerpts from her column (full column at lawliberty.org/college-footballs-death-march/) (I've bolded one paragraph I especially like):
[M]y enthusiasm is blunted by broader concerns about the trajectory of college football. It’s on a death march, and I’m not sure there’s any way to save it.
The evidence is glaring. Attendance at college football games has been declining precipitously for years. Viewership is a bit more complex, but worrisome enough that the suits are in a state of constant anxiety, looking for new ways to juice their ratings. I think the problem is simple. Amateurism was the magical ingredient that made college football awesome. But it’s become unsustainable in our era of professionalized sports: neither players nor fans will accept the constraints necessary to maintain it. (The courts aren’t helping either.) Without that distinctive ingredient, there’s really no reason college football should be the kind of sport that draws millions of viewers and sends entire cities into a frenzy of excitement (or gloom). Sports fans like excellence. They like to see the superstars. It’s really quite remarkable that college football fans still give love and loyalty to teams that even in their best years would be annihilated by the lowest-ranking NFL team. What else, besides amateurism, can explain it?
***
Team sports are a spirited form of group innovation that interweaves cooperation and competition in a complex balance. There are obvious parallels to representative government and free markets. Team sports are the thumos of ordered liberty. For the English, they came to be seen as salutary training for the battlefield, the board room, or life generally. But to people who thought this way, it only seemed right that the cooperative element of team sports would reflect organic ties and attachments. You battle with your little platoon for your school, village, or club. Professional sportsmen are athletic mercenaries.
Mercenaries can actually have their charm though, as modern sports franchises have proven. If the contest is exciting enough, people don’t necessarily mind if competitors are making serious bank. Perhaps it is not strange that here, in the land of commerce, there are fewer inhibitions about bringing dollars onto the gridiron, rink, or court. Can we say that this hasn’t worked out? Creating virtuous cycles between love and money is the American genius, and it’s hard to argue with the spectacular success of the NFL, the most profitable and popular sports league in human history. Still, it’s clear enough that you can lose things when you take steps to turn the little platoon into an ever-more-efficient corporate enterprise. This is obviously the case in team sports, where we do value sheer athletic excellence, but also some other things: teamwork, discipline, ingenuity, courage, loyalty, and perseverance.
Sometimes those goods come into conflict, and we have to make choices. Free agency, for instance, gives players more options and helps teams to shore up weaknesses in their rosters. It raises the level of play. But it also undermines the integrity of the team itself. Players don’t have quite the same sense of being “in it together,” and fans have to live with the possibility that they’ll buy their kid a jersey for the player he absolutely loves, only to watch that same player suit up for an arch-rival two weeks later. The perfect balance between cooperation and fruitful competition can be hard to find.
***
The NFL showcases all the excellences of football to a superlative degree, basically functioning as a ruthless meritocratic machine. It’s “mercenary football” in a shameless and unadulterated form, which turns out to be great entertainment. College football, by contrast, used to show us more of the heart and spirit that we once valued in amateur sports. The players were young, and still felt the victories and losses more keenly. The teams had a visible sense of fraternity that one doesn’t really see on the NFL sidelines.
College football maintained deeper roots in history and tradition, along with organic connections to real American communities. In contrast to the NFL’s relentless mechanization and quality control, the collegiate game presented a bumpy terrain populated by a wide range of characters: old blue-bloods, tiny upstarts, habitual spoilers, and regional rivalries. It had variety and eccentricity, like human society itself. That enabled it to preserve the “little platoon” feeling that professionalized sports inevitably lose. Obviously, cities and regions do care about their professional sports teams, but it never seems quite the same. I’ve noticed that people still often refer to their beloved college teams as “the boys,” as though they still see them as the community’s kids. Nobody refers to pro athletes that way.
The decline of amateurism was gradual, and people can argue about the relative significance of different changes: changing bowl systems, enormous coaching salaries, conference realignments, the player transfer portal, and looming over all of this, the monster that is NIL. The effects of this last change are still playing out, but I can only assume they will accelerate the same trends. This too frustrates me, especially because the suggestion that it is wrong to exploit college athletes by not paying them has always seemed ridiculous to me. No one is forced to play college sports. A large number of good-but-not-spectacular players surely benefit from a system that enables them to pursue their education while still exploring their athletic potential; they can leave multiple options on the table instead of making the agonizing choice of whether to forego a more reliable career path for a high-risk-and-reward attempt to become a professional athlete. Only the athletic superstars really have cause to complain, but won’t they get their millions soon enough anyway? Must we dismantle something beautiful for the sake of the poor little super-athletes? This has got to be one of the least-compelling social justice causes out there, and that’s saying a lot in 2024.
***
Maybe that’s just life. Maybe you can’t have amateurism anymore, once the money is flowing so fast. Sports fanhood is a via dolorosa, as my father taught me in childhood, and I know that some tragedies are unavoidable. Some part of me still believes, though, that it didn’t have to be this way. Couldn’t we have treated college football with a bit more love and care? ...
Nobody says “I do” to a sports franchise, but the bonds can be strong. Even if the Rose Bowl no longer exists, I’m pretty sure the walls of my retirement home will still feature a belligerent leprechaun. Maybe that’s pathetic. But age and experience have taught me that there are worse things than being a fool for something you really love.
A significant part of the column focuses on the CFP, and I think she's right that it is bad for college football in the long run. I don't think that applies to the NCAA tournament for a whole host of reasons. But otherwise, pretty much everything she says about football applies to college hoops.
[M]y enthusiasm is blunted by broader concerns about the trajectory of college football. It’s on a death march, and I’m not sure there’s any way to save it.
The evidence is glaring. Attendance at college football games has been declining precipitously for years. Viewership is a bit more complex, but worrisome enough that the suits are in a state of constant anxiety, looking for new ways to juice their ratings. I think the problem is simple. Amateurism was the magical ingredient that made college football awesome. But it’s become unsustainable in our era of professionalized sports: neither players nor fans will accept the constraints necessary to maintain it. (The courts aren’t helping either.) Without that distinctive ingredient, there’s really no reason college football should be the kind of sport that draws millions of viewers and sends entire cities into a frenzy of excitement (or gloom). Sports fans like excellence. They like to see the superstars. It’s really quite remarkable that college football fans still give love and loyalty to teams that even in their best years would be annihilated by the lowest-ranking NFL team. What else, besides amateurism, can explain it?
***
Team sports are a spirited form of group innovation that interweaves cooperation and competition in a complex balance. There are obvious parallels to representative government and free markets. Team sports are the thumos of ordered liberty. For the English, they came to be seen as salutary training for the battlefield, the board room, or life generally. But to people who thought this way, it only seemed right that the cooperative element of team sports would reflect organic ties and attachments. You battle with your little platoon for your school, village, or club. Professional sportsmen are athletic mercenaries.
Mercenaries can actually have their charm though, as modern sports franchises have proven. If the contest is exciting enough, people don’t necessarily mind if competitors are making serious bank. Perhaps it is not strange that here, in the land of commerce, there are fewer inhibitions about bringing dollars onto the gridiron, rink, or court. Can we say that this hasn’t worked out? Creating virtuous cycles between love and money is the American genius, and it’s hard to argue with the spectacular success of the NFL, the most profitable and popular sports league in human history. Still, it’s clear enough that you can lose things when you take steps to turn the little platoon into an ever-more-efficient corporate enterprise. This is obviously the case in team sports, where we do value sheer athletic excellence, but also some other things: teamwork, discipline, ingenuity, courage, loyalty, and perseverance.
Sometimes those goods come into conflict, and we have to make choices. Free agency, for instance, gives players more options and helps teams to shore up weaknesses in their rosters. It raises the level of play. But it also undermines the integrity of the team itself. Players don’t have quite the same sense of being “in it together,” and fans have to live with the possibility that they’ll buy their kid a jersey for the player he absolutely loves, only to watch that same player suit up for an arch-rival two weeks later. The perfect balance between cooperation and fruitful competition can be hard to find.
***
The NFL showcases all the excellences of football to a superlative degree, basically functioning as a ruthless meritocratic machine. It’s “mercenary football” in a shameless and unadulterated form, which turns out to be great entertainment. College football, by contrast, used to show us more of the heart and spirit that we once valued in amateur sports. The players were young, and still felt the victories and losses more keenly. The teams had a visible sense of fraternity that one doesn’t really see on the NFL sidelines.
College football maintained deeper roots in history and tradition, along with organic connections to real American communities. In contrast to the NFL’s relentless mechanization and quality control, the collegiate game presented a bumpy terrain populated by a wide range of characters: old blue-bloods, tiny upstarts, habitual spoilers, and regional rivalries. It had variety and eccentricity, like human society itself. That enabled it to preserve the “little platoon” feeling that professionalized sports inevitably lose. Obviously, cities and regions do care about their professional sports teams, but it never seems quite the same. I’ve noticed that people still often refer to their beloved college teams as “the boys,” as though they still see them as the community’s kids. Nobody refers to pro athletes that way.
The decline of amateurism was gradual, and people can argue about the relative significance of different changes: changing bowl systems, enormous coaching salaries, conference realignments, the player transfer portal, and looming over all of this, the monster that is NIL. The effects of this last change are still playing out, but I can only assume they will accelerate the same trends. This too frustrates me, especially because the suggestion that it is wrong to exploit college athletes by not paying them has always seemed ridiculous to me. No one is forced to play college sports. A large number of good-but-not-spectacular players surely benefit from a system that enables them to pursue their education while still exploring their athletic potential; they can leave multiple options on the table instead of making the agonizing choice of whether to forego a more reliable career path for a high-risk-and-reward attempt to become a professional athlete. Only the athletic superstars really have cause to complain, but won’t they get their millions soon enough anyway? Must we dismantle something beautiful for the sake of the poor little super-athletes? This has got to be one of the least-compelling social justice causes out there, and that’s saying a lot in 2024.
***
Maybe that’s just life. Maybe you can’t have amateurism anymore, once the money is flowing so fast. Sports fanhood is a via dolorosa, as my father taught me in childhood, and I know that some tragedies are unavoidable. Some part of me still believes, though, that it didn’t have to be this way. Couldn’t we have treated college football with a bit more love and care? ...
Nobody says “I do” to a sports franchise, but the bonds can be strong. Even if the Rose Bowl no longer exists, I’m pretty sure the walls of my retirement home will still feature a belligerent leprechaun. Maybe that’s pathetic. But age and experience have taught me that there are worse things than being a fool for something you really love.
A significant part of the column focuses on the CFP, and I think she's right that it is bad for college football in the long run. I don't think that applies to the NCAA tournament for a whole host of reasons. But otherwise, pretty much everything she says about football applies to college hoops.