Relax, Buffs fans. Sure, Nobel Prize-winning faculty members may come and go, promised state support may be redirected to build roads, and financial aid for academically gifted students may continue to be scarce, but your tailgate parties are secure.
“I want it to be clear that I’m going to bring a great football coach to this university,” University of Colorado-Boulder athletic director Mike Bohn said last week.
Boy, that’s a relief.
But seriously, here’s what I wish Bohn or CU president Hank Brown or somebody – anybody – would have had the guts to say instead:
“CU is going to create a new paradigm for athletics in this country. The way we have managed our football and basketball programs in the past is no longer appropriate for a distinguished institution of higher learning. It demeans all of us.
“CU was not founded 129 years ago to generate profits for the sportswear, liquor and entertainment industries. Our mission, purely, simply and proudly, is to create and disseminate knowledge.
“In the past decade, we have sacrificed our credibility in pursuit of a questionable and elusive goal: victory in a bowl game named after a tortilla chip.
“We no longer will hold the taxpayers of this state hostage to outrageous coaching contracts that make a mockery of accountability. We no longer will exploit young people who can’t succeed in our classrooms by indenturing them to years in a football or basketball program that has little chance of providing them with a decent future. We no longer will accept the kinds of compromises of our values of honesty and decency required to keep the slush funds, the recruits and the endorsement contracts coming here.
“We remain committed to high-quality amateur athletics for our students. If the football industry or the owners of professional basketball teams require minor-league programs, they are free to create these enterprises without the support of our taxpayers, our students and our donors. Any use of University of Colorado facilities, logos, marketing or public-relations services will be prohibited without full compensation. Thank you.
“Now, have I told you about the program we are launching with contributions from multimillionaire Gary Barnett to attract more faculty members from the National Academy of Sciences?”
OK, call me a dreamer – it would be a refreshing change from what football fans usually call me – but I’m not the only one. For years, James J. Duderstadt, former president of the Rose Bowl-winning University of Michigan, has been advocating just such changes.
The NCAA, university presidents and other insiders, he says, don’t have the “capacity, the will or the appetite to lead a true reform movement in college sports.”
What’s needed, Duderstadt said in an e-mail exchange last week, is a kind of Sarbanes-Oxley law to reform corrupt athletics the same way corruption in the securities industry is being addressed.
We should start, he said, by eliminating the tax loopholes that prop up the sports industry, such as seat taxes and deductions for sky boxes. The public should demand full disclosure of the real costs of big-time sports, including the academic performance of all athletes, the rate of sports injuries, and the financial interests of coaches, athletic directors and all those involved in the programs.
Further, university presidents and governing boards should be held accountable for rules violations instead of letting a revolving cast of coaches for whom winning is the only thing take the fall.
“Ironically, at a time when higher education has never been more important to our nation … confidence in the university has been badly damaged by the corruption of big-time college sports,” Duderstadt said. Until universities confront this pig in the parlor, “they will be unable to earn the public trust.”
Forget the myth that football pumps millions into university budgets every year. Even if it were true, it wouldn’t matter. As the tattered reputation of CU demonstrates, football – and our obsession with it – has cost us dearly.
Diane Carman’s column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. She can be reached at 303-820-1489 or dcarman@denverpost.com.
