I was in fan heaven a couple of weeks ago at the outcome of the NCAA basketball tournaments, the statistically miraculous double national championship for the University of Connecticut. I didn’t go to UConn, didn’t teach there, but I lived in Hartford when they began their rise to national fame in the 1980s, and to be connected to that miracle, even by the accident of geography, made my day, my week, my month.
Like every other fan of college sports, I have a lot to lose with the unionizing of college athletes, recently ruled legal. But I won’t miss the hypocrisy that’s long been part and parcel of fandom.
It isn’t easy being a fan. It requires a considerable psychic effort to ignore the widely publicized realities of bigtime college sports: recruiting methods, the myth of the “student athlete.” ( Even when the school is scrupulous about arranging for the players to get a degree it’s an unreasonable expectation; playing 40 game schedule over the meat of the school year is enough work for anybody).
The reality is, despite all the college spirit displayed in the stands, there is no logical connection between players at this level and the school name on the shirt they wear. As teachers often complain, bigtime athletics in many ways has a mission and values that differ fundamentally from those of the academic side of the institution, its presumed reason for existing.
As we know, the teams we end up watching on TV are tantamount to farm teams for the professional level. This so-called amateur sport is big business–almost $1 billion from this year’s tournament– and as the “product” the talented players ought to get a share of the profits.
NCAA unions may well, as is being lamented, mean the end of college sports as we know it. But after the long tradition of hypocrisy, the unionizing of worker-athletes will be a refreshing breath of reality.
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