By
Connor Doyle
Picture this - a group of musicians and record label directors get together once every 10 years to discuss the state of their art form. There are problems, they say, and they wish to propose the way to solve them. They open it up for discussion.
Jay-Z starts talking about how terrible it is that rappers spend so much time talking about how much money they have and spend. Keith Richards explains that drug and alcohol abuse needs to stop among artists. N'Sync bitches about artists that prey on pre-pubescent teen girls. Kurt Cobain's corpse says that alternative rockers are committing suicide too often. Fat Boy Slim complains about songs that are repetitive and monotonous. Lyle Lovett states that there are too many ugly musicians. Destiny's Child professes their desire for the "independent women" crap to be stopped. Britney Spears decries sluttiness. Limp Bizkit demands that people need to stop making really crappy music.
Now lets say that they write down each other's ideas, put it together into a report and tell the public that these areas are destroying music and need to be changed.
The equivalent of this happened last month when a group of current and former university presidents got together and issued a report about college sports. In the Knight Commission's report, they tell us, among other things, that there's too much money involved in big-time college athletics.
The two co-chairs of the Commission were William Friday and Theodore Hesburgh, the Presidents Emeritus of North Carolina and Notre Dame, respectively.
North Carolina has one of the most lucrative apparel contracts in college sports with Nike. There isn't a Champs or Foot Locker in this world that doesn't have UNC gear somewhere in their store. Notre Dame has the richest exclusive television contract in sports with NBC. In fact, Hesburgh was at the bargaining table with NBC when they first signed the contract and it's been said that he was the main proponent of the deal.
Yet both signed their names to a document that bemoans the excesses in apparel and television contracts, because they think that schools are compromising their academic ideals for the almighty buck.
Looking further down the list reveals more of the same.
The current or former presidents of Iowa, Penn State and Florida all signed their name as well. All three schools have immensely lucrative contracts with Nike. The former chair of NBC was there too. To top things off, the former Executive Director of the United States Olympic Committee - a group known for their highly ethical conduct in their own right - sat on the board.
All of these men were and are part of the problem with college sports. Who are these men to teach anyone about integrity? Who are they to author a report lined with platitudes about the purity of college athletics?
Of course, not too many people spent time talking about this clear example of two-facedness. Why? Because the sports world is used to hypocritical pontification.
We hear it every time a ballplayer visits a shelter for abused women and children and then goes home and beats his wife. We hear it every time an athlete tells kids not to do drugs and then gets caught smoking a blunt on the way to a game. We hear it every time an owner talks about how athletes have lost their loyalty and later have a fire sale that ships out a 10-year veteran for prospects.
It's sad that we've become to accustomed to this duplicity. I think there was a time when people actually lived by the same code that they professed to. I'm not sure, because that hasn't been the case since I've been alive.
Some of the points that the Knight Commission made were valid. But their opinions were invalidated by their actions when they had a chance to actually do something about the problem. This ensures that nothing will be done about the problem, and that's sad. It's sad because college sports are corrupt - too much money, too little academics - and they will likely be destroyed because of it.
But the Knight Commission did nothing to reverse that corruption - it only gave us the names of the corruptors.
