March madness is coming ....

Twenty years ago, my wife and I were house parents for a sorority at the University of Virginia. Those were the years Ralph Sampson helped put U.Va. near the top in college basketball, yet I used to delight in the team’s rare losses. Losing meant that the alleyway beside the sorority house would be relatively subdued as the frat boys drifted back from the bars or the game. Winning often meant patrolling the alley or sitting in my window, keeping watch to prevent broken windows, attempted break-ins, or theft; I was knocked down only once during these vigils (“Honey, I forgot to duck”), cursed several times, and spent more hours than I care to remember with my stomach in knots, listening to the howling of drunken frat boys, watching them vomit in the alley or urinate from the second story of the Phi Gamma Delta house behind us.

Those were the years at Virginia that some drunken fraternity boys rode in the back of a U-Haul truck down toward a girl’s school near Lynchburg, rocking back and forth inside the truck until it tipped over and two of them died. Those were the years when some drunken members of the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity raped a 15-year-old high school girl; the girl’s outraged brothers tried to burn the fraternity house to the ground, but were unfortunately apprehended before they could get the fire properly ablaze. Those were the years when one of our finest public universities - The University, as Mr. Jefferson’s present-day snobs call it - doubtless produced not only a crop of fine scholars, but a crop of budding alcoholics as well.

The relationship between big-time sports, beer, and fraternities in our large public universities has apparently worsened in the last 20 years if Murray Sperber’s Beer And Circus: How Big-time College Sports Is Crippling Undergraduate Education (Henry Holt and Co., 2000, $26) is accurate in its analysis of the situation.

Although Beer and Circus - the title derives from the elements once used by the Roman emperor and senate to pacify the mob, panem et circenses, or bread and circuses - examines many aspects of life in our larger public universities, Sperber’s primary thesis is that NCAA Division I athletic programs, particuarly basketball and football, have severely damaged undergraduate education. Sperber, whom the book jacket describes as “the country’s leading authority on college sports and their role in American culture,” patiently walks the reader through the world of mega-sports in the mega-university, showing how the old ideal of “student-athlete” has given way to a multi-billion dollar industry, a corruption of academic standards, and a new-found pride among some college presidents in being a party school.

Unlike several other investigations into collegiate sports, which focus on the athletes, coaches, and the sport itself, Sperber also shows the influence of sports on the university as a whole. Using both hard data and personal interviews, Sperber demonstrates the connection between sports, drinking, and social life in large public universities, the disconnection felt by many undergraduates between the dream and the reality of their education, and the growing failure of college administrators and teachers to provide an education, or even the sense of an education, for the bulk of these undergraduates.

Sperber shows that the NCAA’s contention that big-time college sports makes money for colleges is actually a myth, that most schools are losing money on their athletic programs. He examines in depth the party atmosphere that surrounds certain college teams, the riots that frequently break out after winning bowl games, and the love-hate relationship between players and their fans.

Sperber has written several other books on this topic, teaches at Indiana University, and appears frequently as a commentator on college sports. Despite these credentials, Sperber does not definitively prove that big-time college sports and a flood tide of suds are the primary culprits causing the decline in undergraduate education. One factor which he slights in his argument is the relationship between the size of large public universities and the effect of that size on undergraduate education. Compare the University of North Carolina-Asheville to its much larger counterpart in Chapel Hill. Students attending both schools have roughly the same SAT scores. Chapel Hill has an enormous and prestigious program for graduate students and a host of fine resources, yet a student would likely receive a better undergraduate education in Asheville. At Chapel Hill, many undergraduate classes are huge, and many are taught or guided by graduate students. In Asheville, real professors - men and women like Michael Jones, a classics professor with Ivy League degrees - teach small classes. To be fair to Mr. Sperber, I might add that many students are undoubtedly attracted to Chapel Hill not because of the academic opportunities but because of the beer and circus atmosphere.

Sperber might also have spent more time on the connection between money and college admissions. He touches on this situation but does not develop it. A remark by a teacher in Sperber’s book brings a harsh but too brief light on this part of the problem:

What I would like to ask ... the colleges and their professors is this: If you were so upset about the number of students who need remedial courses, why did you accept these kids in the first place?
Let’s face it; there’s only one reason: money. If these schools didn’t take in kids from the bottom of the academic barrel, many schools would have to fire half their faculty and administrators; a few would have to shut down.
- Patrick Welsh, an Alexandria, Virginia, high school teacher

Although the United States is still a mecca for foreign students, indicating that our system of higher education remains among the best in the world, it would behoove us to remember that nowhere else in the world do universities act as minor league camps for athletes. Sperber has done higher education a great service by warning of the decline of undergraduate education and by giving several possible scenarios, both positive and negative, of the future of our large colleges and their sports.

(Jeff Minick owns Saints and Scholars Bookstore on Main Street in Waynesville.)

 

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