NCAA disillusionment

I had trouble sleeping last night, so instead of lying awake in the dark I turned on the bedside lamp and read an article in Atlantic Monthly: "The Shame of College Sports" by Taylor Branch, award-winning author of a magnificent 3-volume history of the civil rights era.

I knew that college sports were being corrupted by money but I hadn't fully appreciated what a villain the NCAA is until I read this article. I'm afraid I'll never be able really to enjoy "March Madness" again in the way I have in the past. Branch believes that the whole concept of the "student athlete" is not only a fiction, but is an hypocrisy which exploits college athletes in much the same way that slave owners exploited their slaves. College athletes at the big-money schools are bringing hundreds of millions of dollars into the coffers of both their colleges and the NCAA, mainly through TV contracts, but if one of those athletes sells his jersey to someone, he has violated the rules and is suspended (even while his university bookstore is selling replicas of his jersey for $39.99).

A remedial English teacher at one of the NCAA schools, under pressure to insure that the athlete she was tutoring would get passing grades and thus maintain eligibility, did a stupid thing - the athlete was taking a test online and clicked "done," and left before he had completed the test. His buddy was there, so she had him open the test and finish it. She was fired, she sued and lost, and was blackballed by the NCAA. Although a competent and compassionate teacher, she couldn't get a job in any college in the US. She now works in a prison. Another teacher at an NCAA school was being pressured to fake grades so an athlete would pass. She refused and was fired. The university made clear to her in no uncertain terms that their star athlete was a lot more important than she was! She sued the university, but the NCAA didn't support her case.

Branch thinks that the NCAA is probably doomed. This may be wishful thinking, but there is a movement among the big football schools to bypass the whole NCAA-run bowl games and run their own national playoffs to determine the national football champion - sort of a "March Madness" for football. President Obama supports this idea. Branch figures that if they are successful at that, college basketball's "March Madness" itself will probably not be far behind. The schools may just figure out they don't need the NCAA. Eliminate the middleman! If that happens, the NCAA will lose 90% of its income. But it probably won't help the "student athlete."

Maybe there should be a law banning commercial TV cameras from any college sports event. If that happened (it never will!) I would miss "March Madness," but if I want to see basketball so badly, maybe I should just go to my nearest college and support the team in person.

Chicago Trip

Another month has whizzed by. There is definitely a correlation between having access to the internet while I'm lying in bed and frequency of blog entries! The bed I'm lying in at the moment is in Elgin, IL., at the apartment of my brother, Stewart. There is a WiFi network in the neighborhood here that I can take advantage of. When I'm at home, I have to drive to the library, or some other WiFi hotspot, in order to access the internet.

I'm in the Chicago area not only to see my brother, who is doing pretty well, by the way, but to attend the dedication of a new building for the Chicago Theological Seminary. For 90 years, CTS has occupied a lovely neo-Gothic complex in the very heart of the University of Chicago campus. But maintaining that building had become hugely expensive, and in many ways it had become an albatross, despite its architectural beauty. So, it worked out a deal with the U of C which acquired the old building - which, thank goodness has not been torn down, but has become the Becker Friedmann Institute for Research in Economics (there is some irony here because Milton Friedmann's free market economic theories were diametrically opposed to the prevailing mindset of the seminary). In return for the building, U of C gave CTS a huge bundle of cash and on top of that had built it a new building which it will lease to the seminary for 100 years at $1 a year, including exterior maintenance. This is a modern-looking, state-of-the art (LEEDS, digital everything, etc,) building which has everything the old building didn't have (e.g., accessibility, adequate classroom space), but, alas, lacks the older building's graceful beauty, and for someone like me, it's sentimental meaning. My father attended there five years in the 1930's, I attended there three years in the 1950's, met Shirley there, served as Pastor-in-Residence there from 1999-2001 - so it is an important place for me. The seminary is also leaving behind a beautiful chapel with a very beautiful tracker pipe organ - it would have been too expensive to move it.

However, in an era when seminaries are going bankrupt and dropping like flies, CTS has a forward-looking physical plant, which will undoubtedly serve it well for 100 years, a large endowment, and the assurance of a continued existence.

The new building is in a good location - a few blocks from the old building, across the Midway (that beautiful swath of green cutting through the U of C campus which is a vestige of the Columbian Exhibition of the 1890's), and down opposite International House. The dedication is this Friday, and I'll be there with an old seminary chum.

Here's what has been left behind:

Here's a rendering of the new:

I'll post some photos from the dedication at the end of the week.

I came out to Chicago yesterday by Amtrak. The train was late but through no fault of its own. A connecting train from Boston was hit by a falling tree (!!) and we waited in Albany for hours until all those passengers could be brought by bus from Springfield, MA to Albany. As I understand it, this was a late effect of tropical storm Irene - the tree's roots had been loosened by all the rain we've had.