Anonymous
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01-05-05 04:44 PM - Post#1910
For those of you who continue to champion giving athletic scholarships, the resignation today of Andy Geiger as AD at Ohio State must be sobering. This is a guy with an Ivy pedigree, who has now presided over as great a stench in both basketball and football as can be almost imaginable. As I noted about a year ago, when he fired O'Brien as basketball coach for a relatively minor violation (at least in comparison with what has come out with respect to the football team), that would not have occured if O'Brien had been the football coach and if he had not had two poor seasons in a row. Geiger was forced to defend the football program to his ultimate demise....and he now has gone down in flames.
No way to deny it---athletic scholarships are contadictory to the essential mission of any University. They reward excellence on the field only and penalize attention to excellence in the classroom. In the past couple of years, we have seen corruption in big time programs such as Ohio State and St. John's, high mid level programs such as Baylor, low mid level programs such as St. Bonaventure and LaSalle, and even low level programs such as Fairfield.
Giving athletic scholarships creates an inherent motive to cheat if you cannot succeed without cheating, and at a minimum creates tremendous pressure on administrators and admissions officers to overlook infractions and admit "students" who never have been, never could be, nor any intention of being students.
The system took down another decent man in Andy Geiger, whose legacy as an Athletic Director with integrity has been totally destroyed. I know the system will not change with the unbelievable amount of money involved in big time football and basketball, but nothing is worth risking the Ivies' reputation for integrity in academics.
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Chip Bayers
Professor
Posts: 7001
Loc: New York
Reg: 11-21-04
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Re: Annual Big Time College Sports Rant
01-05-05 07:11 PM - Post#1911
In response to
If you're going to start with the false assumption that the "essential mission of any University" is the same, then I suppose you can arrive at this conclusion. But as I've noted here before, there's very little if anything in common between a land grant, publicly-funded state university like Ohio State and an elite, privately funded school like Harvard, which could possibly lead you to conclude that they would treat athletes the same way if they both offered financial assistance tied to a willingness to play for the school's teams.
Every institution is different, and every institution is open to its own problems with athletes merely by having teams. You know very well, if you've been paying attention, that the Ivy League more than once in its recent past has had to deal with academic eligibility issues, even cheating and honor code violations, by its non-scholarship athletes. So it's not the scholarships, per se, that threaten integrity.
And your attempt to lump the La Salle or Baylor situations in with the Ohio State or St. Bonaventure problems is absurdly reductive and grossly unfair. Anyone with a passing exposure to logic 101 (in other words, anyone who attended an Ivy League school) should recognize how ridiculous it is to imply a causal relationship between an individual's status as a scholarship athlete and his involvement in murder or rape. You could remove scholarships tomorrow from every college and university in the country, and you wouldn't eliminate human failings or the status of athletes in America.
I'd respect your argument more if you were advocating removing athletics entirely from the groves of academia. But merely by rooting for your alma mater in basketball, you've compromised the integrity you so righteously espouse, haven't you? Your every cheer elevates the players onto a pedestal that's completely unrelated to the academic purposes of the University of Pennsylvania.
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Anonymous
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Re: Annual Big Time College Sports Rant
01-05-05 07:50 PM - Post#1912
In response to Chip Bayers
Frankly, I expected your response (the tone of which is completely unwarranted, but I've learned to expect that). Rather that respond with personal attacks about your intelligence, as you have done, let me address the specific issues.
(1) Notwithstanding the size of the University or whether it is public or private, the essential mission of any University is to educate. As usual, you attempt to employ disingenuous debating tactics to sidestep the point---just because big land grant schools have different interests as institutions does not mean they are different when it comes to the education of their students.
(2) Ivy League academic issues ARE THE SAME for athletes as for non-athletes. A non-athlete who is on academic probation has the same restrictions on his extra-curricular activities as a basketball or football player. I am aware of no instances where Ivy athletes have been accused of having people take tests for them, take payments from boosters, etc. The honor code violations I am aware of are for copying reports---something that many non-athletes also have been caught at. The issue is the same---that when you treat athletes differently (and not just in terms of admission) than everyone else, you accept a completely different level of behavior. This accounts for the St. John's and LaSalle student situations (which are NOT the corrupted part of the program...it was the administration coverups and acceptance that was) where players felt free to beat up or rape not only regular students, but female athletes because they were unable to accept anything other than getting what they want.
(3)St. John's, Baylor and LaSalle all involved the corrupted actions of the administrations to cover up crimes committed by players and indeed, make grossly unacceptable accusations against victims simply to avoid suspending players whose absence might cause those teams to lose. Please don't insult us (and yourself) by putting words in my mouth about "human failings" when the issue was not the crimes committed by the athletes but the attempted coverups and smears by college administrators and coaches. That directly ties into the ECONOMIC investment that the schools have in these players and that the coaches have in their jobs. It all relates back to money, and scholarships, since they are at the heart of the Big Time college sports system. Get rid of scholarships and all the players who have no business going to college have to play minor league basketball, which is the way it should be. Those who want a degree will have to earn it. Of course, this will never happen---indeed, the reverse is happening, now in college football with the BCS and eventually in college basketball too.
(4) Suggesting that rooting for my alma mater somehow is equivalent to institutional corruption might just be the silliest argument I have ever read in this site and its predecessors.
(5) I note that you say nothing about how a man like Andy Geiger ended up no better than Tark.
I will avoid commenting on the pompous and insulting nature of your post other than the above observations.
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Anonymous
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Re: Annual Big Time College Sports Rant
01-05-05 08:53 PM - Post#1913
In response to
I guess it might be at some peril that one enters into this annual scrum, but here I go anyway. It would seem that with the Olympics going "pro" there is less and less reason for any educational institution, true to it's mission, to try to maintain an inter-collegate athletic program. Evan at the Div. 2 or 3 level, coaches are compensated and hiring or firing is often based on their won/loss records; There doesn't seem to be any way to totally eliminate the influence of money. Our league has never been completely pure, only more pure. The European Sports Club model seems to offer the best potential; let students and nonstudents compete and be compensated on an ability basis. I'm just affraid the Ivy Institutions mught be the most likely ones to push for a move in this direction. 
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Anonymous
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Re: Annual Big Time College Sports Rant
01-05-05 09:00 PM - Post#1914
In response to
Why is it that every time I read your annual rants I think of the Simpsons episode "Lisa Goes to Washington" which ends with Lisa ripping the government system in her speech (after witnessing a bribe at the Jefferson Memorial...."One Nation, under the dollar, with liberty and justice for no one!") and Bart chanting "Cesspool! Cesspool!" in the background?
Once we all stop seeing things in stark black and white and realize that there are not only two ways to do this (the Ivy way and the non-Ivy way which is clearly evil according to you) I think we can have a respectful dialogue.
While I think all of your concerns are very legitimate, I think it would serve a better purpose to discuss how the Ivies could avoid these issues instead of throwing up our hands and saying "we'll be screwed" I think we are wise enough to come up with something.
Until then, I'll play Bart to your Lisa 
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Jeff2sf
Postdoc
Posts: 4466
Reg: 11-22-04
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Re: Annual Big Time College Sports Rant
01-05-05 09:07 PM - Post#1915
In response to
I know alot of people want to know what I'm thinking about this issue. But since we're doing animated cartoons, I'm gonna give you Southpark "I'm staying out of this one".
Well except for one question. What is a "land grant" and how is it different from an Ivy? Is it as simple as state school vs. private?
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Green Ghost
goober
Posts: 74
Loc: New York, NY
Reg: 11-22-04
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Re: Annual Big Time College Sports Rant
01-05-05 09:33 PM - Post#1916
In response to Jeff2sf
Technically, Cornell is a land grant school too, or at least part of it is, which is why you will, on occasion, hear opposing bands/fans chant "SUNY Ithaca" or "Public Ivy" at the Big Red. I don't know the specifics off the top of my head, nor do I have the time to look it up, but it is a specific kind of state school, I believe.
-The Ghost
| The preceding opinion is my own, and is not necessarily representative of the opinion of anyone else, but it could be, it should be, and it probably is. |
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light blue heavy
maximus
Posts: 164
Reg: 11-22-04
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land grant colleges
01-05-05 10:25 PM - Post#1917
In response to Green Ghost
fantastic question- totally a corharcol thing. He is probably posting a better researched, more trivia filled response as I write this.
Land grant colleges are a specific class of state universities mandated by the Morrill Land-Grant College Act of 1861 (see the short legislation at http://www.nal.usda.gov/speccoll/exhibits/lincoln/lincoln_morrill.html
Each state effectively got 30,000 acres per 1860 electoral vote, which the US government would purche, for "at least one college where the leading object shall be, without excluding other scientific and classical studies, and including military tactics, to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts, in such manner as the legislatures of the States may respectively prescribe, in order to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions in life."
The best part about the bill is that it was signed by speaker of the house Galusha A. Grow and President of the Senate pro tempore Solomon Foot. Olde Tymey in the best way.
Trivia- NY State land speculators got the best deal in this of anyone in the country- they convinced the government to buy the land Cornell is on for $5.50 an acre (at 1863 prices!) That's over 10 times other states.
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The Lion King
Senior
Posts: 394
Reg: 11-21-04
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land grant
01-05-05 10:27 PM - Post#1918
In response to Green Ghost
For a quick summary of the 1862 "land grant" act, see
http://college.hmco.com/history/readerscomp/rcah/html/ah_061400_morrilllandg.htm
The requirement for male students to participate in military drill continued through the World War I era. James Thurber wrote about his unsuccessful attempts to march in formation in "My Life and Hard Times."
(from the link, it appears that Southern schools cannot properly be called "land grant" colleges, though I wouldn't swear to this)
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Chip Bayers
Professor
Posts: 7001
Loc: New York
Reg: 11-21-04
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Matters of Tone
01-06-05 12:25 AM - Post#1919
In response to
Excuse me, but you and you alone set the tone here. Because this subject only comes up when you initiate it, and you do so every time - as you did again here - with a hyperbolic lecture on morality, which implies that anyone who disagrees with you is somehow lacking in moral judgment. I'm sorry, but screw you - we're allowed to not so respectfully disagree when you do that. And if you're going to hector from your "holier than thou" plane, you should have thick enough skin to handle it when some of us respond with sarcasm.
No matter how many times you repeat the claim that athletes in the Ivy League are treated just like other students, it won't be true. From the moment they are identified as a recruiting target in high school, Ivy athletes are treated differently than their peers - particularly those in the high profile, significant revenue-producing sports of football and basketball - and it continues throughout their career.
And no matter how many times you insist that the purpose of Harvard and the purpose of Ohio State are one and the same, you will be wrong. As the land grant explanations show, the primary reason those schools were created was to further economic pursuits - as opposed to the spiritual and intellectual goals behind the founding of the Ivy League schools. So you can't be appalled when those publicly-supported schools end up believing that part of their economic mission to the citizens who fund them is to provide the entertainment they demand, even when it comes at the expense of academics.
If the corrupting influence of money is the issue, it is not at all silly to suggest that by being part of the system, we condone it despite our lack of scholarships. In basketball, the League happily takes its piece of the $1 billion+ NCAA tournament money, year after year. It happily allows its teams to take ESPN's money for tonight's PU-Duke game. It happily allows Penn to take its piece of the Big Five cable television package from Comcast. But you can't be a little bit pregnant on this subject - some percentage of the League's annual CBS paycheck comes from the activities of the St. Bonaventure's and the St. John's of the world. Penn's piece of the Big Five contract owes something to those who "condoned" the phone card scandal at Villanova, and those who condoned/covered up the rape scandal at LaSalle.
If you are truly serious about this point, than to me the only honorable stance you can advocate is that the League not only refuse to grant scholarships, but refuse every dime of TV money offered to it. You can take the halfway step and drop down to DIII, but they get NCAA TV money too, don't they? Or you could run the sports as clubs with volunteer staff, only seeking to generate enough revenue to pay the electric bill and a few other incidental expenses. Or you could take the ultimate step and decide that intercollegiate athletics have no place in the academy.
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Administrator
Junior
Posts: 241
Reg: 11-08-04
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Re: Matters of Tone
01-06-05 01:37 AM - Post#1920
In response to Chip Bayers
Why are you guys talking to each other like this? It's ridiculous.
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Anonymous
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Re: land grant
01-06-05 03:55 AM - Post#1921
In response to The Lion King
Quote:
(from the link, it appears that Southern schools cannot properly be called "land grant" colleges, though I wouldn't swear to this)
After they rejoined the Union, Southern states took advantage of the Morrill Act. I know that Alcorn A&M (now State) was a land grant college founded by Mississippi's Reconstruction government in 1871. The post-Reconstruction legislature created Mississippi A&M (now State) in 1878. List of all 105 land grant colleges and universities
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Anonymous
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Re: land grant
01-06-05 12:43 PM - Post#1922
In response to
darn, i am visiting this site too little as i try to get my novel out the door...but y'all have answered the "corharcol" part of this issue ably. His reconstitution as "charcoal" seems to have filtered out his trivial productivity; perhaps I should reapply for my earlier incarnation and more felicitous sobriquet?
On the greater issue, scholarships do not necessarily defeat scholarship. Enough said.
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Anonymous
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Re: land grant
01-06-05 12:47 PM - Post#1923
In response to
Maybe not directly, but Big Money does without a doubt, and the scholarship system is an integral part of Big Money. Since no one yet has dealt with my point about Andy Geiger (a former Penn AD for those who don't know), I am attaching a US News article on Geiger from a few years ago....it is extremely ironic, to say the least, in light of his resignation. His key quote...."What do I do about the stench?" Accept it Andy, for you have no choice.
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/college/sports/articles/18bucks.htm
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light blue heavy
maximus
Posts: 164
Reg: 11-22-04
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Re: land grant
01-06-05 01:40 PM - Post#1924
In response to
apologies for the anachronism (anachropsuedonysm?), charcoal. I did not even realized that I had typed your previous moniker. Best of luck with your book: please let us know when it is published, so that we can take a look at what is going on intside that trivia-packed head of yours.
After reading it, I believe that half of us will start criticizing you for overworking some of your words: perhaps they are tired in the second half of the book, while the over half of your talented vocabulary sits on the bench. Others will complain about the book's tempo, which is far too slow. But in the end, most of us will probably be pretty ok with the result.
Anyways, is it instructive that the posters affiliated with Penn continue to argue over the scholarship issue, while the Princeton and Columbia posters content themselves with the history lessons?
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The Lion King
Senior
Posts: 394
Reg: 11-21-04
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Re: land grant
01-06-05 02:28 PM - Post#1925
In response to
Thanks for clearing that up. And it's interesting to see MIT on the list as well as Cornell. I had no idea.
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Chip Bayers
Professor
Posts: 7001
Loc: New York
Reg: 11-21-04
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Re: land grant
01-06-05 04:57 PM - Post#1926
In response to
First of all, based on that article and everything else I've ever read about Geiger, he was no Tark, as you misleadingly claimed in an earlier post.
As U.S. News reports, he arrived in a situation which was an utter disaster both financially and academically, at a school where the "booster problem" long pre-dated his arrival. The chief task he was handed was to turn a profit and fix the facilities - which he did. But as that article also makes clear, he significantly improved the academic standing of both the football and basketball program, as well as the entire athletic department.
You've offered up the "stench" comment with zero context; according to the article he said that shortly after he arrived there - NINE YEARS BEFORE THE ARTICLE WAS WRITTEN. According to U.S. News, over the intervening time he refused to buy into your ludicrous notion that he should "accept it, for you have no choice." In fact, he did have a choice, and he did clean up a great deal of the stench. Did he completely eliminate the endemic influence of boosters at Ohio State? No. The Clarett situation made that clear. Did he end the societal problems related to our elevation of athletes into heroes before they even reach high school? No, but then no one asked him to.
But if Geiger really did "go down in flames," as you claim (and I think that depiction is itself a gross distortion of what happened this week), it wasn't because he dirtied himself, as you imply. And it wasn't because he failed to take action - because he took a lot of it over the years, from raising the GPAs and graduation rates of the football and basketball programs, right through the firing of O'Brien for doing something that some people have suggested was morally right, even if it was NCAA rulebook wrong.
As a Cleveland Plain Dealer columnist wrote, Geiger's biggest problem in recent years was his "holier than thou" attitude. Sound familiar? In his hubris, he began to believe his own shtick, and that he had eliminated the problems rather than merely cut back on them. That prompted him to lash out repeatedly at Maurice Clarett like a Savaronola, only to be forced to admit in the end that Clarett might not be lying. Geiger didn't go down in flames; he went meekly, apparently embarrassed more by his own self-righteousness than by his institution's failings.
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Anonymous
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Re: land grant
01-06-05 05:30 PM - Post#1927
In response to Chip Bayers
I didn't "misleadingly" say anything. I said he ended up going out like Tark. He did. As for my "ludicrous" notion that he ended up having to accept that he could not clean up the "stench," that is precisely what happened.
One cannot debate with you...you either have a serious anger management problem or a paranoia that makes you feel threatened when someone offers an opinion contrary to yours. I have no clue how you seriously suggest that I am "holier than thou" when I simply offered my opinion, to which you respond viscerally with personal attacks that simply chill the discussion on this Board. I believe that even in here, where the majority are serious basketball fans, most believe that big time college sports is corrupt and we should not go that route. When a poster goes over the top like you always do, no one will want to post. I think you really need to do some self examination as to why you get agita from someone else's expression of opinions that disagree with your own. There certainly was nothing personal directed towards you in my original post, yet you clearly took it that way. That is not healthy.
That being said, you have never addressed how Geiger, who came into Ohio State with a mandate to clean up the program, leaves a broken man if it is not the case that Big Time College Sports is simply so corrupt that from any conceivable academic point of view that for the Ivies to even consider going that route is a serious mistake. This has nothing whatsoever to do with "societal issues" or opportunity for poor kids to get an education. Rather, it is all about money...which if you actually read the US News article rather than search for anecdotes taken out of context you would have realized. Every major college athletic program exists to make money or at least break even---that is irreconcilable with economic reality or a college's academic mission. The Ivies have every right to stay in Division 1 rather than drop to 3 as you suggest they must if I am to be analytically consistent because they do NOT insist on breaking even. They have greater student participation in athletics per capita than almost any major conference and they lose money on sports. Why on earth should they not accept what money they get from the NCAA? They do, however, split it almost equally. If any system gives a student athlete an opportunity to participate in college, it is the Ivy system.
When it comes right down to the issue between us though, it is purely that you for some reason feel threatened by my opinion. Indeed, through 3 posts of yours, all I have read is that I am holier than thou, willfully misleading, and making ludicrous arguments, among other more personal epithets. Through all of this, I haven't read your opinion as to the issue I raised in my first post. Do you realize this?
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Chip Bayers
Professor
Posts: 7001
Loc: New York
Reg: 11-21-04
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Re: land grant
01-06-05 10:09 PM - Post#1928
In response to
If I label your argument ludicrous, I am not labelling you ludicrous. When I label your argument misleading, I am not saying anything about your personal qualities. If I've chilled discussion, it certainly isn't evident from the volume or length of replies in this thread. So before you start telling me that I've got a problem with "anger" or "paranoia," I suggest you look in the mirror.
Please don't presume to publicly psychoanalyze me based on the words I write here. Do I enjoy vigorous online debate? Yes. And I'm not going to apologize for vigorously puncturing hyperbole by you or anyone else in the course of that debate.
I took nothing personal from your address in the initial post in this thread "To those of you who continue to champion giving athletic scholarships." But as one of those who has disagreed with you in the past on the issue, I did feel I was one of many who might respond to your spin on the Geiger resignation when we were addressed that way; that I happened to be the first didn't mean I took you to be directing your comments to me and me alone. I didn't (as others in this thread have) compare you to a cartoon character; in retrospect, dismissing your rant that way was probably the most appropriate response. My mistake, I guess, for trying to engage your posts substantively.
You labelled me "pompous" in an earlier post; anyone who wants a real lesson in the language of condescension and pomposity could start with your posts in this thread.
And there's nothing more pompous, or quite frankly, offensive, than lecturing someone they barely know about how "healthy" their posts are here.
---
As for your argument, such as it is: I'm confused about which unaddressed point about Geiger you want covered.
Is it the first one from your first post, when you claimed that Geiger,
"presided over as great a stench in both basketball and football as can be almost imaginable."
If so, I don't need to imagine a greater stench, because we've already seen much worse than what is alleged to have happened at OSU in recent years. While you're within your rights to make this claim, it leaves you to explain how the current situation is worse than what happened at Baylor, or worse than what happened at CCNY in the 50s, or worse than what happened at OSU before Geiger ever arrived there (just to name three examples).
Or was it your second assertion in that post, that Geiger's
"legacy as an Athletic Director with integrity has been totally destroyed."?
Once again, you're within your rights to believe that Geiger's decision to retire next June, at age 66, wipes out every ounce of integrity he earned during his tenure at OSU, Stanford, Maryland, Penn, and Brown. I reserve the right to respectfully disagree, however; for one thing, the continued success of Stanford athletics without a whiff of scandal or compromise of the university's academic reputation is a pretty strong legacy to leave behind.
Or was it your claim in your first response to me that,
"Andy Geiger ended up no better than Tark."
Or your amended claim that:
"... he ended up going out like Tark."
Either of which, until you back it up with specifics, can only be regarded as more hyperbole. First off, coaches and ADs are different animals under the system; one has direct relationships with recruits and athletes, the other doesn't.
But beyond that, the gulf between what Tark was penalized for doing over the years, (not to mention the behavior he was accused of but never punished for), and what Geiger did or did not do, is so vast as to be infinite. Can you point me to any instance in the current investigations at OSU where Geiger personally has been accused of an NCAA violation, or of countenancing one when he learned about it? Read the US News article again to see what Geiger did to improve NCAA compliance, and tell me how that compares to what Tark did during his coaching tenure at Long Beach, UNLV, and Fresno State.
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Anonymous
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Re: novel approaching
01-06-05 10:51 PM - Post#1929
In response to light blue heavy
I am having it vetted by one of our illustrious Ivy bbu.comrades whose efforts and insight I appreciate. LBH, your review is eerily prescient. High-falutin' vocabulary, but plenty of "word-shooters." A little slow at the start of the game (mimicking its nineteenth century venue) but picks up the pace by the 5 minute mark and starts raining buckets. A few stellar performances off the bench and a surprisingly decisive and contemporary 21st century twist of a victory. Hope it gets invited to the "Big Dance." Pre-pub review yesterday from Dartmouth grad who runs Harvard B School Press nicely laudatory, so I'm hoping I can get out of this law biz and return to my most important avocational interest, posting arcane tidbits on this site....
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