Thursday, December 27, 2012

I Don't Have Time For This Bowl Crap

At 3:00 p.m. today, the institution at which I received my Bachelor's degree and at which I am currently employed will take the field for a college football bowl game as the Bowling Green State University Falcons will play the San Jose State University Spartans in the Military Bowl.  In past years, I would have already written a little bit on this blog about this bowl game, as it likely would have been at the top or near the top of my ranking of the season's college football bowl games in terms of how much watching each appeals to me. Like in previous years, that ranking would have offered an honest assessment of my interest and would have been meant to provide a counternarrative to the lists on major sports news websites that are dominated by games featuring teams from leagues that have automatic qualification for the BCS bowl games -- you know, those lists that reflect a perspective that correlates in some ways to the sentiment of outrage that was articulated when Mid-American Conference member Northern Illinois earned an invitation to one of the BCS games this year.

This year, there was no list because ... well ... there is no appeal to watching any of the games.  After deciding in August to give up college football, I have not watched a single moment of any college football bowl games this year, and I have no plans to watch any of them.  Thus, I offer no list.

I had thought about going through each of the 35 college football games and demonstrating a reason for not watching each one by pointing to some way in which one or both institutions place football in too powerful of a position, by pointing out a practice at one or both institutions that demonstrates the troubling ramifications of how football programs are run and/or financed, or by pointing out a troubling ramification of the bowl game itself.  It was easy to start seeing and finding examples for many games, but frankly, I didn't want to write the post up and scout out a link to an example to provide for every game.  College football doesn't warrant that much of my time.

So, instead, I'll just reiterate that sentiment.  My alma mater is playing in a college football bowl game today.  It's a bowl game that is problematic as a bowl game for some of its ramifications, as Michael Butterworth and Stormi Moskal have pointed out.  It's also featuring, in my alma mater, an institution that, amid a climate of concerns about rising tuition, already has its students on the hook for $50 a semester in a student fee to pay for the basketball arena that opened in 2011, yet, as reported in the Toledo Blade, members of the Board of Trustees for this institution attended a football game at the University of Akron this fall to "gain ideas for a renovation of Doyt Perry Stadium."

Yeah ... college football definitely doesn't warrant any more of my time.

Monday, December 24, 2012

Serving Up Christmas

I am not a Christian.  I do not belong or adhere to any particular set of religious beliefs.  Rather, as I have written on this blog, I found spiritual peace when I came to the conclusion that I neither believe nor disbelieve in God (or, for that matter, any particular religious perspective).  So, Christmas does not have particular meaning for me as a celebration of the birth of the son of God and the various significances that go with that.  Still, there would seem to be much of worth in the philosophies associated with Jesus, and so, as I have been contemplating that this year, I have come to the view that celebrating Christmas as a means of commemorating and reflecting upon those philosophies may have value.  That value, though, would seem to call for celebration of Christmas in a very different way than how so many of us currently celebrate it, and for that I'd like to contextualize it within other views of holidays that I have developed in recent years.

As I have indicated on this blog, I think we should rearrange some of the meanings we currently associate with winter holidays.  Thanksgiving should be removed, as it and its mythology of oppression have little meaning, or it should be changed to a National Day of Mourning.  I think the day of thanks that many now observe on Thanksgiving should be moved to Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.  A day celebrating those who have worked and sacrificed in the name of civil rights seems much more appropriate as a time at which to be thankful.  The day of giving gifts that we now celebrate on Christmas should be moved to New Year's Eve/Day. The time when we both look back at the past year and look forward to the next year seems like the appropriate time for gift giving and merriness.

Christmas, then, in this reconfiguration, would take over for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day as a day of service.  There certainly are good reasons to associate Martin Luther King, Jr., and civil rights with the theme of service, so it's not that I'm opposed to that connection (though there may be some problematic racial coding occurring when the concept of "service" is associated with the holiday that is most prominently associated with the contributions of racial and ethnic minorities).  It seems, though, that that holiday is much more appropriately themed as a time of thanks.  Meanwhile, the messages offered by Jesus seem to align so squarely with the concept of service and seem to have their most use to both Christians and non-Christians as they are associated with service that I think, at least insofar as we might wish to maintain Christmas as a holiday, we ought to make it the day of service.

With that in mind, I am making plans this Christmas to increase my forms of service this coming year, and I resolve each Christmas Day and/or Eve going forward to spend a few hours volunteering in some form of service capacity.  That seems so much more deeply in line with my understandings of Jesus than anything else I might do that day.

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

On Maryland, Rutgers, and the "Benefits" of Their Big Ten Memberships

So, word is that the University of Maryland and Rutgers University are joining the Big Ten (or whatever it is called now) conference, and amid all of the discussion regarding the pros and cons of these moves, regarding the reasons why the moves are happening, and regarding the various kinds of ramifications for the moves, we have this story by Sports Illustrated's Andy Staples that sums up the case for Maryland's move (and, I think, by extension, much of the same would be applied to Rutgers).

As Staples notes, the University of Maryland -- like many other state universities around the country -- is facing drastic budget cuts that affect programs throughout the university, including college athletics.  So, the move to the Big Ten for Maryland's athletic programs will presumably help the athletic department pay for itself and thus not be as reliant on the university's budget.  As Staples notes, this means the athletic department will be able to "meet its budget without taking more money from taxpayers or students."  So, this sounds like a pretty good argument, right?  For all us critics of big-time college athletics, this takes away much of our case, right?  After all, now at places like Maryland and Rutgers, athletics won't draw money from the university, and that money could be used for other things.  Indeed, as Staples notes, "Some schools in big-revenue conferences such as the Big Ten and the SEC actually give money back to the academic side after balancing their budgets."  Heck, can't beat that they'll actually give back, right?

Well, yeah, you see, I think we can beat that.  To do, so let's see how this new scenario looks at a place such as the University of Maryland.

Let's say Maryland athletics make so much money that they contribute a few million dollars -- heck, even 10 or 20 million dollars -- back into the budget.  Even the high end of that range ($20 million) does not equal half of the $50 million budget cuts with which the University of Maryland system was threatened this past spring.  And, remember, Staples says that "some" Big Ten programs give money back to their universities--not all.  And I would get the feeling that places like Ohio State and Michigan are more likely to be the "some" than places like Rutgers and Maryland.  Still, even if a place such as Maryland does give back, it's not making up for the cuts other parts of the university are facing.  So, athletics at a place like Maryland grows, while other parts of the university suffer and shrink (although apparently not the president's house), and at best athletics provides slight assistance in warding off some of that suffering an shrinking.

Meanwhile, there is another alternative.  We could take all of the money we spend on athletics -- and especially football, since it's the sport that's driving this -- and spend it instead on funding education.  Given estimates of revenues that the athletic department at a place like Maryland will generate based on joining the Big 10, if we applied all that money to other aspects of the university -- buying tickets for events at the university that support academic programs, donating it for education and attending a two or three hour reception for donors rather than a two-hour basketball game or three-hour football game, giving money and time spent on college sports to student support services at the university, and so on -- we would more than make up that threatened $50 million budget cut.  (And, by the way, doesn't look just like another amount that's prominent in the University of Maryland's move to the Big Ten -- i.e., the amount they are asked to pay to leave the Atlantic Coast Conference in order to join the Big Ten?)  Tuition would not have to rise, and folks would not have to be asked for more tax money to support higher education. 

As I've argued before, and I continue to argue, this is a matter of priorities.  If we're going to continue down the road of less state support for college education, forcing collegiate programs of all sorts to find other ways to fund themselves amid the marketplace (a model that I find problematic, but that's a discussion for another time), then our choices as consumers in that marketplace really, really matter.  And despite how deeply so many of us have become socialized to participate in the support of college football and other big-time college athletics, we have to start resisting through the choices that we make if we are going to have worthwhile, effective, and accessible higher education.  We need to change our priorities, and I think that starts with giving up college football.  College football is what's driving conference expansion, and college football is driving too much of the ship at too many universities.  I've already made the choice to give it up, and today, while reading about Maryland and Rutgers joining the Big Ten, I'm even more resolved in the idea that I made the right one.

Thursday, September 27, 2012

I Hear There's Been Discontent with the NFL ...

When I made the decision in August to give up college football, I also decided to throw in the NFL as well.  So, just I have not been paying attention to college football, I have equally not been paying attention to the NFL.  I didn't even know that the NFL referees had been locked out until I happened, while reading about other sports, to see a story about it heading into the first week of the NFL season.

Meanwhile, while I wasn't watching, many who have been watching have apparently voiced their discontent following the game this past Monday, using, as Michael Butterworth has noted, the language of armageddon.

Frankly, I don't care a whole heck of a lot about "botched" or otherwise controversial calls.  I suppose it's good that fans have voiced their outrage, but I'm happy that I wasn't even watching in the first place.  Remember -- the NFL locked out its referees; the referees did not strike.  And then, while locking out the referees, the NFL hired replacements ...

This does, I think, as Butterworth suggests, offer "a glimpse into our eschatological future."  And I think it's telling about our present and potentially that future that the articulation of discontent came now and not when the NFL locked out the referees.  It's telling because it reflects the worrisome disregard for the place of labor in the United States and the troubling adherence to the corporate organizational structure that has become so entrenched in U.S. society. When are folks upset?  Apparently only when the product they want suffers, not when the folks who make that product do.

The NFL is a high-stakes corporation, and it seems to have all of the oppressive side effects of such an organization.  In other words, I don't regret giving it up at all ...

Monday, September 3, 2012

Building a Society

In recent weeks, much has been made of a comment by President Obama in which he said, "You didn't build that."  With the statement pulled from its context, many folks have taken exception to it, particularly people who have suggested that the statement dismisses or devalues the hard work that people put into building businesses.  This theme featured prominently at the Republican National Convention this past week.  It even served as context for a bakery in Virginia to turn away Vice President Joe Biden.

I'm certainly not the first to comment on Obama's statement and the context of the statement and/or to offer a counter-criticism of the complaints about the statement.  Heck, the Democratic Party and the Obama campaign were, as one would expect, quick to jump on that.  Yet, on this Labor Day, I want to touch on one aspect of those complaints.  In the speech in which Obama made this statement, he was talking about all of the various things that helped people be in positions to build their businesses.  They were taught by other people.  The roads they used were built by other people.  And so on ... Again, plenty of other folks have already covered that.  I want to focus, though, on how these complaints reflect on laborers.

As the story above about comments from the Republican National Convention demonstrates, these complaints take part in a tradition of thought focused on individualism.  They build out of a myth of the American Dream in which people build success in their own lives out of their own hard work and effort.  And they then argue that Obama's comment flies in the face of the logic of that mythology.

Yet, in the process of suggesting that their work should be valued, these complaints belie a particularly troubling self-centeredness.  Yes, insofar as we place value on labor, the work that one puts into creating and developing an organization warrants recognition.  Yet, anyone who thinks that they are alone in that process is either rather naive or rather uncaring.  In addition to the teachers, road builders, and others to whom Obama was referring when making the comment, businesses don't make it without employees.  Sure, some employees work harder than others, some have more commitment to their jobs than others, and so on, but individuals who perform labor allow organizations to succeed.  Without people doing the day-to-day tasks that any organization needs, the organization does not function and, thus, does not succeed.  Still, in the U.S. we're quick to deny these individuals much recognition.  Focus placed on things like "business leadership" invoke the idea that executives and owners of businesses provided the means for businesses to be profitable and, as such, they deserve large sums of money and large amounts of social and political power.  We then hear how that's their money--they earned it, and they should be able to do with it as they wish.

Except that they didn't earn it all by themselves.  When someone like Terrence Pegula has $88 million available to donate to Penn State hockey programs and still has $189 million left to buy the Buffalo Sabres, he got that money from investing in something.  And, in this particular case, he got it from sale of an oil and gas company that he owned (and which, by the way, made considerable money from fracking).  People worked for him in that company, doing many of the tasks, often very dirty tasks, that made that possible.  Yet, where are they in getting to have a say in the use of that money and the priorities used when doling it out?

In the end, the U.S. gives plenty of credit to business owners, entrepreneurs, and executives who run organizations.  Indeed, the Mitt Romney presidential campaign is centered on the idea that that's what makes someone qualified to be president, and Romney is far from alone among politicians from various sides in articulating such a sentiment.  We do just fine in recognizing their contributions.  On the other hand, we are much less effective in recognizing the labor that accompanied these folks' contributions.  When business owners complain that Obama's comment devalues their work because they did build their companies, as if they did it themselves, they're succumbing to the rather self-centered, undemocratic notion that lies at the heart of our ineffectiveness in recognizing the contributions of laborers.

For every business owner out there who takes exception to Obama's "You didn't build that" statement, there are scores of laborers who helped those business owners build what they are acting like they built themselves.  On this Labor Day -- this day of all days on which we are asked to think about the contributions of laborers to our society -- it seems like a good time to reflect on that a little bit more.

Sunday, September 2, 2012

How I Fared in My First Weekend Without College Football

Thursday, as the college football season was beginning, I wrote about why I could not in good conscience watch the sport anymore, despite enjoying it quite it a lot over the past couple of decades.  Well, after the first Saturday of the season, I can truthfully say that I did not watch or, with one small but important exception that I will note momentarily, follow along with any college football games over the past three days.  As I expected, though, it was difficult.  On Friday morning, as I checked the Arizona State University website to read other news, I saw that one of my alma maters, Arizona State, won big over Northern Arizona on Thursday night.  Because I haven't been following the sport, I hadn't even realized that ASU played Thursday night.  Seeing a headline about it gave me a small twinge of longing to have watched a bit of the game.

On Saturday morning, while checking other sports news on espn.com while eating my breakfast, I saw that Michigan State -- another of my alma maters and the team from among the big six conferences that I have most rooted for and identified with over the past 15 years -- won a close and apparently exciting game over Boise State on Friday night in what appears to have been billed as an opening weekend heavyweight matchup.  Again, I had not even realized that Michigan State had played Friday night or had opened with Boise State.  Had I been following the sport, I would have known this and probably would have watched, and so on Saturday morning, reading about this, I felt quite a lot more longing for college football.

Then, during the say on Saturday, as I logged into Facebook a few times, I saw people using their Facebook status to provide updates on the game between Bowling Green and Florida.  Apparently, Bowling Green scored first, was in the tie with Florida at 14 points apiece in the second half, and hung in well against an opponent that was expected to demolish them.  I learned all of these things from other folks' Facebook updates, and this is when I had the biggest longing of all.  It was very hard not to turn on the television and see if I could watch.  This is when I most started stretching the boundaries of my pact, as twice I went to espn.com, eventually to read stories about tennis, golf, and auto racing, but also, to be honest, as an opportunity to look to the upper left quickly and see the BGSU-Florida score.  It was hard to stop there, and it took a lot of my might not to do more to keep up with the game.

Then, last night, while surfing the net for some reading material while eating something, I saw the headline for this story on the main page of usatoday.com.  Since my checks of espn.com when I glanced at the BGSU-Florida score also meant that I saw headlines indicating that the Nittany Lions had lost to Ohio University, I already knew the outcome of the game.  And, since this was a commentary on Penn State and not a game story, I decided to read the piece.  I'm glad I did, because while reading some of the signs from the Penn State game that are listed in the piece and while reading the tone of moving on from what happened at Penn State that the piece reflects, this story strengthened my resolve.  It feels as if we have learned nothing from what happened at Penn State, nothing about how football occupies an inappropriate place in the structures of universities, and nothing about ourselves.

We are addicts.  We have become addicted to college football, and my own behavior on Saturday demonstrated it.  Like someone addicted to alcohol who finds a way to justify one drink at a social gathering or someone addicted to gambling who starts drawing distinctions between gambling for money and gambling without money, I was already on the first Saturday of the college football season looking for ways to skirt my own commitment to quit the habit.  And as many an addiction program will tell us, the first step in solving a problem is admitting you have a problem.

A major reason why college football is able to keep driving the ship at universities around the country is because so many of us have a problem.  We've become addicted to it.  We spend gobs of money on it, we spend considerable time with it, and we allow it to have heavy influence on so many other parts of our lives.  In the name of this addiction, we justify all kinds of things that we really have no business justifying, from boys being abused at Penn State to allocation of financial resources away from academic programs to a bunch of other things along the way.  As I keep saying, this is a matter of priorities, and like an individual, when a society is addicted, its priorities are out of whack.

I learned this opening college football weekend a little more about the depths to which my priorities have been out of whack.  I was then reminded in the story on usatoday.com how widespread those misplaced priorities are.  I largely made it through the first few days of the college football season with my commitment not to follow the sport intact, yet the ways in which I circumvented that commitment are deeply telling.  I have work to do to relinquish college football's hold on me, and I feel pretty sure that I'm far from alone.

Thursday, August 30, 2012

Goodbye, College Football

Tonight, the 2012 college football season gets underway, and in past years I would have been very excited, ready to start another fall of having the sport in the background each Saturday, each Thursday night, and sometimes on other evenings as I worked.  I feel that excitement again this year; however, I won't be watching.

After some deliberation this summer, I've reached the decision that I just can't justify watching, going to, or otherwise following college football, especially at the NCAA Bowl Subdivision level.  There are, of course, concerns about football injuries that have been voiced prominently in recently years that have me similarly questioning consumption of football at any level.  Indeed, I may choose not to follow the NFL either, though I haven't followed that as much as college football in the past three or four years, so that might not be as difficult to give up.  Yet, for as important as that is, the determining factor in my decision not to consume college football is that I've come to the conclusion that it's being given too high of a place of importance at institutions of higher education, especially at the NCAA Bowl Subdivision level.

In July, I wrote that I thought Penn State University's football program should be shut down because if the head football coach is in a position to influence the president of a university to do something illegal (and in this particular case rather inhumane) that the president was otherwise prepared not to do, then the football program occupies too powerful a position in the organizational structure of the university.  Shutting down the program and reorganizing its place in the institutional structure seems, to me, to be the most appropriate decision.

Yet, I think we'd be naive to think that Penn State is alone in offering such prominence to its football program.  Universities around the country invest significant time and energy in their football programs, while their academic programs and student services programs -- you know, the things that are much more fully tied to the institutions' missions -- continue to suffer and suffer and suffer, from lack of funding, from lack of acknowledgement, from lack of exposure, and from other lacks as well.  Meanwhile, football programs continue to grow -- in funding, in expenses, in exposure, and so on.

These concerns are not particularly new.  Consider, for instance, what Jan Kemp went through 30 years ago after voicing concerns when administrators at the University of Georgia enabled nine football players to pass a remedial English course that they had otherwise failed so that the players could retain their eligibility.  And, of course, questions about the prominence of college football programs predate Kemp's ordeal by plenty of decades as well.

So maybe I've just been fooling myself for a couple decades as I followed college football, finding ways to justify being a fan or excusing its excesses for some selfish consumption.  And maybe I'm now being hypocritical or jumping on a bandwagon by making this decision this year.  I'm willing to self-reflect to interrogate those possibilities; indeed, that has been part of the self-reflection process that has gone into this decision.

I suppose, though, I do think things have changed.  The academic programs and services to help students succeed academically -- remember, though things that are more fundamental to universities' mission statements -- have very recently taken an unprecedented backseat at institutions of higher education.  State funding has dwindled substantially in recent decades and even just in the past few years, and folks such as me are told at my institution to expect this as "the new normal."  Programs at universities are being asked more than ever to rely on the market for their sustainability.  Get donations, raise funds, convince people to send their money your way, all of us are told repeatedly and with increasing force.

And that is what I think ends up making such a crucial difference to me.  If academic programs and student services are going to be forced by university administrators (and the political forces that are heavily influencing those administrators) to "market up" and join the competition for consumption against other entities at the institution, then I cannot in good conscience support an entity that I think is getting entirely too excessive of a share.  As I argued on the Agon about the gift of $88 million by Terrence and Kim Pegula that created self-sustaining Division I men's and women's hockey teams at Penn State, this is a matter of priorities.  Football should not be the priority that it now is, in terms of its financial power, in terms of its institutional power, and in terms of its cultural power.

It doesn't have to be like this.  Sports can have a place at universities as community activities.  Cooperative models in place of our contemporary hypercompetitive models of community structure and development are available.  Unfortunately, we seem unable and/or unwilling to explore those models in ways that would allow for greater diversity, democracy, and humanity.  In seeking to work with efforts to push toward exploring those alternative models, particularly as those models might be applied to educational institutions, a useful step appears to be refusal to take part in an institution that seems to stunt diversity, hinder democracy, and ultimately -- particularly in the Penn State case -- devalue humanity. 

So, goodbye college football.  Perhaps one day we can be friends again, but I fear it might get worse before it gets better.  And to men's college basketball:  You're officially on notice.

Wednesday, August 8, 2012

This Used To Be My Playground


Exactly twenty years ago, Madonna hit number one on Billboard's Hot 100 chart with her single "This Used To Be My Playground" from the film A League of Their Own. The song's title seems to be a fitting way to begin a blog updating the situation regarding the Popular Culture Building at Bowling Green State University.

As I noted in my previous blog entry, efforts have been afoot to try to save the building.  Those efforts have produced a wealth of new information about the house.  Most significantly, thanks to the work of kit homes expert Rosemary Thornton, we have learned that the house is not just a standard Montgomery Ward kit home, as had been believed.  Rather, the home appears to be a kit home produced by Montgomery Ward but in a special request to look like a Sears pattern.  For more on the home and its history, please check out Thornton's Sears Homes blog, which features several posts about the Popular Culture House and other Sears homes in Bowling Green, Ohio.  Also, check out other folks (such as here and here) who know about kit homes and have weighed in on the matter.  In all, the apparent history of this house has made it so much more rarer than initially believed that it's becoming increasingly more difficult to argue against its historic value.

At the beginning of efforts to save this house, I said that as a piece of popular culture, the house was a symbol of the kind of work that popular culture studies does and, thus, as the kind of work that occurred in the home for nearly four decades.  Now, the attempts to save the house have made it more than a symbol.  It is now a physical embodiment of that kind of work, as the attempts to save it have shown just how worthwhile having physical examples of cultural artifacts can be.  In this case, the ability to go into the house and identify characteristics of the house and markings within the house helped provide the basis for reinterpreting the story of the house and its significance.  This a key aspect of popular culture studies, and it's a key component of the importance of material culture to the study of history, culture, and society.  We can learn from interpreting material artifacts, and we can learn even more by having them available for reinterpretation.

Unfortunately, decision makers at the university feel differently, and as you can see in the picture above, the process of removing the house has begun.

Twenty years ago, while Madonna was hitting number one, this building was my playground, while I was a student at Bowling Green State University working on my Bachelor's Degree in Popular Culture.  Several years ago, it would be so again, as I was a faculty member in the department for two years.  It has been one of the places in which my intellectual play has met my intellectual work, where my imagination was able to grasp new connections in the study of culture and come to thicker understandings of the many phenomena that I witness.  And I am not alone, as many other individuals studying popular culture have passed through it on their journeys of intellectual play as well.

It still could be a playground.  Indeed, some of the proposals that have been offered for saving the house have suggested setting up a museum and/or center of popular culture studies in the building.  Yet, again, these proposals have been met with little, if any, consideration, and so this, in all likelihood, will soon cease to be the kind of wonderfully productive playground it has been for folks like me for several decades.

The 1989 song "Open Letter (To A Landlord)" by the band Living Colour begins with the lines "Now, you can tear a building down, but you can't erase a memory.  These houses may look all run down, but they have a value you can't see."  The Popular Culture House has many kinds of value, for the reasons I have indicated here as well as other reasons.  In a fashion that is so severely disappointing that saying so doesn't seem to do it justice, some folks apparently don't even want to see that value.

Sunday, July 22, 2012

Save the Popular Culture Building!

I am an alumnus of the Department of Popular Culture at Bowling Green State University, having received my Bachelor’s degree in Popular Culture in 1994.  I then taught for two years as an instructor within the Department of Popular Culture from 2005-2007, during which time I had an office on the first floor of the Popular Culture Building, which sits on the southwest corner of the intersection of College and Wooster in Bowling Green, Ohio.  From my time as an undergraduate and my time as a faculty member, I have wonderful memories of the Popular Culture Building. 

Over the last number of years, the building has shown some of its age, and it could use significant repairs.  As a university spokesperson stated in a recent article about the plans that appeared in the Bowling Green Sentinel-Tribune, “It is in poor condition and would require a substantial investment to bring it up to being minimally acceptable."  However, administrators at Bowling Green State University have determined that, rather than make those substantial investments to repair the building, the university would be better served by demolishing the building and using that space for other options, such as a parking lot or as part of a site for a new student health center.  That decision appears to be driven by the view of administrators who, as characterized by the university spokesperson, “do not feel the house is particularly significant.”

Unfortunately, that sentiment appears to be one that university administrators gained without surveying members of the community who might feel very differently about the significance of the Popular Culture Building.  Indeed, many of us who are alumni, students, staff, and faculty feel quite strongly about the building, given that it has served as the home of the Popular Culture Department for decades, that it served as a home for a number of past university presidents, that it has unique charm that adds to the character of Bowling Green State University, and that it is a piece of popular culture itself!  It was a catalog home ordered from Montgomery Ward & Company and erected in 1932, then purchased by the university in 1937.  For a little more on the house and its history, see this brief account.

Plans are developing in an attempt to save the Popular Culture house, though work must be done fast, as university administrators – again, apparently without consultation with constituencies who might have a stake in this discussion – have made plans to have the building demolished by the beginning of the Fall 2012 semester, which starts in less than a month on August 20.

If you’d like to be involved in the effort to save the building, here are some things you can do:


Write to BGSU President Mary Ellen Mazey at mmazey@bgsu.edu to indicate your opposition to this decision.

Call the Office of the BGSU President at 419-372-2211 to voice your opposition to this decision.

This blog is devoted to “piecing together personal experience, popular culture, and politics.”  My involvement in efforts to save the Popular Culture Building reflects exactly that confluence.  If not for my interests in the study of popular culture, this blog would not be the kind of avenue of expression that it is today.  Those interests were shaped, in significant part, by my experiences in the Popular Culture Building, and as I have noted, the building’s status as a piece of popular culture has played a significant role in that shaping process.  The politics of BGSU, as they currently work, left me and many other interested folks out of discussions about the future of this building until we noticed third-party reporting about plans that came out of those discussions and that had already been finalized.  Maybe in the end there are really, really good reasons for this decision.  I’d like to think that me and others like me who are attempting to save the building would be willing to accept those reasons had we, or at least folks to represent us, been involved in those decisions.  We weren’t, and that’s why it’s so crucial that we express ourselves now.

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

What's In The Cards

I posted this over on The Agon moments ago but also wanted to post it here:

Last night, I stayed up late watching the Tournament Updates on the World Series of Poker website and ESPN’s Andrew Feldman’s Twitter feeds for the latest happenings at the 2012 World Series of Poker’s “main event.”  When I finally nodded off, twelve players remained as the tournament whittled its way down to the nine players who will square off at the final table in late October.

Upon waking just after 7:00 a.m. this morning, I immediately checked to see what I had missed.  Indeed, the field had been cut to nine, but unfortunately, my main rooting interests went out in positions eleven and ten, as Elisabeth Hille of Norway and Gaelle Baumann of France just missed making the final table.

This was big news, as it’s the furthest that a pair of women together in one year has ever made it in the World Series of Poker’s 43 “main event” tournaments.  Only once – in 1995 – did a woman make the final table.  That year Barbara Enright finished fifth.  A few other times, a woman has just missed the final table, as Barbara Samuelson in 1994, Susie Isaacs in 1998, and Annie Duke in 2000 each placed tenth.  The year that Duke finished 10th, Kathy Liebert finished 17th in what, before Baumann and Hille this year, had been the highest placing pair of women in the tournament’s history.  (For a bit more on Baumann and Hille’s place in history, see this story.)

Meanwhile, in many years, no woman has even placed in the money.  For the first 16 years of the tournament (1970 to 1985), no woman placed.  (In fact, until 1978, no woman even entered the tournament.)  After Wendeen Eolis finished 25th in 1986, no woman cashed between 1987 and 1992.  In 1999, 2001, and 2002, no women cashed as well.

These numbers aren’t particularly surprising given the level of female participation in the event.  While I don’t have a figure for the number of women in the main event this year, through 58 tournaments at this year’s World Series of Poker (there are 61 tournaments total, with the Texas Hold ‘Em “Main Event” as the final tournament), it’s been reported that women made up 4.9 percent of the participants.  A general sense of the history and coverage of the main event would lead me to believe that the number of female participants in the main event wasn’t too far away from that mark. 

In other words, in what is not a surprise to anyone who follows it – and probably not a surprise to a lot of other folks as well – professional poker is a very male-dominated sport.

Now, I recognize that there are questions about whether or not poker really is a “sport,” but, regardless of one’s position on that issue, the game does draw on many conventions of sport in its coverage, its marketing, and its culture.  In doing so, it also provides us, I think, with a useful window into discussions of gendered participation in sport.  Time and again, we hear arguments that would deny women opportunities in sport based on the premise that it’s just physically impossible for women to compete with men.  Biologically, arguments like this one go, men are stronger, faster, and bigger than women, so men will always be better at games like basketball, baseball, hockey, tennis, and so on than women.  These arguments are then deployed to trump questions about culture or socialization as significant contributing factors to women’s participation and success in these and other sports.

Yet, in poker, those arguments about stronger, faster, and bigger don’t hold up.  Indeed, since research has suggested that women are better at interpreting interpersonal communication than men, if we’re going to go with biology, it would seem that there’s an argument to be made that women should dominate poker.  Still, men dominate the game, and I think the culture of poker, socialization processes into poker, and many other cultural and social processes from outside of sports that discourage women from participating in poker have to be considered here in order to explain adequately why the game is so dominated by men.  That these practices and processes involving poker mirror practices and processes involving other sports—and the ability of ESPN to market its coverage of poker relies mightily on how heavily they do—compels us, I think, to recognize more fully the roles of culture and socialization in perpetuating inequitable opportunities for women throughout the world of sports.  If, as the saying goes, the cards don’t lie, then they appear to tell us that arguments for gendered inequality based in biology do.

Thursday, July 12, 2012

Hunger Pains

Since we met, my wife and I have enjoyed going to the theater to see films together.  We’ve probably seen somewhere around a couple hundred films in the theater over the past 14 years.  Living in Bowling Green, Ohio, for the past several years has contributed mightily to that, since the Cinemark here in town at the Woodland Mall – both affectionately and mockingly known by BG locals as “The Small” – has to be one of the best deals for seeing new films in the theater in the country.

One Friday this past April (April 6, to be exact), my wife and I decided to go to the theater, and we settled on The Hunger Games as our choice.  We both sat squarely on the fence about whether to see the film or not.  Neither of us was against seeing it, but neither of us expressed a particular interest in hurrying out to it either.  Neither of us had read the books, but we both had heard of The Hunger Games as a popular culture phenomenon.  Nothing else of greater interest was showing, though, so we went to see The Hunger Games.

And I was blown away.  I loved it.  I left the theater saying that, even though blockbusters and Academy Award nominations don’t typically go hand in hand, this deserved merit for the Oscars, and a number of its actors, especially Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen for Best Actress, deserved nominations as well.  I also talked about how much I enjoyed seeing a strong female lead character in this film—something I made sure to bring up in the Communication and Gender class I was teaching the following Monday.

Within days, I had purchased the novel on my Kindle and was devouring it, followed quickly by its sequels, Catching Fire and Mockingjay.  I continued to be enthralled, and the more I read the books, the more I was convinced of their value, not only because of the strong female lead character, but also because they seemed like an outstanding set of narratives for illustrating standpoint theory—a theory that suggests that one’s positions in power structures within a society affect one’s viewpoints, attitudes, expectations, interests, and so on.  Standpoint theory plays a large role when I teach Communication and Gender as well as when I teach a course on Communication, Race, and Power, which I was also teaching in the spring, and so the articulation of this theory in these books came along for me at a time when they resonated profoundly with the content in the courses I was teaching.  I took time in each course to talk about this connection. 

The first book in the series clearly seems to be the best, and the third book – Mockingjay – did contain a few parts that felt a bit contrived, but I found great value in the entire series.  The series demonstrates the aforementioned connection to standpoint theory as we see Katniss learn to understand how different people who have experienced different forms and levels of privilege come to very different ways of making sense out of life.  The hope is, of course, that as we read about Katniss’ experiences, we learn to apply this to our own lives and interactions with others as well.  At least, that’s the connection I saw to the Communication and Gender and Communication, Race, and Power classes. 

In the process, though, the books also demonstrate how hegemony works, and with the “Hunger Games” competition, the narrative seems to serve as an excellent metaphor for discussing and understanding how forms of oppression and dehumanization occur within competitive systems like capitalism.

The third book adds another important element to that, as it demonstrates how resistance movements can often end up investing in their own forms of oppression and dehumanization.  In particular, the resistance movement in this book seems to provide an excellent depiction of how socialist movements such as those that have developed in the Soviet Union, China, and Cuba can be little or no better at avoiding oppression and dehumanization than the competitive capitalist systems that they oppose.  The series, as a whole, thus invites both reflection on how to recognize the oppressive and inhumane aspects of both systems and discussion of how we might chart a course that provides a more humane alternative to these two options that have so pervasively dominated the modern world.

Meanwhile, the third book also includes the very important narrative element that provides the basis for the overall story’s literary irony.

Given all of this, I have been greatly looking forward to the theatrical versions of Catching Fire and Mockingjay.  However, some very recent news has dampened that enthusiasm considerably.

This week, Lionsgate Entertainment announced that the third book, Mockingjay, will be split into two films, continuing a trend that started with the seventh book in the Harry Potter series, which was cut into two films that were released in November 2010 and July 2011, respectively.  That cut made some sense.  Many Harry Potter fans with whom I’ve talked have tended to feel that the film versions of books four, five, and six left too much out.  The seventh book is no less densely packed, and so significant of an amount of narrative elements needed resolution in the seventh Harry Potter book that, while still debatable, I think a case can be made for justifying splitting the final book into two films.

Not justifiable, though, is the trend that this has begun.  Soon after film studios realized the increased profitability of having two films for one Harry Potter book, other franchises began to follow suit.  The fourth book in the Twilight series was split into two books, and as someone who has read all of the books and seen all of the films, I can state quite firmly that I do not believe that Breaking Dawn contains the kinds of narrative complexity that warrant two films.  Additionally, while each of the books from the The Lord of the Rings trilogy warranted its own book, largely because they are their own books to begin with, I do not think that The Hobbit needs to be broken into two films.  Indeed, it’s already been done as one (albeit animated) film before.  And, similarly, for all of its merits within the The Hunger Games series, Mockingjay does not seem worthy of two films.  Quite the opposite, I fear that two films, by both drawing out the narrative to a point of lost efficacy and, particularly, by splitting the narrative in two separate experiences, have the capacity to diminish the strength of the book’s narrative themes and resonances.

This is, though, as so many folks have already realized, a rather bald play for profit by film production studios.  They can make much more money by asking filmgoers to attend two films, asking consumers to purchase two films, and so on than they can by just having one film.  And, of course, they’re relying on the premise that fans like me who really enjoyed the book series and the first film, along with the regular blockbuster-attending public, will pay for a second set of tickets, a second DVD or digital download, and so on.

When, though, is enough enough?  Supposed “news” sources often report on ways in which Hollywood loses money.  Every time we witness a few weeks in which the films in theaters didn’t rake in as much money as the films in theaters on corresponding weeks one year before, we’re inevitably treated to stories about Hollywood being in “a slump.”  Forget any other complicating factors, like how the summer blockbuster planned for exactly one year after a film like The Dark Knight, Avatar, Spider-Man, or any of the other top 20 pictures of all time would be hard-pressed to repeat the success of their predecessors from one year earlier.  Forget that 14 of the top 20 highest-grossing films of all time in the United States have come out in the last 10 years and that three of the top five have come out in the last five years.  Forget that even in a down week, especially during the summer and between Thanksgiving and Christmas, movie theaters bring in tons of money every week.  And forget all of the other ways in which Hollywood has figured out how to make money beyond theater ticket sales.  Hollywood production studios, and their parent companies, would continually like you to believe that they are facing pending economic collapse.  The news agencies that report this, which are owned by those same parent companies as the film production studios, are complicit in this ploy as they report this.  And, in the end, they’re banking on the consuming public paying for all of this, like the folks in Capital City, needing diversions to make our lives meaningful while the economic system that produces those diversions continues its various forms of oppression and dehumanization, often without our awareness or our concern. 

In the end, it’s tough to say what is enough, and that’s a question that folks like me who study popular culture usually have to negotiate as we both find pleasure in popular culture and critique it at the same.  It’s a question that many courses I teach, many conversations I have, many written works that I publish, and this blog seek to ask more folks to realize and explore.  It may be that I have already bought too much into the ploy by seeing films in theaters, by buying the The Hunger Games books, by purchasing soundtracks for some films I see, and so on.  Having a local film theater that only charges a few bucks to see a newly released film makes it a little easier for me to justify going to the movies, but it still exists within that negotiation process, and that my available choice involves simply how much money I will spend to see a film in a theater demonstrates some of the privileges I already enjoy that many do not.  And, in the end, as much as it pains me to say it, the splitting of Mockingjay into two films may have to be the line I cannot cross.  I’m anxious to see the cinematic representation of the novel, but I think in the end I’m more anxious not to contribute to what seems to be an embodiment by Lionsgate of the very antithesis of the useful critical theme that drew me to the books in the first place.

Sunday, July 1, 2012

Not Any Lions: Some Thoughts on the State of Penn State Football

I would not say that I am a fan of Penn State football, but growing up I did develop a bit of an affinity toward them because one of my brothers somehow became a fan, and they seemed like a good “outside” rooting interest when you’re smack dab in the middle of Ohio State-Michigan country and you don’t want to root for either of those teams.  This, of course, comes with a few caveats.  First, Penn State only really became a good rooting interest along those lines when they joined in Big Ten conference in the early 1990s.  Second, I really most pulled for Northwestern among Big Ten teams as I grew up, because they were so horrible in the 1980s and that made them worthy of my rooting interest.  And third, once I went to Michigan State for my Master’s degree in the mid-1990s, the Spartans became my rooting interest within the Big Ten.  Still, in football, behind Michigan State and sometimes Northwestern, I have tended to root for Penn State for the past decade and a half within Big Ten football.

Given the well-documented events that came to light last fall in regard to Penn State football, my rooting interest has largely evaporated.  And, given additional evidence that has come to light within a recent CNN report on email exchanges among principal administrators in the case, I’m thinking that more is needed than simply not rooting for Penn State football.  Namely, I’m leaning heavily toward thinking that the football program at Penn State University should be shut down.  That shutdown should occur for at least a couple of seasons, and it perhaps could go on longer.  I’m thinking it should be set from the beginning as indefinite, and it should occur until such time as the university has thoroughly and sufficiently created a structure for the program that would prevent similar kinds of abuses from occurring.  To be thorough and sufficient enough, the new structure would need to include significant measures to ensure that the football program does not attain the kinds of cultural and organizational power that would appear to have been a significant contributing factor to the situation that allowed Jerry Sandusky to remain involved with the football program and the university.

Now, I know that there are concerns about penalizing current players, coaches, and other individuals (including, I suppose, fans) who were not individually involved in this situation.  Indeed, such concerns have held me from reaching my current opinion for some time.  However, I see those as problematic concerns that, like too many other phenomena in the contemporary United States, place too much emphasis on individual action and individual pathology and not enough emphasis on deeper cultural and organizational structures that induce individual actions.  Indeed, the very emphasis on the individual and not the cultural and organizational appears to have been a significant part of the problem created by PSU administrators Graham Spanier, Tim Curley, and Gary Schultz in their reaction to concerns about Sandusky’s behavior in 2001.  As the CNN report notes, they saw the “humane” path as one in which they confronted only Sandusky about the situation and sought to allow him to work individually on correcting his behavior.  This would appear to place too much emphasis on individual action without addressing the organizational and cultural elements of Penn State football that might have helped encourage and sustain Sandusky’s individual action.  Those elements include authority given to head coach Joe Paterno toward determining the course of action taken, as it appears by the email exchange in the CNN report that Paterno’s reluctance to involve anyone outside of Penn State’s athletics administration in the matter may have significantly influenced the actions taken (or, more to the point, actions not taken).

While sanctions against these individuals have an important place in addressing this situation, I don’t think that speaks enough to the kinds of organizational and cultural power structures that would allow a football program to elicit that kind of power – particularly the kind of power to convince the university president to subvert state law about reporting the 2001 incident by handling the situation internally.  There are increasingly persuasive arguments recently that football may not even have a place at colleges and universities, but perhaps it does still have a place.  However, even if it does, that place should not be anywhere near as high as it appears to be not only at Penn State, but at numerous higher education institutions across the country.  I believe more is needed to address this, and I think a good start is by shutting down the football program at Penn State University for a minimum of a couple of years and then indefinitely after that until such time as the university demonstrates that football has been accorded a more appropriate place within the university structure.

As part of this proposal, current players, coaches, and staff affiliated with the football program and not directly involved in the Sandusky situation would be given the opportunity to transfer or seek employment at alternative institutions while foregoing any typical sanctions that they would face for doing so.  Given that that’s not a particularly practical consideration with the 2012 college football season only two months away, Penn State would be allowed to play its regular-season schedule this season.  They would be excluded from any postseason opportunities, but at least playing this season would give current players, coaches, and staff in the program a much more equitable opportunity to seek alternatives.  That could occur at the conclusion of the season, and with the program barred from any postseason opportunities, they could all begin that search early within the transferring and hiring cycles.  The program would then shut down at the end of the 2012 season—again, for at least a couple of years and indefinitely after that until Penn State University demonstrated to some independent entity that the university had sufficiently made arrangements for a more appropriate place for the program within the university structure.

Ideally, the university would make this move itself and seek help from other agencies in soliciting an outside entity to make a future determination about reinstatement of the program.  If the university won’t do it, then the government of the state of Pennsylvania and the NCAA are other possible sources for the decision, preferably in that order, I think.  Whatever the case, I’m very much coming to the conclusion that this kind of action is warranted.  At the very least, if I continue to watch college football (and, feeling a tension similar to that recently expressed by Abe Khan on the Agon, I’m seriously considering not watching college football at all any more), I will most certainly not watch or pay particular attention to games that involve Penn State.

Sunday, May 27, 2012

An Oval of Conflict

I just sat down a little while ago to watch the Indianapolis 500, and for the first time in a long time, if not ever, I'm seriously conflicted about whether or not to watch.

As I've said before on this blog, the Indy 500 is my favorite sporting event to watch each year. Over the past 30 years, I've watched almost every race, only missing a few here and there because of conflicting events (mainly high school graduations, including my own). In recent years, I've also become fairly attached to watching the entire Indycar series. Yet, after the death of Dan Wheldon in Las Vegas in the final race of the series last October, I've had a hard time getting back into the series.  Much of this is tied to what I wrote on the Agon on the day of Wheldon's funeral last fall. Please read that piece, which sums up concerns that have significantly influenced my reservations about watching this year's race.

I tried to watch the Indycar series with the very first race of the season earlier this spring, but when pre-race television coverage went to a piece about Dan Wheldon and his death, I lost interest. I turned the telecast off and, while trying again with subsequent races, I have not watched a race in the series since. Still, as the calender turned to May, and the series turned to Indianapolis, I tried again, this time to watch the time trials as drivers qualified for the Indianapolis 500. Sure enough, that worked. I watched attentively, and here I am today watching the race.

Yet, coincidentally enough, the moment I turned on the pre-race coverage today, about 15 minutes into it, ABC was at the end of a piece about Dan Wheldon and his death. That piece ended with ideas about how important it is to remember Dan Wheldon -- to keep him "forever in our hearts," as one statement that could be seen on the telecast put it. Yet, that seemed only to translate into reflecting on how sad it was to lose a great driver, while not translating into serious contemplation on the conditions that contributed to his death.

It's that seemingly misplaced sentiment that makes it difficult for me to watch and support the league right now. It's the misplaced values that I associate with that sentiment that, even if I do manage to get back to watching the league, will keep me from watching the race at Texas Motor Speedway, which is run and promoted by Eddie Gossage, whose attitudes and actions appear to reflect deeply the very problematic ideological commitments that I mention in my piece on The Agon from last October. And it's all of this that has me so conflicted as I watch the race. We'll see how it goes. I very well may watch and enjoy it, but I won't be taking it so lightly.

Saturday, February 11, 2012

Dancing with Whitney



If you read this blog, or if you read my posts over on Tunesmate, you surely realize by now that I have a fondness for popular music. For over two decades now, I've been formally studying popular culture, and in the process I've examined film and television, I've done a lot of research on sports, I've look at advertising and consumption, and I've analyzed popular literature. Yet, the impetus for studying popular culture really came from my interest in music.

When I started college, I even thought about studying music. Upon entry at Bowling Green State University in 1990, I was accepted into the College of Music, largely on my music theory knowledge, while being told that I was going to have to spend the summer between high school and college learning how to play my tuba much more effectively if I was going to cut it.

On the way home from my audition, while sad over the results and not sure what to think or how to feel, my dad told me about something else I could study at BGSU: Popular Culture. And the more I thought about it, the more this seemed like a match. I had, after all, spent my last couple of years of high school playing bass guitar, watching MTV, and pouring over Billboard magazine when it came in the mail each week. (I used to spend almost $200 of my own money each year for that Billboard subscription.)

I went into my first year at BGSU undecided, having enrolled in the Introduction to Popular Culture course to see what it was like. By November -- just three months into my first semester of college -- I was hooked. I declared Popular Culture as my major, and I've been studying it in some form or another ever since.

On the surface, that may seem to have little to do with the passing of Whitney Houston, which is ultimately the subject of this post. Yet, that journey was at least in part inspired by Whitney.

While I'm sure the interest in popular music had been latent within me for years, it was the summer of 1987 that really made me recognize it. Following Dial MTV every day that summer, typically while hanging out with my friend Glen, I had a full blast of songs like Heart's "Alone," George Michael's "I Want Your Sex," Bob Seger's "Shakedown," and Whitney Houston's "I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)," among a host of others. Houston's song in particular made me love pop music. I thought she was so beautiful in the video, and the song had such amazing energy that it made me crave the joy of singing, dancing, and playing and listening to music.

By the end of that summer, between my freshman and sophomore years of high school, my whole outlook had changed, and popular music was now as big a part of my life as anything. I built my schedule around making sure I listened to Rick Dees' Weekly Top 40. I watched MTV as much as my family would let me have the TV set to do so. And I was writing lyrics with a good deal of my spare time. That following spring, while Whitney Houston was setting the record for most consecutive number one singles (as I’ve written about this evening on Tunesmate), I was getting my first bass guitar and dreaming of life as a pop star.

Obviously, I didn't become a pop star, but I did become a pop culture scholar who still deeply loves popular music and who still writes music when I have the time. And, I don't know that I would have done any of it without dancing with Whitney back in the summer of 1987.

Monday, February 6, 2012

J. Geils Band's "Centerfold"



As a nine-year-old heterosexual boy in Catholic school in the early 1980s, I'm sure there were a lot of reasons why this song and video appealed to me. Looking back on it now, it's quite apparent just how much it embodies the kinds of blatant sexism that have been staples of rock 'n' roll music. I mean, seriously, is J. Geils Band's "Centerfold" not the perfect example of
scrawny-looking men thinking that women should be throwing themselves at them?

I obviously wasn't alone, as the song went to number 1 on Billboard's Hot 100 chart exactly 30 years ago today, and it would remain there for a total of six weeks. Surely, the catchiness of the whistled melody played a significant role in the song's popularity as well, and I do remember a few instances in which I was whistling or singing that melody without thinking about it in the context of the subject matter of the song or video. Yet, I have to think that subject matter also aided that popularity, and in that regard, it's a pretty telling reflection of the kinds of gender attitudes that prevailed at the time (and that, I think, many contemporary media texts would suggest we may not be as far removed from as we might like to think).

Monday, January 16, 2012

Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day!



I hope that everyone has a safe and enjoyable Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. I will use this day as a time to give thanks for what I have and reflect on the many folks who have helped make that possible and who continue to do so. As I suggested a year ago, this seems like a much more appropriate day for that than Thanksgiving.

Saturday, January 14, 2012

A Racial Inequity of Hall of Fame Proportions?

Every year since he has become eligible, Alan Trammell has received a significant enough amount of votes to remain on the Hall of Fame ballot, though he has not been elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. This includes appearing on 36.8 percent of the ballots this year. Meanwhile, the ballplayer whose name very prominently complemented Trammell’s through almost the entirety of Trammell’s career, Lou Whitaker, did not receive the five percent needed to remain on the ballot during his first year of eligibility back in 2001, when his name appeared on just 2.9 percent of the ballots cast.

As I grew up in the 1980s, Trammell and Whitaker were seemingly inseparable amid baseball discourse. Both came up, with Trammell at shortstop and Whitaker at second base, for the Detroit Tigers in 1977, and both played nearly their entire careers together for the Tigers, mostly as the team’s starting double-play tandem, through Whitaker’s retirement after the 1995 season. Trammell retired one year later.

In the end, their statistics look very similar. Whitaker played in 2390 games and had 8570 at bats, while Trammell played in 2293 games and had 8288 at bats. Whitaker scored 1386 runs and drove in 1084 RBIs, while Trammell scored 1231 runs and drove in 1003 RBIs. Whitaker had 2369 hits, of which 420 were doubles, 65 were triples, and 244 were home runs. Trammell had 2365 hits, of which 412 were doubles, 55 were triples, and 185 were doubles. Whitaker walked significantly more than Trammell (1099 vs. 874), but he also struck out significantly more than Trammell (1197 vs. 850). Trammell stole significantly more bases (236 vs. 143) and had a significantly higher batting average (.285 to .276), but Whitaker had a higher on base percentage (.363 to .352) and a higher slugging percentage (.426 to .415).

At the time of Whitaker’s retirement, he ranked as follows all-time among second basemen: ninth in hits, fifth in home runs, eighth in runs score, ninth in RBIs, ninth in doubles, fourth in walks, and seventh in at bats. All of those are higher than where Trammell ranked all-time among shortstops at the time of his retirement. Trammell’s rankings were tenth in hits, sixth in home runs, fifteenth in runs score, fifteenth in RBIs, eleventh in doubles, thirteenth in walks, and fifteenth in at bats. Trammell’s ranking of 26th in stolen bases does significantly outperform Whitaker’s ranking of 71st. Also, Trammell ranked 18th in average and 11th in slugging percentage among shortstops, while Whitaker ranked 30th and 12th, respectively. Both were ranked seventeenth in on base percentage, and neither ranked particularly high in triples, though Whitaker did rank higher among second basemen than Trammell did among shortstops. In other words, at the time of retirement Whitaker ranked higher against his positional peers than Trammell in more of the most prominent statistical categories than Trammell ranked higher than Whitaker.

In the time since these two retired, some second basemen have passed Whitaker and some shortstops have passed Trammell. Still, Whitaker remains more highly ranked among second basemen than Trammell does among shortstops on all from the above statistics that he did at the time of retirement except hits, where Trammell is now ranked twelfth among shortstops while Whitaker is ranked thirteenth among second basemen. Meanwhile, Trammell remains more highly ranked in batting average among shortstops than Whitaker does among second basemen (23rd to 42nd), and Trammell is now barely ranked higher among shortstops in on base percentage than Whitaker is among second basemen (20th to 21st), but Whitaker is now ranked slightly higher among second baseman in slugging percentage than Trammell is among shortstops (19th to 20th).

Meanwhile, to make this about at least a little more than batting statistics, Whitaker has a lifetime fielding percentage of .984 (all at second base), while Trammell has a lifetime fielding percentage of .977 at shortstop (along with 944 in 9 games in the outfield, .950 in 11 games at second base, and .950 in 43 games at third base).

All of this considered, there is a strong case to be made that Whitaker actually outperformed Trammell. At the very least, it suggests that there is anything but a clear-cut case of Trammell outperforming Whitaker. Still, the results of a little over a decade of Hall of Fame voting provide a different story, as indicated in my first paragraph above.

In the end, I can’t help but wonder if race is playing a role here, given that Trammell is white, while Whitaker is African American. There are well-documented histories of stereotyped depictions of black athletes as more naturally gifted than white athletes alongside overly generalized characterizations of white athletes as scrappier and more intelligent than black athletes. These characterizations have helped produce a history of Major League Baseball folks seeing white athletes as more fit for managerial and coaching roles than black athletes, and perhaps that has played a role in the fact that Trammell has gone on to become a major league coach and manager, while Whitaker has not. It would seem like these racialized perceptions could also easily lead Hall of Fame ballot holders to give Trammell more credit for his performance than they give Whitaker and thus produce the inequity of these two players’ ballot results.

Friday, January 13, 2012

A Higher Standard

This week Ohio State University president Gordon Gee appears to have added to the list of awkward statements that he has compiled in recent months. That list includes some disparaging remarks toward the likes of Boise State and TCU in the Fall of 2010. It also includes the unfortunate statement during the investigation of former OSU football coach Jim Tressel last spring that rather than fire Tressel, Gee hoped Tressel didn't fire him. Now, while speaking on Wednesday at the downtown athletic club in Columbus, Gee made an ethnically insensitive statement by referring to a coordination problem among institutions by saying, "It was kind of like the Polish army or something."

For a much-circulated Associate Press account of this latest instance, see here. Now, looking at that again, check out the second-to-last paragraph, which reference other "gaffes" that Gee has made in the past. One listed is from 1992 when Gee called then-governor of Ohio George Voinovich "a damn dummy" regarding funding for higher education.

While this 1992 "gaffe" does reflect upon Gee, it also reflects on a level of agenda setting within the Associated Press, at the very least on the part of the AP writer(s) who wrote the story. Specifically, I'm not sure how this qualifies as a "gaffe." I suppose if it is meant to suggest that his use of the term "dummy" reflects insensitivity to people who cannot speak, I might agree. However, if it's meant to suggest that it was awkward or inappropriate for Gee to refer to Voinovich like that, then it's hardly a "gaffe." I remember higher education changes being proposed and developed by Voinovich's administration at that time, and I remember thinking they were very misguided and antithetical to what I would envision as a thriving and democratic system of education. One change involved the centralization of many graduate programs in the state, which seemed to me that it would take away some of the useful diversity that comes from having multiple degree-granting programs that have different emphases, strengths, and specialities. Indeed, to some extent that change benefited Gee's own institution, as OSU became even more fully (as if it wasn't enough already) a centralized place for research and advanced academic study. Yet, even Gee saw that Voinovich's vision of higher education contained significant flaws.

So, in that context, Gee's comment about Voinovich hardly seems like a gaffe, and it certainly doesn't fit into the same category as his "Polish army" comment. Rather, the mistake here is in the AP story, which sets us up to disallow Gee's comment on Voinovich and thus positions us to accept legitimacy in what Voinovich did to higher education.

Higher education deserves better than this.

Sunday, January 8, 2012

My Hypothetical 2012 MLB Hall of Fame ballot

At approximately 2:00 p.m. tomorrow (Monday, January 9), the 2012 National Baseball Hall of Fame voting results will be announced. Check here for a look at who was on the ballot this past year.

Over the last three years, I’ve posted on this blog indication of those players for whom I would vote if I had a ballot. So, without further ado, if I had an MLB Hall of Fame ballot this year, I would vote for the following ten players (in rough order of how strongly I feel they belong):

Mark McGwire
Rafael Palmeiro
Fred McGriff
Barry Larkin
Tim Raines
Jeff Bagwell
Jack Morris
Dale Murphy
Lee Smith
Alan Trammell

None of these players are new to this year’s ballot. The first nine fall right in line with what I wrote last year, so please read that for more commentary. With Roberto Alomar and Bert Blyleven from last year’s ballot having been elected, that made room for Murphy and Smith to move onto the ballot. Meanwhile, they jumped ahead of Harold Baines from last year, since Baines unfortunately failed last year to attain the five percent to maintain eligibility for the ballot.

Filling in Trammell in the tenth slot was the toughest call to make (and, though I don’t remember my thought process from a year ago, apparently, a year ago I would have put Larry Walker and Don Mattingly ahead of him). After looking over statistics from the careers of a group of players that included Trammell, Walker, and Mattingly as well as Juan Gonzalez, Edgar Martinez, and Bernie Williams, I decided that Trammell had the best case. That said, it was very tough to select one from among that group of six players, and so, like most years, if I could vote for more than 10 players, I would. In fact, I would vote for 16. That includes all of the ten on the mock ballot above as well as the five players who vied with Trammell for the tenth slot on my list.

Of course, that only adds up to 15, and so the final player who would make it is Ruben Sierra. I actually looked at Sierra’s numbers along with the six players mentioned above whom I examined for my tenth slot. I easily separated the other six from Sierra, though, which left him out of that hunt. However, when I reconsidered him to discuss what I would do with an unlimited ballot, I decided to include him. Statistically, he matches up with some players for whom I would have voted in the past. (See last year’s blog post as well as the posts from 2010 and 2009.) I hesitated, though, and I think that hesitation came from my perception of Sierra as not living up to expectation. When Sierra came up in 1986/1987, he was touted very highly, and for a while in the late 1980s and early 1990s, he was my favorite baseball player. I even considered trying to find and purchase the album of music he released in 1994. But then Sierra’s career fell apart, and in the end he didn’t quite live up to the hype. Still, he ended up having a very nice career—one that, in the end, I think was just good enough to warrant Hall of Fame inclusion. Just barely, though.

After Sierra, the remaining candidates on the ballot (all of whom are new to the ballot this year) failed to stack up enough for serious consideration. The only one who seemed to warrant a second look was Vinny Castilla, but his statistics did not stack up enough to merit inclusion, especially when the 1990s Colorado effect seems to need to be taken into account for him. So, in addition to Castilla, Jeromy Burnitz, Brian Jordan, Javy Lopez, Bill Mueller, Terry Mulholland, Phil Nevin, Brad Radke, Tim Salmon, Tony Womack, and Eric Young would not make my ballot.