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.