It's nearly college football season, which means Iowa fans can look forward to another Top 25 squad, and Illinois fans can pray for respectability and then look forward to basketball season.
But maybe avid boosters ought to consider their own critical role in the ills of college athletics. Namely, they ought to recognize that they're supporting of the exploitation of college-sports stars. (Full disclosure: As a University of Illinois graduate and fan, I'm part of the problem.)
In Steve Bahls' essay in these pages, the Augustana College president is unequivocal in identifying the source of many of the problems in college athletics: "NCAA Division I sports ... have created campus subcultures in which prima donna players have little in common with their fellow students."
This is undoubtedly true, and Bahls' recommendation to better integrate athletes into the student body is a good one. Separate is not equal.
But the problems of college sports run deeper than segregation, and they're tied less to campus culture than to money. In calling athletic segregation the "worm" that has spoiled the apple of intercollegiate athletics, Bahls ignores two critical, and somewhat contradictory, issues.
(1) To borrow his fruit metaphor, the apple is rotten enough that eliminating athletic segregation won't reduce the number of scandals in college sports.
(2) The problems of intercollegiate athletics are largely confined to two sports, so the type of reform that Bahls suggests - integrating athletes into the normal student body - is more sweeping than it needs to be.
In other words, Bahls' proposal, while well-intentioned, is at once too little and too much. It's too little because it doesn't address the core problem in intercollegiate athletics, which is that, as he notes, it's quasi-professional. And it's too drastic because it doesn't restrict itself to those sports that are quasi-professional, namely football and men's basketball.
The biggest problem with college sports is that athletes in the Division I revenue sports of football and men's basketball continue to function as de facto minor-league systems for the NBA and NFL, but with major-league fan interest and with compensation that comes nowhere near reflecting their value to their educational institutions. The effect is that players are cheered and booed and marketed as if they were being paid the same as professional athletes, but if their schools are playing by the rules, a free education is all they get in return.
Athletes are, in other words, simultaneously put on that "quasi-professional" pedestal by fans, their schools, and their conferences and treated like slaves by NCAA rules.
Consider, for example, how much money hoops star Dee Brown brought in for the University of Illinois, not just filling Assembly Hall every game but selling jerseys from magazine covers and with his electric style of play. Dee Brown generated hundreds of thousands - perhaps even millions - of dollars for the U of I. What he did he get? Presumably only a scholarship. With his brilliant smile, Brown participated in a system that exploited his skills and sweat.
To me, the surprise is that there aren't more athletes like former Iowa basketball star Pierre Pierce, now in prison on burglary and assault convictions. Many college athletes act entitled because, bluntly, they have a legitimate beef; they've been aggrieved by a fundamentally unfair system that doesn't pay them in a manner that reflects the revenue they generate for their schools.
The imbalance between what sports stars give and what they're allowed to receive won't change by making the experience of athletes more similar to that of ordinary students. Whether they're segregated on campus or not, athletes in football and men's basketball are going to be treated like celebrities without getting the commensurate compensation.
Some people will argue that these athletes are paying their dues, much like players for the Swing or the Mallards. The difference is that Division I athletes are the tools colleges and universities use to generate millions of dollars in attendance, merchandise, enrollment, and alumni gifts. The never-ending debate about Chief Illiniwek at the University of Illinois is a testament to how closely athletics are tied to the image - and financial well-being - of institutions of higher education.
With few exceptions, this disconnect between revenue and compensation only exists in men's basketball and football. Bahls' remedy suggests a problem much larger - one that infects the whole of college sports.
But if that were true, wouldn't there be more lacrosse, gymnastics, and track scandals? The Duke lacrosse case - in which three white players are charged with raping a black woman at a party - has drawn so much attention because of its racial component and because it is so unusual. As sad as it is to say, if the accused were basketball or football players, I doubt it would have received nearly as much press; it would have been business as usual.
The reality of the system is that the problems are largely limited to sports in which fan interest is intense. Consider that of 34 current instances of NCAA probation among Division I schools, only five do not include violations in the schools' football or men's basketball programs.
The question, though, is whether those relatively small numbers of violators reflect a relatively small number of cheaters or a relatively small number of people who get caught.
On that score we can't be certain, but the list of NCAA institutions with major violations (available on the NCAA Web site from http://www.ncaa.org/enforcement/) looks about right. Schools widely thought to be historically "dirty" are well-represented.
In its entire history, the University of Iowa has been cited for two major violations by the NCAA, the last in 1986.
The University of Illinois' history is more troubled, particularly with its football program. The school has recorded six major violations, including in 1984, 1988, and 2005. That ties the school for eighth among schools with the most violations.
And famously, the recruitment of basketball player Deon Thomas by Illinois led to an investigation and, in 1990, three years' probation. That affair remains a sore spot for many Illinois fans because of the involvement of Bruce Pearl, then an Iowa assistant who was also trying to recruit Thomas.
But those violations don't make the entire athletic enterprise corrupt.
Consider the NCAA's most recent Academic Progress Rate reports, which found that only one sport each at Illinois and Iowa is performing below the governing body's academic standard - which translates to a 60-percent graduation rate among athletes. That might not be ideal, but it's respectable.
The only genuine reform of college athletics will come when its athletes are paid, and not under the table. Until that day comes, we're stuck with the system we have, and by many measures it's working as well as it can.
Bahls has highlighted the important issue of segregation, but fixing that alone won't remove the scandals from college sports.
