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A lone voice cried in the Big Ten wilderness.
Seeing the bundles of money that were being used to build the impenetrable kingdoms of big time college athletics producing God-coaches and misguided loyalties, he had a proposal. Silence the money mongering by ending recruiting and scholarships. Knife the monster right in the gut where it feeds, and have the Big Ten emulate the Ivy League-no athletic scholarships, no recruiting, emphasis on school, not sports.
The man had private approval for his proposal from most of the presidents of the Big Ten universities. He made his case at an unprecedented meeting. In the end, the vote went against him. Leading the thumbs down vote? The Big Ten presidents-the very men who were charged with safeguarding the academic emphasis at their schools and who gave him support in private. The donors got in their ears, and when it came to putting their necks on the line...nothing.
Ah, yes...even college presidents have self-preserving and misguided egos. Feckless, enabling cowards.
The lone voice? My grandfather, Ray Eliot. The year? 1955. At the time, he was the highly successful head football coach at the University of Illinois (three Big Ten championships and two Rose Bowl championships to his credit) and he was the dean of Big Ten coaches having held his position for 14 years to that point.
He felt devastated and betrayed by the presidents' decision. Four years later, at the relatively young age of 54, he got out of the college coaching profession, sickened by its state of affairs.
Some 20 years later, my dad also trod a lonely path. He graduated from the School of Engineering at Illinois in the 1950s. By the 1970s, he had had enough of higher education's misplaced priorities. He wrote the university a letter telling them that they would not get one more dime of his money until they got their priorities straight. They haven't, and he's found better uses for his money.
I've been resisting this day. I grew up a huge sports fan and college football was in my blood. With my lineage how could it not be? I almost made this decision earlier this year when Ohio State President Gordon Gee genuflected at the altar of former God-coach Jim Tressel. My stomach turned when he said that not only wasn't he going to fire the lying hypocrite, but he hoped Tressel wouldn't fire him.
Now Penn State. I can't wait any longer.
College athletics will not see another penny from me until they realign their priorities. I will not buy a ticket, go to a fundraiser, even buy emblazoned gear. I'm done. Unless the monster is starved, it will continue on its devastating and destructive path. No emasculated and hypocritical NCAA is going to stop it. The only thing that can kill the beast is people like me no longer feeding its money lust.
How can I decry a filthy, poisonous, destructive cesspool of a system and support it financially at the same time? That would be as hypocritical as those I'm calling to account.
You say, "Doug, they're not all bad." You're naive if you think not. Don't you know they're all in on it? They're all a part of the same perverse universe and they all operate the same way-that's how they win. The cheating without a pang of conscience. The justifying because everyone else is doing it. The belief that there is one set of rules for them and another for everybody else. God-coaches and aspiring God-coaches are all around. Penn Sate just fired one.
All Penn State needed for the past thirty years was some leadership. Somebody to choose right over wrong. Somebody to point the way. Somebody who wasn't afraid to lose their job.
If a leader won't risk losing their job, than they're not fit to lead...period.
Leadership was needed rather than cover-ups. Leadership was needed rather than image saving. Leadership was needed when a twenty-eight year old man witnessed the rape of a ten year old boy.
When a leader builds a kingdom in which he no longer wants the truth, when loyalty is no longer earned but expected in order to keep ones job, when men are taught to guard image rather than expose fact, where a child rapist can move about unmolested for thirty years, where we have a fraternity of "understanding" that leaves the status quo in tact-then what follows is always moral depravity. Entitled leaders are the world's greatest danger.
The University of Chicago was a football powerhouse in the first part of the twentieth century. They saw the trend even then of athletics eclipsing academics. In 1939 they did away with football. (Later they reestablished a Division III program). Now they have produced the third largest number of Nobel Laureates of any university in the world. Maybe I should go see what I can do for them.
Several years ago, I led an effort to get my grandfather elected to the College Football Hall of Fame. He's admittedly a borderline case, but I felt his many positive contributions would put him over the top. It didn't.
I will not waste my time in that effort anymore. The Hall and most enshrined there are not worthy of his company. Nor of my dad's.
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