We -
I've lived in or near Chapel Hill, NC now for almost ten years, I can say 'We.'
We are not some two-bit hokey college, out in the sticks. We are the oldest
public university in the United States, and one of its largest. We have made
great play of our focus on student-athletes. If our esteemed coaches did not
know, they should have done. Period. But that, for me, is not the real
issue.
Young
people come to our university to train to be doctors. To train to be engineers.
To train to be stockbrokers. Take a trip through the hallways of our business
departments. Our medical facilities. There is no attempt to pretend that
students are being made to study other than their chosen vocation. There is no
attempt to hide the fact that the best are being recruited, even while at
college, for professional berths after college.
So, why
do we feel the need to pretend with our athletes? What is wrong with coming to
university to train to be a professional athlete? No-one demands of our medical
students that they run the 100 meters once a week. So, why do we demand of our
athletes that they engage in activities which have nothing to do with the
profession for which they are training, and for which they simply may not have
the gifts?
What we
end up doing is stigmatizing our athletes. We say to them that sports is not a
real career. That they are not as good as the rest of the student body. Pretty
much we teach them to cheat at this early age.
Is it
not time simply and honestly to recognize that much of our athletic program is
a training ground for professional sports? Openly to encourage our athletes to
think in this way? To encourage them to be the very best, the very most open
and the very most honest athletes and students they can be? Taking pride in
their accomplishments, not least their being chosen before graduation to
perform with recognized professional sports teams? Allowing them, as we take
pride in them, allowing them to take pride in the institution which recognized
their gifts on a par with every other student?
Isn't
it time just to end the hypocrisy?
Posts
