When Winning is Everything

by P.D. Lesko

BY NOW, BOBBY KNIGHT has pretty much completed the talk
show circuit. He answered the same 10 questions a thousand
times over. I do have one question, though. What’s Indiana
going to do for Murray Sperber now that he has decided to
return to campus? Maybe the institution’s president, Miles
Brand, will give Dr. Sperber a chunk of Knight’s salary. Maybe
Dr. Sperber will use it to hire several much-needed bodyguards
to protect him from the lunatics who sent him death threats
when he called for IU to fire Bobby Knight after Knight allegedly
choked one of his players.

It’s so tempting to just throw up one’s arms in disgust and
forget about trying to root out the bad apples in college
sports. It’s also easy to say that the Murray Sperbers within
higher education–those college faculty and administrators
who call for reform of college sports–are a bunch of Don
Quixotes. Instead of railing at windmills, these folks are
railing at goalposts. In truth, reform of college sports will
never come from the Murray Sperbers; reform could possibly
come from within if, say, Michigan’s ex-gridiron leader Bo
Schembechler decided to tackle the problem.

College coaches from around the country would stop and listen
to Bo; the same people would walk past Murray Sperber and
not return his polite greeting. It has to do with a little
thing called hierarchy. Just as the tenured faculty member
is the cock of the walk within the given department in which
that individual teaches, college Head Coaches work within
similar hierarchical systems. After all, why is there a Head
Coach? Because there are lots of Assistant Coaches.

And when was the last time the Head football Coach visited
the English department and, with a curled upper lip, asked
the tenured faculty members just how many of them had taught
an introductory composition course during the past semester?
I can see it now, the entire faculty agrees to assemble on
a sunny afternoon to discuss with the Head football Coach
the “Adjunct Problem.” No, the faculty in that department
would scoff that the Head football Coach knows squat about
faculty staffing, and would probably politely suggest that
the Coach might like to stick to his forte, wind sprints.

I have an immense respect for Murray Sperber, and think Bobby
Knight deserved to be fired. I believe Indiana’s president
Brand should be disciplined by the Board of Regents. He allowed
an employee to flout the rules of staff and faculty conduct
to the extent that the incidents resulted in national embarrassment
to his institution. As for those crazies who sent death threats
to Murray Sperber, Knight’s departure is sufficient punishment.

But what about the fact that college sports is overseen by
the NCAA, an organization which has demonstrated a singular
lack of leadership? Nuts sent death threats to Dr. Sperber;
Miles Brand had his toes roasted over hot coals by the national
media, Bobby Knight lost his job and then hit the talk shows.
And in all of this, where was the NCAA? The “Bobby Knight
Problem” represented an unprecedented opportunity for
the NCAA to make a public statement concerning the organization’s stance on the treatment of student athletes. Better yet, the NCAA might have instituted its own investigation of Bobby
Knight as soon as the allegations from athletes started surfacing.

Of course, it could be that the assault of student athletes
is not an infraction of the NCAA’s rules governing the behavior
of coaches in NCAA-sanctioned programs. No, Murray Sperber
and his ilk will never clean up college sports. It is the
NCAA which holds the real power to change what goes on within
NCAA-sponsored programs. One has to question whether or not
the NCAA wants to take on issues such as those exposed by
Bobby Knight’s alleged assaults on his players. Of course, we can only hope that the Murray Sperbers of higher education will, eventually, push the NCAA to do a better job of protecting student-athletes and amateur college sports.

Otherwise, college sports will continue to be plagued by coaches who think the rules are for the little people, and college presidents and athletic directors who value winning basketball and football games over human decency.