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.