Monday, March 15, 2010

Blog 2: Chapter 2: College Sports, Winners and Losers

Who has more power over a university, the president or the basketball coach? In this chapter, Sperber gives an example of a college coach who was able to overpower the president of the university. His example is the legendary Bob Knight, coach of Indiana University, who is probably one of the most powerful basketball coaches in all of college athletics. As far as other coaches go in gaining power over a university president, I have found no evidence linking the two together. In an interview conducted by Connie Chung (national television) Knight was asked how he handled the pressure and stress of coaching a “BIG-TIME” college basketball team. In his answer to Chung he compared it to rape. Knight said, “if rape is inevitable, relax and enjoy it” (Sperber 24). His answer outraged many and several staff members of IU wanted Erlich, the President, to handle this situation. So what did Erlich do? He issued a statement saying that this was not the feelings of the staff of IU. This outraged Knight and he threaten to leave to take a coaching job at the University of New Mexico. Newspapers across the nation ran this story. In the end, Erlich apologized to Knight and he remained the coach of IU. Simply put Bob Knight had more power than the president of the university. Knight was able to do so because he was loved by the student population of the university, in fact he was loved by the entire state of Indiana. The bottom line Erlich did not know how to deal with the traditions of IU and he was out of his element because he was part of the “academic subculture.” So chalk one up for the prodigy basketball coach.
This chapter discusses the massive demands that college coaches put on their players. “The games had to be won. Americans lacked a psychology for failure” (Sperber 23). Congress endorsed the 4 hour day/20 hour a week practices. “The NCAA hailed the rule as one of the most important pieces of legislation in its history, and even some critics were impressed” (Sperber 31). So what exactly did this mean for college athletes? Did this rule work? No, this rule ended up working against college athletes. This new rule by Congress stated that coaches could only hold practices four hours a day and for 20 hours a week. Sperber says that these were mandated hours and “voluntary” practices would take place. College coaches would monitor these practices and keep an eye out to find out which “players” participated in the “voluntary” practices, extra weight training, conditioning and so on. What would they do with this information?-give the athlete who attended “voluntary” practices more playing time. This was just another added pressure that college coaches inflict on their players.

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