Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company The
New York Times
May 19, 2002 Sunday Late Edition -
Final
SECTION: Section 8; Column 1; Sports Desk;
Pg. 11
LENGTH: 954 words
HEADLINE: BackTalk; Talking to the King of College
Sports Is Definitely a Lost Cause
SERIES: A YEAR
AT SCHOOL: The Illogic of Football
BYLINE: By
ROBERT LIPSYTE
BODY:
"I'll never understand the football thing," writes Capt.
Michele Lent. "I've been a cop for the N.Y.P.D. for 20 years and a product of
women's college sports. I say that because I believe that much of my success in
the N.Y.P.D. is attributable to my playing a team sport that not only taught me
how to play with others but gave me the confidence to succeed in what was always
considered a difficult job.
"I have worked with other
athletes, both male and female, and I will say that every officer that has also
competed in college athletics, both male and female, is usually up for the other
challenges that life brings. I haven't in my experience seen any difference in a
college football player than any other sport. If you think football is tough,
tell someone to wear my uniform for a couple of days."
Captain Lent is probably right, but trying to tell football anything
even mildly nonreverential, much less critical, has been a losing cause for more
than a century. Real men don't have to listen to women or to those "powder-puff
youths and rumble-seat cowboys" that Coach Knute Rockne of Notre Dame disdained.
Rockne, the prototypical "revenue-producing" coach, knew early that his sport
would always flourish so long as people believed there were three major American
sexes -- men, women and football players.
Michael
Oriard, a cultural commentator who has managed to embody two of the three sexes
(he is an Oregon State University professor who played football for Notre Dame
and the Kansas City Chiefs), captures the self-aggrandizing illogic of the
game's cultural role in his absorbing study of early 20th-century culture, "King
Football" (University of North Carolina Press, 2001). Oriard writes: "Football
players were the most masculine American males because they played football,
which was the most masculine American sport because it was played by the most
masculine males."
Football's cultural role is up for
inspection again these days. The feminists who rushed, blocked and tackled for
the enactment and then enforcement of Title IX are celebrating
30 years of legislation that mandates gender equity in federally funded
activities. The numbers they offer are remarkable; women's collegiate sports
participation has jumped from about 30,000 to 157,000.
The testimonies of former college jocks like Captain Lent are
persuasive. A physical training and tactics instructor for many years, she is
now in the N.Y.P.D.'s Office of Management Analysis and Planning; would she have
gotten that far without basketball at Lehman College and Cortland (N.Y.)
State?
Meanwhile, male college golfers, gymnasts and
wrestlers, among others, are watching their sports disappear as athletic
departments go for easy fixes to balance the numbers of men and women. The most
politically sensitive of the newly de-sported claim not to blame assertive women
so much as the clumsy way in which the rules are followed; Title IX is about
equal access for all, they say, not about equitable distribution of money and
resources.
The response to last week's column on gender
equity from those involved in "minor" sports (more often now called "Olympic"
sports, whether or not they are) has tended to be sad and resigned. Tales are
e-mailed of walk-ons walked off Ivy League track teams lest they unbalance the
equation. At Marshall University, Leonard J. Kraus II finds that recruits for
the women's swimming team he is creating are put off by the lack of a men's
team; such camaraderie is a training aid for such a demanding sport. The
University of California's dominating rugby team went from club to varsity
thanks to a major donor, writes Rob Anderson of Moscow, Idaho, who was there at
the time.
"Not thinking through all the ramifications
of such a gift," continues Anderson, "the leadership moved forward to reclassify
the team. Of course, this meant that a huge number of male athletes had to be
balanced by women's teams. This was done by adding women's golf, softball and
water polo. Of course, what followed was a sea of red ink for the budget. Guess
who was blamed? The women and Title IX."
Football, with
nothing to gain, tends to be quiet in this debate. So long as the N.C.A.A.
allows Division I-A football teams to give out 85 full scholarships (fewer for
lesser divisions) and a squad often carries more than 100 players, the gender
equity seesaw starts with a severe male tilt. At colleges with the money, this
has turned out well for women's soccer, even more so for crew and rugby,
relatively inexpensive, large-roster sports that can accommodate women who may
not have had previous sports opportunities.
While many
women have suggested capping the size of football squads to save a wrestling
team, few men in minor sports dare challenge football. Is it the battle of the
sexes, fear of the powerhouse sport's influence, or a concern that the last 20
boys on the squad, without practices to drain their manly energy, will pillage
the campus (more work for Captain Lent)? American colleges may be irrevocably
mortgaged to football real estate. Could they still be psychologically mortgaged
to the origins of the game?
Oriard writes: "Football
was created and won a following in the last quarter of the 19th century when a
collective sense of diminishment -- of opportunity, of personal liberty and
power, of 'manliness' -- was becoming acute among American males of the middle
and upper classes."
The Series So Far
Previous articles in this series about the role of college
sports in American culture have explored race and athletics, gambling, paying
the players, a major quarterback at a midmajor school and the debate about Title
IX's effect on "minor" men's sports. Robert Lipsyte's e-mail address is
thelipsite@aol.com.
URL:
http://www.nytimes.com
GRAPHIC: Photo: Knute
Rockne: Manly men only. (Associated Press, 1925)
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