Readers who have been with The Texas Pilgrim for awhile know that I have shared a love/hate relationship with college athletics in several essays, primarily surrounding the issues raised by the reports of the Knight Commission on intercollegiate athletics. I have been a huge fan of college sports and close follower and supporter of The […]
A Different Kind of Madness
As I write, the NCAA basketball championship game is upon us, and there is no bigger spectacle in college athletics than the Final Four. And I’m a big fan, but I continue to worry about the imbalances in the way we measure and reward success for these young athletes and the schools they represent. I […]
College Athletics in Turmoil
Like many enthusiasts of college sports, I monitored closely the daily drama of the near implosion of the athletic conference alignments that recently unfolded over a period of several weeks involving several major football conferences, with primary focus on the Big 12 and its potential dismantling. I won’t belabor all the various cross-currents; I will […]
Baseball Has Now Lost Me
The Mitchell Report might have been the last straw. I long ago abandoned professional football–haven’t watched a game live or on TV since the Houston Oilers fired Bum Phillips and traded Earl Campbell–and professional basketball put me to sleep long before that, in both cases more for the on and off field culture they helped […]
A Profile In Academic Courage
My hero of the month is Gordon Gee, Chancellor of Vanderbilt University. Recently he announced that Vanderbilt is eliminating the position of athletic director and replacing its traditional athletic department with a new body that is more connected to the mission of the university and more accountable to the institution’s academic leadership. As he said, […]
The “Student-Athlete” Myth
If you care at all about college athletics or its relationship to the mission of higher education, I urge you to read the Report of the Knight Foundation Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, released in June. This report is a follow-up to the Foundation’s report of 1991, which proposed what it called a “one plus three” […]