The cult of college sports; where a basketball to the head is a-ok

(Illustration courtesy of Florian Nicolle)

A college sports scandal emerged this week. A video surfaced showing Rutgers basketball coach Mike Rice throwing a basketball at players' heads, verbally abusing them, shoving them, using homophobic slurs, and generally just being an awful human being. Rice has since been fired, as has the athletic director, Tim Pernetti, who is leaving on what was termed a "mututal agreement" between him and the university.

Obviously, there's a larger story here about institutional control, since Pernetti knew about the tape for a full year and did nothing about it. But what fascinates me with this incident, and what has fascinated me with most if not all of the college sports controversies over the years, is that no matter what coaches do, the players always come out and defend them. Joe Paterno allowed little kids to get molested, and yet the players were so loyal to him that they were prepared to walk to his house and deliver him the game ball had they won their first game after his firing. Knowing that, it shouldn't be surprising that two of Rice's players defended him on ESPN's Outside the Lines this week:

"You can't let those individual moments define what he was," said forward Wally Judge. "In my past two years, me being an older guy and being under other coaches, I have grown from the moment I stepped in these doors, not only as a player, but also as a person because of how he has treated me."

"I feel if people had a chance to see the other portions of practice, or had been at practice, their judgment would not be as severe," said forward Austin Johnson said. "I am not saying what he did wasn't wrong, because I do believe it was wrong. But it is also tough because it was a highlight reel of his worst moments."

It's plausible -- although a tad unlikely -- that when he wasn't being secretly recorded, Mike Rice was a stand-up gentleman who did everything right and who was a great inspiration to his players. But here's the thing. Even if Rice was great when no one was looking, it's still pretty incredible that he didn't lose his job the moment he threw a basketball at one of the kids' heads. Seriously, pretend for a second that you're a 20-year-old college student. You're in computer class. You misspell a word. Your teacher then shoves you across the room, hurls insults at you, challenges your masculinity and throws a keyboard at you. There's NO way that teacher keeps his job for more than another hour. There's no way you could respect that teacher ever again.

Amazingly though, the whole Rutgers basketball team witnessed Rice's behavior, and none of them did anything about it -- or at least anything that would have ousted him. Our society has inexplicably lionized the Bear Bryant, Woody Hayes-type coaches of the world who act like drill sergeants, and who look at college athletes as troubled souls who can only be polished by a tough, no-holds-barred philosophy that includes working the players long hours and berating them when they mess up. Players routinely defend coaches like Rice as though the act of coaching young athletes is some unbelievable act of charity, and that no matter what the coach did -- whether it was letting children get raped or throwing a basketball at a kid's head -- it should be overlooked because gosh-darn-it, that coach was the best darn coach a kid could ever have.

The reason I consider college sports a cult is that the level of admiration given to coaches often extends into hero worshiping, which is more than a little creepy. If Mike Rice did what he did in a computer lab or a math class, he's out on his ass within a week. But there's something about sports where this sort of behavior is weirdly acceptable. It's tolerated by the players and it's tolerated by the universities, who can somehow overlook transgressions like Rice's. In fact, college coaches are so revered that you never, ever hear a college player call out his coach; it's practically unheard of. There are a million instances of a coach calling out his players in the media, saying they didn't hustle, saying they're a sorry sack of crap, but you never hear a player call out a coach. And there over 300 Division-I schools, and a lot of them have some horrible, horrible coaches, some of whom even do lousy things like throw basketballs at kids' heads. But the players almost never speak up; they really do act like their coaches are drill sergeants or lieutenants, and that speaking up against them would be violating some chain of command that would come back to harm them.

Oh, and let's not forget the other cult-like aspect of college sports: the players don't get paid. One of the most common explanations people have for liking college football and basketball over the NFL and NBA is that "It's purer. The players are just playing for the love of the game; they're not motivated by money like they are in the pros, and they try harder." But it's not like the players are willingly sacrificing a payday, rather the universities and the NCAA keep all the money for themselves and refuse to compensate the players a single cent. The monopolizing of college athletes is so great that players are often banned from competing for accepting the meagerest of funds that didn't first enter the hands of the universities or the NCAA, like game tickets, or plane tickets, or free food. Ohio State was banned from appearing in a bowl game -- a punishment that reportedly cost them $8 million -- because their players sold merchandise to get tattoos.

Obviously, there's a lot to like about college sports; I mean, it's not like college athletes are immediately subjected to whippings and iron maidens the second they step into a locker room. Still, one of the criteria of cults is that they scam gullible people out of their money, and college sports is perhaps the only billion-dollar industry in the country where the people doing all the work, the players, don't get any monetary compensation. Everyone around them rakes in the cash, but the players can't even get free airfare. Meanwhile, coaches can do things like throw basketballs at people's heads; the players never speak up against them and support them no matter what -- and the rare ones that do are demonized for it. Yeah, college sports are fun to watch, but there's also a Stepford-ian aspect to them that makes it impossible for me to appreciate them as the pure athletic spectacle everyone else sees them as.