Anyone who came of age in Minnesota during the ’90s does not need to be reminded of it. College basketball is corrupt. If the Clem Haskins and Jan Gangelhoff scandal didn’t destroy your faith in Bobby Jackson and Gopher basketball, then John Calipari must have certainly destroyed your faith in Derrick Rose, or Kelvin Sampson in Eric Gordon, or Tim Floyd in O.J. Mayo.
Today, NCAA basketball has become such a lucrative business that these scandals are more or less inevitable. Administrators will struggle to stem the tides of greed while at the same time try to maintain and maximize the profitability of March MadnessTM and the Bowl Championship Series. Coaches will always seek to gain an edge (and a big contract), while 18-year-old boys will always be swayed by the prospect of hundreds of dollars and someone to take their tests for them.
So when the University of Wisconsin Athletic Board met last Friday to discuss reforms to men’s basketball recruitment policy, its business didn’t really surprise anyone. The WAB and Big Ten in general are concerned with addressing not only the way high schoolers are recruited, but also the way coaches deal with players’ representatives and associates.
Normally I would have paused, nodded and muttered, “Wake me up when they start talking about paying these guys,” before dozing off. But then, interestingly, the conversation turned to the role of athletes in campus diversity.
Monday’s Herald article, “Board talks men’s basketball reform” (Oct. 19), quoted two WAB members who pointed out the important contributions the athletic department makes to campus diversity. Professor Adam Gamoran pointed out the football team plays an especially large role here, accounting for almost an eighth of black students on campus.
To cite the football team as an important contributor to diversity employs the definition in the most limited sense. Yes, there are more black kids on campus because of the football team. And yes, that makes our diversity numbers look the tiniest bit more respectable. But the fact that we as a university rely so heavily on the football team to create a “diverse climate” is just pathetic.
The way I understand it, diversity efforts on campus (whether or not I agree with them) are meant to accomplish two goals. First, by actively ensuring the presence of minority groups on campus, the university seeks to educate all students about the greater world, not just the small slice of the Midwest that is Wisconsin. Second, by affording members of underprivileged groups a path to higher education, the university desires to make possible opportunities that would have otherwise been nonexistent or much more difficult to obtain.
The use of the football (or basketball) team as a diversity vehicle accomplishes neither of these goals. Division I athletes are busy people. Since they barely have time for classes, practice and sleep, how can they be expected to fully participate in the common campus experience? Because of their obligations, these athletes have a very difficult time exposing the rest of campus to their ethnic heritage. For athletes who have to attend class, watch film, practice and lift all in the same day, there is little time to write an almanac article for the enemy paper or attend a Student Council meeting.
The university falls short on the second count as well. Our revenue athletes don’t always receive the best education the university has to offer. For every Shane Carter (who graduated with a degree in sociology and is now taking graduate school classes in education), there are players who don’t graduate at all. Even though we’re better than Texas’ 50 percent, Wisconsin athletes still ranked below the BCS average with a graduation rate of 63 percent in 2008.
So since revenue athletes aren’t full participants in the campus climate and aren’t all getting a top-notch education, should they count toward our diversity numbers at all?
If the administration is serious about fostering campus diversity (as ambiguous as that is), it needs to move beyond schemes to get students to the university via admissions or athletics. It has been a year since Plan 2008 expired, and we still don’t have a Plan 2018 (though there is “Inclusive Excellence”). Maybe it’s time to sit down and reevaluate our diversity goals and how we expect to accomplish them. Or maybe it’s time to let the Irish-, African-, Polish-, German-, Korean- and Coastie-Americans figure out how to get along with each other — whether they are athletes or not.
Joe Labuz ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in biomedical engineering.
