Since the NCAA handed down its final decision in the Shoe Box scandal last October, criticism of the UW-Madison athletic department’s misdeeds has been relatively nonexistent.

In Wednesday night’s panel discussion, “Should There Be Big-Time Sports on College Campuses?” the silence ended and criticism of college athletics reemerged, this time aimed at the “big-time” sports programs nationwide and armed with allegations more severe than shoe discounts.

Murray Sperber, the featured member of the panel and one of the country’s most outspoken college-sports critics, spoke candidly about a system of athletics that is corrupt and exploitative, while accusing universities of failing students who genuinely seek an education.

“Most college athletes have been identified at very early ages for their talent and are brought to the university to perform at the highest possible level athletically and intellectually,” he said. “Surprise, surprise — many can’t do it, and they become physically and mentally exhausted young men and women who academically underachieve.”

Sperber, also a professor of English and American studies at the University of Indiana, earned national recognition and infamy among Hoosier fans for his strong criticism of Bobby Knight, whose occasionally tyrannical behavior was overlooked by university officials because of his legendary coaching success on the basketball court.

Showing restraint, Sperber refrained from criticizing the UW athletic program during the panel discussion. However, in his most recent book, “Beer and Circus: How Big-Time Sports is Crippling Undergraduate Education,” he gives frequent mention to the UW, referring to the football team’s 1999 Rose Bowl trip as the “gravy plane” and criticizing UW’s “beer-soaked” campus culture and low admission standards.

The most scathing attacks on college sports came from Linda Bensel-Meyers, the University of Tennessee English teacher who made headlines last year for exposing plagiarism and cheating that she alleges was condoned by the UT and its athletic department.

“There is a well-preserved ‘good ol’ boy system’ perpetuating values that a university would or should not perpetuate,” Bensel-Meyers said. “The values of the university education system have been undermined by the wholesale invalidation of academic policies that university faculty has worked hard to establish.”

She also related the athletic program at Tennessee to the “early plantation system in the South,” basing her comparison on the exploitation of the athletes, and argued that it is the athletes that are often the biggest victims.

“The interests of the athletic department are so protected; I have heard it said that the athletes are instructed not to walk across campus, fearing they may somehow get themselves into trouble,” she said. “Athletes are locked up in a zoo, a palatial zoo, where they aren’t allowed an education and are not taught the values the university is obligated to teach.”

Despite the overwhelming criticism of the current state of athletic programs in the UW System, there was some encouraging evidence of the benefits of participation in sports offered by the former UW track star Gilda Hudson-Winfield.

Hudson-Winfield, a Big Ten champion sprinter and the first to receive an athletic scholarship under Title IX, credits the women’s track team at the UW with providing her with the tools and support to graduate and succeed as a professional.

“The bachelors degree that I earned could never have been attained without the support of the women’s track team at the University of Wisconsin,” Hudson-Winfield said. “Being a member of the team taught me discipline, tenacity and gave me the tools that I needed to get through a university that, quite frankly, was very hostile when I first came here.”