In the 2007-08 academic year at George Mason University, something incredible happened. Out of nowhere, admission inquiries went up 350 percent, out-of-state applicants increased 40 percent and active alumni increased 25 percent.
In 2008, something similar happened at Davidson College. According to administration officials, the school’s website began receiving millions upon millions of hits within a matter of weeks. In fact, at one point Davidson owned seven of the top 10 most searched terms on Google.
What is the common thread? A Cinderella run by the university’s men’s basketball team in the NCAA men’s tournament.
This phenomenon is what sports writers commonly refer to as the “Flutie effect.” And since the release of a report in March 2008 by two Virginia Tech researchers, it is a documented and proven fact.
Being the beneficiary of the “Flutie effect” means a couple of things for a university. First of all, it means a future increase in applications, translating into increased revenues (this could be a serious argument for increasing funding to some athletic programs). Second and perhaps more importantly, it means a time period of unsurpassed media exposure for that university. In 2008, George Mason professor Robert Baker estimated as a direct result of the men’s basketball team’s 2006 final four run, the university received about $6.8 million worth of free media exposure. Stacey Schmeidel, Davidson’s director of college communications, put it like this: “The tournament is an incredibly big podium. I’ve been doing college PR for 25 years, and there are not many events or opportunities that give you that kind of a platform to tell your story.”
After nine straight NCAA tournament berths under head coach Bo Ryan and the immeasurable media exposure UW has received as a result, it is important to ask what “story” our basketball program has been telling on the NCAA tournament podium.
In last Saturday’s Washington Post, a column dealing with the myths of the NCAA tournament recounted a story about John Wooden, the legendary former UCLA basketball coach. When asked about his view on the role of a college coach, Wooden loved to answer by telling a story about former football coach Amos Alonzo Stagg. Apparently, when asked at the conclusion of a season whether it had been a successful one, Stagg famously responded, “I won’t know that for another 20 years.” The idea here is quite simple — that a coach should be more concerned about developing his players’ characters and life skills than winning championships.
While such a notion is trumpeted by just about every college coach, sports program and university administration, the simultaneous presence of NCAA, academic and team violations often inform us that priorities actually lay elsewhere. With our men’s basketball program and head coach Bo Ryan, such hypocrisy is simply non-existent.
I was lucky enough to be able to speak with Coach Ryan a few weeks ago following his weekly radio show at the Great Dane. I didn’t expect much from him, hopefully an autograph and a few words of dry humor. Instead, Ryan took fifteen minutes away from his dinner and family to talk to a few students he had never seen before, had no connection to, and would probably not remember tomorrow (I’m still holding out hope that last part isn’t true). And what did he talk about? The absolute first thing he talked about was how important he thought it was to use the game of basketball to influence and teach young people discipline, responsibility, and hard work — you know, all those terms college students hate but know are undeniably virtuous.
Bo Ryan making such a statement in public was, of course, no anomaly. If you have seen any of Ryan’s press conferences you know he views his role as a coach much as Wooden apparently used to see his. What is anomalous is Ryan’s actual commitment to this professed cause.
In an era of college basketball continually plagued with dismal graduation rates, widespread academic fraud and continual NCAA investigations, Ryan has graduated his players at an impressively high rate, enforced academic standards even when it meant the loss of big recruits and maintained a pristine record with the NCAA. Oh, and all the while he has become one of the most successful and respected coaches in the nation.
Big-time college athletics are often the target of criticism from faculty who argue they harm more than they help the educational mission of the university. And yet, we can see here that successful athletics programs can not only bring in money and attract better students for a university, meaning not only more and better paying jobs for professors, but also help to define a university in positive ways that nothing else can.
Not everyone that has watched our men’s basketball team in the NCAA tournament will pick up on this narrative. To some, a basketball program run by a coach like Bo Ryan will be no different than any other. But, to the countless others that will actually be introduced to our university by our basketball program and its head coach, there is no better representative or introductory story to tell.
Alec Slocum ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in legal studies and philosophy.
