The Four Horsemen of Greed

EL HOMBRE KNOWS SPORTS

Outlined against a greenbacked November sky, the Four Horsemen rode again. In dramatic lore they are known as famine, pestilence, destruction and death. They are only aliases. Their real names are Greed, Avarice, Gluttony and Self-Indulgence. (With apologies to Grantland Rice)


The news came down earlier this week and was supposed to be a reason for great joy among college football fans. espn now owned the rights to the Bowl Championship Series, that rotten, flaking rash on the visage of America’s Greatest Sport. Locked it up through 2014. And not just the broadcast rights, either. Nope, the four-letter folks from Bristol will also market the games, assuring proper synergy for the products and guaranteeing a constant stream of BCS propaganda designed to benumb fans and drive heretic ideas of a playoff from their soft minds.

Since the Disney/espn/ABC “family” of networks fairly dominates the college football TV landscape, we can look forward to a barrage of rationalizations for why a contrived, jury-rigged system is preferable to deciding a championship on the field. We can also count on continued use of ridiculously themed weeks of action, such as “High-Colonic Saturday” and “The Final Verdict.” Can’t wait for the cross-promotional possibilities, like “Desperate Housewives Meet The Ol’ Ball Coach.” Worse, we won’t hear a legitimate dissenting opinion about the BCS from anyone with true authority at the four-letter compound, for fear of turning people off from their own programming. If there are four undefeated teams from big-time conferences in a couple years, and only two of them can play in the BCS “title game,” the other two might as well be from the Sun Belt Conference, even if they’re USC and Alabama.

So, we’re stuck with this mess for the next six years. If college football wants to be a joke for the money, that’s how it’s going to roll. But let’s hope this puts an end to the asinine arguments that the BCS system exists to protect the student-athlete. It’s all about the cabbage. This week’s series in USA Today clearly demonstrates how little the academic institutions that comprise the NC2A’s gridiron-industrial complex care about the young men who toil for the greater glory of State or Tech. In an effort to give the illusion that players are being educated, schools funnel them into phony-baloney programs that wouldn’t tax The Three Stooges’ brainpower. Wednesday, USA Today provided several examples of players who were discouraged from pursuing majors that might interfere with their responsibilities on the football field.

Kansas State defensive lineman Steven Cline arrived in Manhattan with a dream of becoming a veterinarian. But when he struggled in biology, the Wildcats’ academic counselor encouraged him to drop down a few cranial notches to “social sciences,” a rag-tag collection of courses that produces a degree in Nothing Much. Today, Cline is working construction so he can raise enough money to go back to school to pursue veterinary medicine. Instead of making full use of his free ride, he came away with a degree that gave him few legitimate skills in a Speedo-tight job market. Sure, he could have fought harder for his dream, but when advisors at the school are directing kids toward courses of study designed to clear their schedules for more football, it’s an indication just how little schools care about them.

It’s all a by-product of the NC2A’s response to the furor that arose over SAT/ACT scores’ determining eligibility for prospective players. Since the test scores were judged to be biased or poor indicators of future performance, the focus shifted to classwork as the main criteria for athletic eligibility. Do well enough in high school, and you can play right away – even if the prospect’s curriculum in no way prepared him for college work. At the same time, the NC2A decided athletes should be making sufficient progress toward degrees, a noble pursuit. There was a catch: since many of them entered school unprepared to do college work, especially with a year-round gridiron commitment, there was no way they could be expected to thrive in traditional major programs. So, schools began to channel players onto the soft track. They enroll in “social sciences,” as Cline and many of his teammates did. They are shunted into “general studies,” a nebulous collection of courses designed to accumulate credits but not develop skills. There are other favorites throughout the country, like Criminology and Kinesiology, which can be a legitimate pursuit but is often a fancy word for Phys. Ed. Twenty-seven of the returning players at Florida this year listed social and behavioral science as their course of study, while athletic coaching education is big at West Virginia (16 returnees).

The good news is that these players accumulate sufficient credits to satisfy the NC2A requirements and keep their schools on the right side of the ledger. The bad news is that it’s tough to translate many of the majors – provided the players graduate – into something that might entice an employer. So, when the final gun sounds, if the NFL doesn’t beckon, and it rarely does, players have spent four years on campus playing football and getting through classwork that has little pertinence in the real world. That’s the real crime, not an extra game or two in the playoffs.

It’s funny, but few people spoke out (former Michigan coach Lloyd Carr was one of the dissenters), when the NC2A allowed schools to add a 12th game to their schedules. And where is the outrage at Washington State or Cincinnati, who will play a 13th game (and in Cincy’s case, a bowl) because late-season trips to Hawaii are exempt from the dozen-a-year limit? There is none. Coaches say the trip to the islands is a “reward” for the players. It really is a recruiting tool that allows pitchmen to sell prospects on a paradise vacation if they choose Fort Knox U. And it’s a drain on players, who wear down as the season goes on and don’t see any of the money that flows in from extra games. And don’t try that old saw about how they get “a free education.” We’ve seen exactly what kind of training they get.

The BCS lives on, thanks to espn, the Pac-10 and Big 10’s Paleolithic love of the Rose Bowl and a governing body that dares not flex its muscles to create a playoff (which it has in every other football division), lest it watch its biggest schools break off and form their own confederation. Try to enjoy it but remember to keep the Compazine handy when the school presidents and ADs start to talk about how the bowl system works best for the “student-athlete.”

You’re going to need it to keep from vomiting.

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EL HOMBRE SEZ: What a shock that Nuggets coach George Karl has no remorse about the trade that sent Allen Iverson to Detroit. He spoke of the difficulties running an offense with a shoot-first (and second and third) “point” guard and didn’t seem to miss the 15-20 bad possessions a game during Iverson’s tenure. Since A.I.’s departure, the Nugs have won seven of eight, and Karl is beaming. Go figure…Wednesday, top Princeton chess players traveled to New Jersey State Prison to play against inmates in one of the most intimidating home-court advantages in the country. All went well until someone noticed that Black-Eyed Johnny’s rook was really a shank…Former Argentine soccer legend and serial bad boy Diego Maradona made his debut as coach of his country’s national team Wednesday, leading his side to a 1-0 win over Scotland in Glasgow. Maradona is making his players adhere to a strict training regimen that includes no more than a pack of cigarettes, two grams of loco powder and 18 beers a day…Hats off to golfer J.P. Hayes, who disqualified himself from the PGA Qualifying Tournament when he realized he had played a round with a ball not sanctioned for competition. In a world where steroid use is covered up, videotaping of opponents’ signals is greeted with a slap on the wrist, and athletes and owners are ever-greedier, it’s nice to see some integrity. There ought to be a statue of the guy somewhere.

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YOU GOT A PROBLEM WITH THAT? Okay, so Donovan McNabb didn’t know there could be only one overtime period in an NFL game. That’s pretty silly. But Philadelphia fans – and columnists/analysts/blowhards – are missing the point about the Eagles QB: he has been rotten of late. You may want to make OT-gate a metaphor for his time in town, but that is simple and off base. On average, McNabb is more cerebral and thoughtful than most athletes who come through here, so his lack of knowledge about overtime is an isolated incident and not proof he should be dispatched to the CFL. More damning is his poor play in the last four games. He has been inaccurate and even tentative, not wanting to run and unable to get the ball to receivers in a timely fashion. He is Exhibit A on a team that lacks playmakers and is not constructed nor coached properly in an NFL that no longer is dazzled by the West Coast offense. McNabb will likely be elsewhere next season, but plenty of his current mates had better be wearing different uniforms, too. This isn’t a good football team right now, and substantive changes have to be made. If that means getting rid of McNabb, so be it. But judge him on his play, not one dumb mistake.

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AND ANOTHER THING: Michigan fans are advised to avert their eyes Saturday when the Wolverines travel to Columbus for what promises to be a hideous beat-down. Say what you want about playing a spoiler’s role or “making its season” with a win over the Horrible People, but there is no chance of that happening. None. Michigan is an awful team with no quarterback and a defense that has rarely played to its potential. Worse (if that’s possible), first-year coach Rich Rodriguez has angered alumni with his unwillingness to embrace the tradition of a program that drips with the stuff. There are some pretty interesting whisperings out there, beginning with the rumor that Rodriguez may end up at Clemson next year, because of his ties to the school and the mutual loathing between him and U-M. A more likely scenario involves the firing of defensive coordinator Scott Shafer and a circle-the-wagons approach to next season. Stay tuned – just not to Saturday’s game, unless you are a fan of carnage.

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ONE FOR THE ROAD: Q: How can you tell an Ohio State fan has a girlfriend? A: There’s tobacco juice on both the driver and passenger’s doors of the pickup.

-EH-