As much as the media, the fans, and others proclaim the necessity of sports, especially in schools to “build leaders,” “teach teamwork” and other platitudes, is it all really crap?
In light of the economic hard times of the past several months, sports and other extracurricular activities have been downsized, eliminated, or forced the participants’ families to pay extra money to play in school. We have seen numerous stories about this on the news concerning high school sports, but colleges and universities are not safe.
This week, Hofstra University announced that it would be dropping football because of costs and fading interest. The school’s board of trustees voted unanimously to shutter the program, which had been in existence since the school’s founding in 1937.
“The cost of the football program, now and in the future, far exceeds the return possible,” Hofstra president Stuart Rabinowitz said. The university will use the $4.5 million spent annually on the team on scholarships and other priorities. Mr. Rabinowitz added that despite Hofstra having sent several players to the NFL (including Kyle Arrington of New England, Stephen Bowen of Dallas, Willie Colon of Pittsburgh Marques Colston of New Orleans, and probably best known of all, receiver Wayne Chrebet), the program does not attract enough national attention. “Given that, along with the low level of interest, financial support and attendance among our students, our alumni and the community, the choice was painful, but clear.”
Unlike other schools the students weren’t supporting the team. Despite offering them free tickets to home games, only an average of 500 students attended games at the 13,000-seat campus stadium. Fortunately, there are no plans to cut any other sports at the Long Island school.
But Hofstra isn’t the only school in its own conference to drop football. Fellow member of the Colonial Athletic Conference, Northeastern University in Boston dropped football after 74 years.
Football at many schools generates enough income to pay for the “non revenue sports,” but it is expensive: coaches need to be paid; equipment is costly; there is a need for facilities, stadium upkeep; insurance. Unless the school is in the sports mad conferences: SEC, Big Ten, Pac-10, etc., football could be a tough sell. When Northwestern was in the midst of its 28 consecutive game losing streak, football very easily could have become an afterthought. Fans (except for the opposing team, who came for the easy beating) were hard to come by. Until Gary Barnett became head coach and proved me and many others wrong that NU could field a winning football team, I thought that NU should follow the Duke model – field a football team, but build a basketball dynasty due to the low number of quality recruits needed to field a successful team.
Still, we sports fans should never forget that colleges’ and universities’ first and most important mission is educating young people, and anything that gets in the way of that mission is unnecessary. At schools where education, especially for athletes, is an afterthought, perhaps the elimination of football is an apocalyptic nightmare, and such an event that has as much chance of occurring as I have of teleporting myself to London with the power of my mind. But education, not entertainment, is the primary function of colleges and universities. The students at Hofstra who benefit from the money once used on football now used on scholarships and facilities are grateful. I feel for the athletes, but there is a greater priority.

For approximately 15 years, when I was writing for The Sportswriters on TV, I have advocated research on football injuries, and I have said that too little was being done to research the effects of football on players after they left the game. My reasoning was simple – when football was evolving, there weren’t 350 pound men who could run a 4.5 second 40-yard dash. Having 22 men of huge size and agility and ability to move that fast, couldn’t have been envisioned by the early thinkers in the game of football.
Fortunately (or unfortunately considering the physical cost), the plight of ailing players has come to light over the years, along with the NFL and players’ union woeful response to the medical problems that could only have come from playing football.
This week, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell sent a memo to the 32 teams saying a player who gets a concussion should not return to action on the same day if he shows certain signs or symptoms. These symptoms include an inability to remember assignments or plays, a gap in memory, persistent dizziness, and persistent headaches.
Oh boy! “You’ve gotten your bell rung, take the rest of the day off, but we expect to see you in practice on Tuesday and we need you in next week’s game.” Books and movies like “North Dallas Forty” and books by NFL doctors have detailed the pressure to downplay injuries; give pain killers to allow players to remain on the field, and the pressure to be a good doctor compared but always being paid by the team.
Add the pressure to perform, and the fear that a player will be replaced by a younger player, ending a man’s employment and while I’m glad that the commissioner took a step that should have been taken 25 years ago, it doesn’t go far enough.
I believe that new helmets and helmet technology are needed. Perhaps a form of armor is needed for football players to protect their bodies? Despite the fame and fortune that come to college and especially professional football players, are 10-15 years of pounding worth 20-30 years of suffering and an expected life span shortened by 20 years?

Florida State Head Football Coach Bobby Bowden announced that he is retiring after FSU’s bowl appearance this postseason. Did he retire or was he pushed as Florida State is no longer a national powerhouse is a question that should be asked, but does it matter?
Bowden always amused me; kind of a jovial, funny stereotypical, old time football coach. He is second on the all time NCAA Division I coaching wins list (behind the legendary Joe Paterno) and won two national titles at FSU.
Despite all that, and a slew of players who went to the NFL (including Deion Sanders among MANY others), Bowden’s FSU didn’t graduate athletes. The common conception of his program was that he did give talented young men a chance to play college football, but the best went to the NFL and the rest were spat out like an old wad of chewing gum.
Bobby Bowden’s retirement is the end of an era in college football. I’m not sure that’s necessarily a bad thing.

When someone is great at something, especially if they’re rich, famous and a huge celebrity, when people get a chance to pounce on your image, the vultures stop circling and dive in to feast upon the carrion.
Such is what’s happening to Tiger Woods. What we do know for fact is that he had an accident with his SUV hitting a fire hydrant. We also know that Woods was pulled from the car by a golf club wielding wife. Elin Nordegren. Then, Team Tiger went into secretive mode and just like nature, the mainstream and blog media abhors a vacuum and so the stories started flying. Was this a marital argument gone out of control? Did Ms. Nordegren have a golf club because she was about to put a 5-iron around Woods’ neck? The biggest story was published by the National Inquirer that Woods had an affair with Rachel Uchitel, club promoter and former television reporter.
But Tiger Woods is probably one of the few black men who could refuse to talk to the police. Woods had refused to talk with the Florida Highway Patrol three days straight since the incident and will avoid his own tournament, the Chevron World Challenge, due to “injuries from the incident.”
As they have been lumped together numerous times before, Woods and Michael Jordan are probably the only black men in America who have enough money, corporate connections, and positive impressions on the public to forestall a police investigation. (And don’t say President Obama is a third; Matt Drudge, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and others of their slimy ilk would make a big deal if the President failed to wipe himself thoroughly after taking a monster crap.) There were other stories, eventually denied by the Highway Patrol, that they were going to subpoena Woods’ medical records from that night to see if they were consistent with an auto accident or with spousal abuse.
Woods’ only statement come on his web site, calling the incident “embarrassing,” but not giving any further detail other than he will make restitution for all damages to the fire hydrant and anything else he hit in the accident. He will be able to skip the press along with the tournament this weekend.
The only person who is talking is Ms. Uchitel who has told The New York Post (quoted on Golf.com) made a clear and unequivocal denial of the National Enquirer story that claimed she had an affair with the married Woods. “This is ridiculous. Not a word of it is true,” she told The Post. “I told the Enquirer and Star that it wasn’t true. I told them not only did I have information to disprove the story, but I offered to take a lie-detector test.” Uchitel said that she has met Woods only twice as part of her job as a hostess for VIPs, sort of a nightclub ambassador to the rich and famous.
I don’t have magical powers; I don’t know what happened to Tiger Woods, and we the public may never know for sure. But with a lack of facts, people are going to fill in the information void with stories close to truth and also close to lunacy. One would think that Tiger Woods’ advisors would be smart enough to know that; and advised him to just come clean, take the media abuse (if any) and move along.
A character in John Ford’s great film “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” when asked whether he was going to print the true story, said “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” Tiger Woods should know that better than anyone.

One would think that I would be happy that Notre Dame fired Charlie Weis. I’m not, just as I wasn’t happy when they fired Bob Davie or Tyrone Willingham, or even Gerry Faust. I liked having the Domers frothing at the mouth, chomping for the flesh of the man they blamed (that time) blamed for not returning the Irish to its (in their minds” rightful place at the top of the college football world.
But no, I enjoy Notre Dame getting beaten on a regular basis, and it was fun to see Weis, the Great White Hope after the racist school fired Willingham, fall flat on his face. I almost (key word being almost) even felt sorry for him, but he will have approximately 18 million dollars to keep him company and an NFL job in his future.
But, when they do going looking for a coach, it’s always fun to see coaches turn them down, often before they are even asked. One of my favorite times was when Gary Barnett, then coach of Northwestern, refused to follow in the footsteps of Ara Parseghian and turned them down. Already Urban Meyer and Bob Stoops have expressed no interest in leaving their current jobs (Florida and Oklahoma respectively), although reportedly Stoops is still considered a candidate. Both are kind of sleazy and would put wining teams in South Bend, but also may be just a few years away from the ultimate embarrassment, NCAA rules infractions.
Unfortunately, the Irish may end up with one of two very competent, hard working, apparently decent guys who should do well, and unlike Weis, might make it hard to hate them, at least until the Domers start talking and reminding us that hating Notre Dame is a thirst that will never be quenched. Cincinnati’s Brian Kelly has led teams to bowl games in Division I and national championships in Division II. He wants the job and may end up with it. Gary Patterson is a terrific defensive coach who has had great success at TCU. They might be successful and run clean programs, and that would be very bad for those of us who hate Notre Dame with all of our hearts. So, for all of us, Mr. Jack Swarbrick, Athletic Director at ND, we need you to pick someone you will overpay, come in with a big ego and swagger, who ends up the same way as Weis – five years – barely over .500 record, few bowl appearances, no wins. It’s so much easier to hate the coach, the team and the school together than to have to hate some decent coach just because he’s in South Bend.

I usually hate these types of columns in the newspapers. Why should a reader give a good damn what someone else is thankful for? Unless it’s someone who I know, or a favorite writer, I usually avoid the piece. But this year, I do have a lot of things to be thankful for; several of which occurred recently. Take a look:
• Last week, my least favorite television personality, Oprah Winfrey announced that she would leave syndication in 2011. Maybe she will move to her own cable channel; perhaps she will move to California. Good. I can put on the parental control on her channel and I certainly won’t miss all of the hoopla whenever she shows up someplace. Maybe she will crawl under a rock and disappear. I hope she takes Dr. Phil with her.
• I’m almost feeling sorry for Notre Dame Head Football Coach Charlie Weis. After losing at home to UConn, he has looked like a beaten man. But, I always enjoy anything bad that happens to Notre Dame football (even quarterback Jimmy Claussen was punched outside of a bar this week). Domers are, mostly, obnoxious jerks who think that their team is a national title contender by divine right. The “Subway” alums, fans that aren’t smart enough to attend ND, but are rabid nonetheless, are even worse. They deserve what they get.
• My Northwestern Wildcats football team continues to surprise me. I thought they would lose at Iowa, and they didn’t. (They knocked out the QB which helped immensely.) I expected them to lose last week to Wisconsin; they came through again. (I’m so glad they did; I was sitting by two of the most ignorant, obnoxious UW fans I’ve ever seen. Shutting them up was one of my favorite things from this season.) So, now, NU is going someplace warm to play in a bowl game. I have said that I’m tired of them going to bowl games and losing, so I’m not sure if I will be going down there. But, depending on the game and the opponent, maybe I shouldn’t count them out.
• No more Bush.
• No more Cheney.
• A President who, while making some mistakes, is still trying to clean up an enormous mess.
• No more “Jon & Kate Plus 8.”
• I don’t play for the Bears; I am not Lovie Smith, Jerry Angelo, or Jay Cutler.
• I’m not into “Twilight.” And the Indignant Children aren’t old enough to be into it yet.
• And of course, I’m most thankful for The Indignant Family. I love you.

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

I don’t think that anyone who watches sports in general, or NFL football in particular has any doubt that the Bill Belichick is a classless individual. He has proven that he will do anything to win, including spying by videotaping secret practices by the other team. The little hobbit in the torn hoodie also thinks poorly on anyone who doesn’t acknowledge his greatness or dares to rile him. The latest victims are the New York Jets and their head coach Rex Ryan (son of Buddy) has called him on it.
Ryan was quoted on SI.com as saying that he felt “disrespected” by the Patriots for throwing a deep pass with the game all but won last Sunday. The Patss were ahead 31-14 with 30 seconds left in the fourth quarter when Tom Brady threw long for Randy Moss on third-and-6 from their 45-yard line. The pass was incomplete, but Ryan was steamed.
“We need to stop them anyway, so it’s no biggie, but I was surprised, and I did feel a little bit disrespected,” Ryan said via SI.com Ryan added that he didn’t know if Bill Belichick was behind the call, saying it might have been something Brady and Moss did on their own.
Belichick may have been trying to get back at Ryan, who created controversy in the offseason when he said he didn’t come to New York to “kiss Bill Belichick’s rings, but the pass may have been intended to be one final message to cornerback Darrelle Revis, who has developed a rivalry with Moss.
To show his displeasure, Ryan called a timeout with 5 seconds left as a response to the Patriots’ play call. This may be good for a long time if Ryan wins in New York; I don’t think any kin of Buddy Ryan is going to back down to Belichick, no matter how many scowls his sends Ryan’s way.