Thoughts on Evan Kaufmann, Terrence Cody and Memory

This past Sunday, the New York Times' Sports section featured a story about Evan Kaufmann, an American-born hockey player who plays for the German national team.  This is a gripping story and a must-read.  For me, it connects to an issue that I've been thinking about for quite some time about the uneasy relationship between Black high school athletes and major college sports.  The question is one of historical memory: How do we choose to remember, and why do we sometimes choose to forget?  More importantly, do we have a  responsibility as individuals to honor these memories, whatever they may be, and to live our lives accordingly?

For here's the thing: Evan Kaufmann is an American Jew, playing in Germany and for the German national team because, according to the Times, this is "his best pro opportunity to play hockey."  Should Kaufmann have the right to do that?

This is not the easiest of questions.

The Strange yet Unremarkable Case of Jeremy Lin

Stop me if you've heard this story before: A terrific high-school athlete is overlooked during the recruiting process because he does not fit the stereotype of what college athletes are supposed to look like.  He ends up at a terrific college, yet not an athletic powerhouse.  He has a terrific college career, but pro scouts ignore him the same way college coaches ignored him before. He catches on with a pro team, and then another, and then another.  He is not sticking with any one team for long.  And then, almost out of necessity, he gets a chance.  One chance.  One time.  One game.  And he blows it out of the water.  

The story is almost out of central casting, tailor-made for Angelo Pizzo.  For those not paying attention to the world of sports in the last week or so, this also happens to be the story, in a nutshell, of Jeremy Lin, Taiwanese American point guard for the New York Knicks.  How in the world do we explain the fact that a multi-million dollar system designed to scout talent missed as badly as it missed with Jeremy Lin? Here's the cold reality:

"It's the Asian thing," says former NBA player Rex Walters, who's Japanese-American and wound up with [Jesse] Evans' job at [the University of San Francisco]. "People who don't think stereotypes exist are crazy. If he's white, he's either a good shooter or heady. If he's Asian, he's good at math. We're not taking him."

Lin looks like a math major, not a basketball player.  Simple as that.

But make no mistake, this is not a new story. We have seen it a million times.

This is the story of Toby Gerhardt or Brock Forsey, white running backs in a world where running backs happen to be black; or the story of many black quarterbacks in a world where quarterbacks happen to be white.  The argument applies to basketball players and concert pianists, to college professors and football coaches, to welfare recipients and college students.  Stereotypes abound, and they affect our decision-making in ways that we often fail -- or refuse -- to recognize.

Think about what this means for debates over hiring and college admissions.  Close your eyes a moment and think about what a college student is supposed to look like, or better yet, a college professor.   As you do that, try to imagine what happens when a faculty gets together to choose a new colleague, or worse yet, when a faculty gets together to vote on a tenure case.  Even those who have never been privy to one of those meetings have a pretty good idea of what goes on. 

Ask Rex Walters.

When it comes to the NCAA, when will we have enough?

In case this coffin needed a nail, here's an amazing report by Taylor Branch on "The Shame of College Sports," published in The Atlantic.  Within a few minutes I had seen it on line, two friends had emailed me the link to it.  This is spreading like wildfire.  In a nutshell:

But after an inquiry that took me into locker rooms and ivory towers across the country, I have come to believe that sentiment blinds us to what’s before our eyes. Big-time college sports are fully commercialized. Billions of dollars flow through them each year. The NCAA makes money, and enables universities and corporations to make money, from the unpaid labor of young athletes.

Slavery analogies should be used carefully. College athletes are not slaves. Yet to survey the scene—corporations and universities enriching themselves on the backs of uncompensated young men, whose status as “student-athletes” deprives them of the right to due process guaranteed by the Constitution—is to catch an unmistakable whiff of the plantation. Perhaps a more apt metaphor is colonialism: college sports, as overseen by the NCAA, is a system imposed by well-meaning paternalists and rationalized with hoary sentiments about caring for the well-being of the colonized. But it is, nonetheless, unjust. The NCAA, in its zealous defense of bogus principles, sometimes destroys the dreams of innocent young athletes.

The NCAA today is in many ways a classic cartel. Efforts to reform it—most notably by the three Knight Commissions over the course of 20 years—have, while making changes around the edges, been largely fruitless. The time has come for a major overhaul. And whether the powers that be like it or not, big changes are coming. Threats loom on multiple fronts: in Congress, the courts, breakaway athletic conferences, student rebellion, and public disgust. Swaddled in gauzy clichés, the NCAA presides over a vast, teetering glory.

 This is embarrassing.  Not new, mind  you, but coming from the pen of Mr. Branch, it packs a particularly poignant punch.    So the question is, what will it take to bring down this behemoth?

Race and College Basketball

Anyone watching the Kentucky - West Virginia basketball game will come away admiring the skill and athleticism of the players on the floor. These players are terrific talents, no question about it.

I just can't help but notice a far more interesting phenomenon. For long stretches during the first half, all ten players on the floor were black players. In contrast, when the cameras turned to the crowd, it was predominantly white, as were the bands for both teams, the announcers and the coaches.

Finally, around the 10:47 mark, what appeared to be the first white player stepped on the floor for West Virginia: Deniz Kilicli, a freshman forward from Istanbul, Turkey.

I kid you not.

This is embarrassing in so many ways that I don't even know where to begin.

Above all, I wonder whether the people of Kentucky and West Virginia are as welcoming of students who apply to their university as they are of their basketball stars.

I also wonder whether admission officials at both schools are similarly welcoming of applicants of color as they are of basketball players, black or white.

Same for residents of both states: I wonder about their views on race and affirmative action.

Back in January, I wrote about the blatant the hypocrisy in the affirmative action debate, written in the context of the hiring of two white coaches whose credentials were questionable at best. I wondered then whether we could only "find Ward Connerly when we needed him."

I am still waiting for the outrage. After all, aren't these players taking seats on college campuses -- and college teams -- away from deserving whites?

Maybe the tea partiers could add this issue to their cause.

There They Go Again: College Sports

Binghamton University is the "academic jewel" of the SUNY system. According to the New York Times, Binghamton was also the site of gross academic misconduct, including the lowering of admission standards and the changing of grades, in the name of "athletic glory."

This was in the sports section of the paper, though it really should have been front page news.

This story epitomizes the vacuity of college athletics.

Somehow, the Times missed the larger import of the story. As you turn to the rest of the story, you find out about the lengths to which university administrators went to improve the men's basketball program. It is all pretty sickening. Yet it also made me wonder: surely, if small Binghamton University goes to these lengths, what else is everybody else doing to either achieve athletic excellence or to remain there?

Perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not, the Times included an AP story on the next page about how the "Longhorns are Preparing for Life After McCoy." This is a story about the University of Texas' football program and the upcoming season. This is the same program whose coach will be paid in excess of 5 million dollars a year, and whose budget is around 127 million dollars.

To pose the obvious question: if it happens at Binghamton University, what are the chances that it does not happen at the University of Texas? or put a different way: to what lengths would administrators at the top revenue producing programs go in order to reel in top recruiting classes while ensuring that their players remain academically eligible?

We can only wonder.

However, it is hard to be optimistic.