John Keilman, Chicago Tribune reporter
January 24, 2012
Harper, a community college in Palatine that serves 35,000 students annually, announced last week that it was closing down the football program it has run since 1971. Two schools in its conference, Joliet Junior College and Grand Rapids Community College, had just shed their squads, prompting Harper officials to rethink whether it still made sense to offer the sport. The answer they settled on was "no."
I felt sorry for the players when I heard about this, but I have to admit that my primary reaction was amazement. I couldn't believe that anyone involved with college sports would make such a rational decision.
I applaud Harper's decision. Their's has been a VERY successful program, but the sport is dangerous, it is expensive, and there are probably no more than 50 programs in the country where football actually brings in more loot than it costs.
College football and basketball have long provided a banquet for critics of hypocrisy, corruption and misplaced priorities, and lately the cynics have been digging in like teenagers at an Old Country Buffet. The latest bite came from The New York Times, which cited research concluding that prime-time programs cause grades and study habits to diminish among the general student body. (Fancy that - and don't forget the moral hazard of sports betting!)
The denunciations have become so loud and frequent that I usually tune them out. Universities care only about money? No duh — they sold their souls to ESPN and Nike a long time ago. Athletes are getting ripped off? If they don't have the brains or the guts to demand to be paid like the professionals they are, that's their problem. Students are being distracted from their academic work? Take away the games and they'd just find another reason to do keg stands and set police cars on fire.
I don't have much hope for the 50 or so hyperpowers that dominate bowl games and March Madness. But for years I have looked elsewhere for a flicker of common sense about intercollegiate sports, wondering when someone in charge would finally ask, "What are we doing? What does this really have to do with education?" (Two tremendous questions, that really need to be asked!)
I never imagined, though, that this breakthrough would come at a community college.
That's because most of these schools already run low-profile sports programs. They're typically ignored by the media — as I said, I didn't even know Harper had a football team until I heard it was disbanding — and they don't spend a lot. Harper's squad cost about $350,000 a year, (that almost sounds like real money!) a sum that probably wouldn't pay for the ACE bandages at a Big Ten university.
Kenneth Ender, the college's president, said money had little to do with the decision. Something more fundamental was at issue: Football, he said, had become divorced from the school's mission of propelling local students toward bachelor's degrees or professional advancement.
In
recent years, fewer than 10 percent of the team's 80-some players came
from the northwest suburban communities that support Harper with their
tax dollars (this year's roster featured athletes from as far away as
the U.S. Virgin Islands). A lot of them came with the ambition of being
noticed by four-year universities, but that rarely happened, Ender said.
Harper
has no athletic scholarships and no dorms, so the young players had to
find their own apartments and manage their own lives. The result, Ender
said, was an "abysmal" graduation rate.
"It just didn't make any sense to continue to offer the sport," he said. "The only reason, when you get down to it, is that we always did."
The school's other teams, which include men's and women's basketball, cross country and soccer, will continue. Ender said they attract local students to campus, and more importantly, help to keep them there. The money formerly spent on football will be used to fund two new sports that have yet to be determined.
Now, this wasn't exactly like Oklahoma, Miami or Notre Dame saying goodbye to football. There was no massive TV contract at stake, no powerful boosters to fear, no legion of alumni ready to march on the administration offices with pitchforks and torches. Aside from the understandably disappointed players, Ender said, no one on campus has said much about the decision.
But I think a lot of bigger schools would be well-advised to study Harper's sensible example. What would they discover if they put their athletic departments under a similar microscope? Do their teams really add to the educational experience? Or have they drifted into isolated orbits, estranged from their schools' true purpose?
I have a feeling that if other colleges and universities had the courage to act on what they found, America would have a lot more empty football fields.
Twitter @JohnKeilman
Copyright © 2012, Chicago Tribune
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