As Coaches And Teams Win, Dunces And The Ill-Behaved Lose

Among the best gauges of a society’s health are the heroes it glorifies and the behavior it pays money to watch. Popular sports and sports figures - and what we expect of them - tell a lot about the values of the people who patronize and elevate these idols into our pantheons of celebrity.

Maybe I, a lifelong sports fan, make too much of this. But ever since former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson bit off a piece of Evander Holyfield’s ear while millions watched on television, I’ve wondered if the threads of sportsmanship that reinforce the fabric of all societal endeavor are beginning to unravel.

Is life imitating art, vice versa, or some of each? And should it worry us?

In Oakland, pro basketball star Latrell Sprewell publicly curses, punches and chokes his coach. In Rockford, Ill., the school board president grabs a disagreeing board member by the throat. In Irving, Texas, visiting football linemen pummel Dallas Cowboys quarterback Troy Aikman, trying deliberately to injure and knock him out of the game.

In Washington, congressional leaders bombard President Clinton - and one another - with calculated insults, aiming to destroy their careers by savaging their reputations.

Unrelated fragmentary coincidences? Maybe.

Edward Gibbon’s “The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire” is cited as warning for every evil from dandruff to fallen arches. But one inescapable sign of the decay of Roman culture surely was the brutalizing depravity of the public taste, as reflected in popular amusements at the Colosseum.

No longer content with healthy athletic competition, an increasingly sadistic public demanded blood. Sated with spectacles of cruelty, people craved the sight of gladiators actually killing opponents and of human victims being eaten by wild animals. By that time, Roman civilization was too far gone to recover.

One reflection of current American values is the salary scale we hold out to professional athletes. More for a single season than the best teacher in our public schools will earn in a lifetime! Even collegiate competitions have succumbed to a near-fatal blurring of that once-proud, Simon-pure line between amateur and professional. It’s win at any price. A coach can have a string of successful seasons and set a healthy life example for his charges. But suffer a losing season and he’s out!

My alma mater is not much different from the rest. The University of Texas at Austin put up with coach John Mackovic while he tolerated players who didn’t attend classes. After all, we beat Nebraska last year! But let Mackovic produce one losing team and we screamed for his scalp.

Our school was searching recently for a new coach and a new president. With bated breath, we awaited the announcement of Mack Brown’s selection as head coach. How many know who’s being considered for president? Or care?

Reportedly, we’ve offered Brown a five-year contract for $750,000 a year plus bonuses - several times the amount we’ll pay UT’s new president, whoever he or she may be. This introduces a sobering question: What, after all, is a university’s purpose? And what does this example teach students about what is and is not important?

Oh, I know. A winning team produces revenue for the school. If it’s good enough to attract television coverage, especially if it makes a major bowl game on New Year’s Day, there’ll be some money to share with mundane academic pursuits. Can’t argue with that.

But whatever happened to the ideal of the student athlete, with equal emphasis on “student”? Several members of my high school team went together one year to see the Cotton Bowl classic - Rice vs. Colorado. We wanted to watch Colorado quarterback “Whizzer” White, who was not only a fine player but a celebrated Rhodes scholar. White later served on the U.S. Supreme Court. A friend of mine on the Rice squad that year told me how tough his school’s academic requirements were on student athletes.

Back when Texas Christian University was winning conference titles and bowl games, it produced a lot of players who were good students and became good, productive citizens. Ben Hagman practiced law in Weatherford. I.B. Hale became security head for General Dynamics.

Sammy Baugh played for the Redskins, coached college football and was exemplary as a person. Lon Evans had a long, outstanding career as Tarrant County’s sheriff. All-American mentions Davey O’Brien, Lindy Berry and Dr. Jim Swink have occupied prominent positions in community life. The list is too long to recite.

Is it wistful nostalgia or did coaches really care more in those days about successful lives? Now, many seem so eager for winning scores - so driven, in fact, to produce them - that their highest post-college hopes for a player often embrace merely a few years in professional ranks.

Coaches are role models, whether they wish it or not. One university coach this year quarreled with the academic dean who’d turned down admissions for two recruits who couldn’t pass eighth-grade math or English.

Other colleges, the coach explained, were enrolling such recruits - physically gifted but academically untouched, socially passed all the way up through high schools - on their athletic prowess alone. “Another team will get them,” said the coach, “and if I’m not allowed to recruit kids like this, I can’t give you a winning team.”

It turns out he was right. And that’s sad. And do you know who is done the biggest disservice? The kids themselves.

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