Tag Archives: athletics

Odd Goings-On

I have noted (endlessly?) that intercollegiate athletics at our major universities have taken over the show. One of the comments by a reader of a recent post on this topic mentioned that when she returned to her alma mater for a reunion not long ago she noted that the English department at her old university — which flourished while she was there — was now pathetic, small in numbers and anemic. Yet the football program is huge and costly. This has become the norm, sad to say.

But one of the peculiar  things to have come out of this dominance of sports, especially football, on college campuses has to do with the ridiculous Bowl season which is about over as I write. I mentioned in a prior blog post that there are now 40 Bowl games during the holidays. But a few years ago the NCAA instituted a playoff of sorts to determine the National Champion — a prize worth millions. It involves the four best teams according to a blue-ribbon panel that decides on the basis of statistics and “the eye test” which four teams should play off for the Grand Prize. Those teams who don’t make the final four are relegated to the lesser Bowl games — such as the Sugar Bowl and the Cotton Bowl — all with corporate sponsors of course (which should tell us a thing or two about what is going on here). Those “lesser” Bowl games still involve good teams, though the criterion of 6 victories minimum to make the team eligible for the games makes for some lopsided games. Not all the teams involved are all that good.

In any event, of recent note is the fact that an increasing number of young men destined for the NFL have decided to opt out of the Bowl Games — not those involved in the National Championship (so far), but in the lesser games. They (and their agents) have decided it is too risky to play in a meaningless game where they might get hurt and reduce their value in the pro football market. Georgia recently had several of its star players sit out of their Bowl game for this reason (and they won anyway, which is interesting).

Just prior to the Rose Bowl (the “granddaddy of them all”) an interviewer spoke with Jonathan Taylor of Wisconsin — one of the two teams involved in the Rose Bowl game. Taylor is a star running back who has set a number of university and national records and is a sure bet to go high in the upcoming NFL draft. She asked him why he had decided to play in the game when so many of those who also have a promising professional career ahead of them were opting out to maximize their value to a professional team. Taylor said that he regarded the Rose Bowl as a privilege and an honor and since it took a team effort to get there it would be wrong of him to opt out and lessen the chances of his team winning. This was astonishing to me as it suggested that there is at least one young man who realizes that there is something more important in this world than the self and — as they like to say — there is no “I” in team.

He was right, not only factually but also morally. There is a duty that so many of these young men are ignoring: their universities have paid them (in the form of free tuition, room, board, and books) to pay for the team. And it was the team that put them into position to shine and increase their market value (if you will). But they see only the chance to make millions of dollars and they weigh it against the possibility that they will get hurt in the Bowl game and they decide to opt out — except for a few young men like Jonathan Taylor.

Taylor is an exceptional running back for Wisconsin. But more importantly, he is also a remarkable young man. He showed that he understands a bit more than so many of his fellow players about what it means to be on a team. I applaud him for that.

(Oh, and may I also mention the he is a philosophy major at Wisconsin? Coincidence, to be sure, but interesting none the less.)

Advertisement

Pay For Play

Increasingly those who claim to be in the know suggest that athletes at the NCAA Division I level should get paid to play the games they play in college — especially the revenue sports such as basketball and football. The argument runs that paying the athletes to play will circumvent the sorts of scandal that are all-too common in collegiate sports these days.

For example, Zion Williamson, the extraordinary basketball player who recently completed a sensational Freshman year at Duke University finds himself involved in a scandal resulting from the claim that Nike gave his mother a considerable sum of money to make sure he would thereafter wear their product. Allegedly, Nike also made it “convenient” for him to attend Duke University which is a “Nike” University — i.e., a university that  receives (as does its basketball coach) baskets full of money to have their players wear their shoes and clothing. In a word, the players become walking endorsements for the Nike products, which makes it obligatory that young kids spend many, many dollars to wear Nike products worn by their heroes and heroines (and frequently made in sweat shops in the “Third World”).  It’s allegedly been going on for many years, but the F.B.I. has recently become involved because laws may have been broken.

Clearly, there are moral laws broken here and there, but we tend to look the other way as long as our team continues to win. But the question remains: should those athletes simply get paid for the job they do, since there is such a huge amount of money involved? Surely, they are the ones earning the money their colleges and universities pocket after the season and the tournaments are over. Laws or no laws, it simply seems to be the fair way to doing things. And if it reduces the instances of fraud and corruption so much the better.

Nearly 20 years ago, in the Fall of 2001, I published a paper in the Montana Professor in which I argued that athletes at the NCAA Division I level (in the revenue sports) should be paid to play their sports. I gave my reasons and I still think my plan is more honest than anything I have heard recently that is supposed to solve what is clearly a moral problem — if not a legal one. Here’s the heart and soul of my argument:

[A]t the Division I level . . .  I would recommend eliminating all pretense by admitting that major sports at that level are a proving ground for professional athletics–especially football, basketball (both men’s and women’s), and, to a lesser extent, baseball. Young people who choose to participate in athletics at that level should not be required to attend classes and they should be paid a fair salary to play: athletes at the major universities thereby becoming members of minor league teams wearing school colors and sponsored by the universities and their alumni. . . . .

In the event that some of the athletes on these teams actually want to pursue an education, they can pay tuition along with everyone else. Presumably, they will be better able to do this with the money they make from their sport. This step would remove the hypocrisy that exists at present, and the universities would be able to apply the most promising of current business practices to organized sport, without worrying about interference from the NCAA. In the event that the costs of fielding a professional team become prohibitive, the universities can eliminate play-for-pay and move to the Division II level where, even as things now stand, financial losses from athletics are typically considerably less than at the Division I level. Eliminating athletic “scholarships,”  would further reduce costs. In the event that costs are still prohibitive, the universities would have to eliminate some of the sports programs–a reasonable proposal given the large number of sports that involve such a small number of students (and one that is already being adopted by a number of Division I schools). Dropping football at a typical Division II school that currently offers “scholarships” to athletes, for example, can save that school close to $200,000 a year, according to a recent NCAA study. To encourage greater student participation in sports, a larger share of the athletic budget could then be allocated to intramural sports, which involve a great many more students.

The strength of this model is simply that it is more honest, since very few of the athletes in major sports at the Division I level are students in anything but the loosest sense of that term. On a more positive note, since the perks that athletes currently receive at the Division I level–posh living accommodations, scholarships, meals, medical treatment, automobiles, etc.–“do not come close to representing the value of the athletes to the school in publicity, revenues, etc.,” this model would acknowledge that these athletes are professionals and treat them accordingly.*

This may not solve the problem altogether, because where such huge sums of money are involved there will always be corruption. But it does, as I say, seem to be the most honest way to deal with the problem. One thing for sure, it will bury the myth once and for all that these kids are “student-athletes.” They are athletes who may choose, if they pay tuition, to be students.

_________________________________________________________

*For the complete essay, “The Tail That Wags The Dog,” see my blog main page and check the URL in the comment for a clearer copy.

Then and Now

Then

Thomas Jefferson founded the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia in order to make it possible for young gentlemen to receive an education so they could eventually become involved in politics and make wise decisions in an effort to run the country. Like cream in milk, the best would rise to the top and become the brains that would determine how the state and the country are best served. [We see how that turned out!] All of the young people were to be accorded three years of free education, including the girls. The girls would not proceed further, but the best and brightest boys would be encouraged to continue their eduction and the very best and brightest would attend the University. Plato thought women could become philosopher kings and while Jefferson admired Plato — and most assuredly borrowed ideas from his Republic — he did not go as far as Plato, sad to say.

In any event. I was born in Charlottesville and many (many) years ago I returned and visited a room in one of the original dormitories at the university and saw where the young men were housed — with stairs in the room leading down to a dark, small room below where the slave who attended to his master lived. It was disturbing, to say the least, though unlike many others I do not fault Jefferson for his racial and gender prejudices as they were common in his day and he made up for his blindness in that direction by seeing so many other things that were important for this young nation — like the essential relationship between education and the survival of democracy.  Unlike many others, I make every effort to separate the man from his ideas.

Now

Nowadays the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia is a reputable institution and a prominent member of the NCAA Division I  — with a football team that has 85 full scholarships awarded to the best, strongest, fastest athletes, many of whom, including the quarterback, are black. (Please note the irony!) The university has 25 sports teams, in fact, nicely balanced between the men and women (yes, the women are allowed to enroll at the university if you can imagine!) Like so many major universities in this country, the athletic teams dominate the scene and the notion that the university is there to prepare young people for a life of public service, the carrying out of their civic duties, has been buried beneath the merde that has become the Division I university of our day.

Years ago I suggested that athletes in Division I schools be paid a salary and those few who wanted to attend classes and actually learn and have their minds expanded could damn-well pay for it just like the other students. With the salaries they would make as semi-professional athletes they could well afford it. There is some talk these days about allowing the young men and women who play sports in those large universities to be paid a stipend that would be based on the amount of monies the universities make in this day and age of ENTERTAINMENT where, as things now stand, the athletes are exploited by avaricious universities that make millions in TV revenue and from playing in the plethora of Bowl Games that grace our television sets from Christmas until well after New Years (40 at last count). They stole my idea, but my plan is more honest.

Things have changed. But as we must admit, all change is not progress. To be sure, there has been some progress: women are allowed to attend universities and be exploited along with the men, for example. And black athletes are compensated for their efforts in that that they are offered a free education, such as it is. But it is not clear what Thomas Jefferson would think about what is going on at his university, despite his blind spots. At the very least he could see the obvious fact that at the University of Virginia, like all other major universities in this country, the focus is on athletic success rather than academic excellence: the tail wags the dog.  We have allowed things to turn upside-down. Jefferson must be spinning in his grave — for many reasons.

Here We Go Again!

You may have picked up the stench from East Lansing, Michigan where the outrageous behavior of Dr. Larry Nassar recently came to the surface and is now followed by allegations of innumerable sexual attacks against women by members of the university’s basketball and football teams. Dr. Nasser has been sentenced to 175 years in prison for his behavior involving Olympic athletes as the flowing clip from CNN reveals:

(CNN)Once a world-renowned sports physician treating America’s foremost Olympic women gymnasts, Larry Nassar now will spend the rest of his life behind bars.

The disgraced former USA Gymnastics and Michigan State University doctor was sentenced to 40 to 175 years in prison, a judge announced Wednesday, after more than 150 women and girls said in court that he sexually abused them over the past two decades.
“I’ve just signed your death warrant,” Judge Rosemarie Aquilina said in a Lansing, Michigan, courtroom. “I find that you don’t get it, that you’re a danger. That you remain a danger.”
Nassar had pleaded guilty to seven counts of criminal sexual conduct in Ingham County in Michigan and admitted to using his trusted medical position to assault and molest girls under the guise of medical treatment.
Imagine that: 150 women testified against this man who has shown little remorse that raises deep questions about the man’s mental stability, among other things.
But the aftermath at Michigan State, where Dr. Nasser was team physician for many years, raises even more questions. It has all the hallmarks of the Penn State investigations not too long ago involving charges of sexual attacks on young boys by a member of the Penn State football staff. The fundamental problems here are twofold: (1) The University feigns ignorance regarding victims of alleged attacks, and reporting those attacks is not encouraged; moreover, when attacks are reported they are not taken seriously. (2) The culture of secrecy that surround the athletics programs which are laws unto themselves. Attacks are investigated by campus police who then report to the Athletics Director as do those young women who allege attacks. The Athletics Director is then charged with following up those charges and punishing the attackers when found guilty. But, as can be imagined, the in-house investigations give every appearance of a cover-up and the University continually denies the charges, as do the basketball and football coaches who, if they did not know of the attacks (which is doubtful) certainly should have.
In any event, we have here the resounding echoes of the seemingly endless number of scandals that would appear to rock college campuses where the sports teams are laws unto themselves and just when we think public reports of the latest scandal would surely end the nightmare, it passes as just another incident reported in the news and quickly forgotten. The genie is out of the bottle on college campuses where Division I athletics are King. And it is not clear, given the amounts of money involved in sports at that level, that the genie can be put back into the bottle. On the contrary.
As a life-long educator this bothers me on so many levels. I have spent my life dedicated to the ideal of education as the process of freeing young minds and have always regarded college as the place where the process finds its highest expression. I have no problem with sports, having played them all my life and having been a certified teaching professional in tennis and a collegiate tennis coach for many years. But as an educator I have always thought that sports should take their place in the college and university hierarchy well below the ideals of educating young minds.
But at the Division I level of NCAA sports this is clearly not the case where education comes after all the money is counted and the bills are paid — and folks are paid off, apparently. The corruption in itself is an object lesson, one would think, but like so many object-lessons this one is not learned — even in the hallowed halls of academe where history is still taught. We hear and read about these things going on and then return to business as usual. Nothing changes and the problems persist.

More Of Same

In my numerous (innumerable?) jottings on the sorry state of higher education these days I have tended to focus most of my attention on the undue emphasis on athletics in “higher” education along with the seemingly endless athletic scandals that have been a part of the collegiate climate. To be sure there have been many and they continue to be revealed at an alarming rate. But there is more.

The remarkable group in Washington D.C. that keeps an eye on the level of education in America today, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, shares with us other information that is almost as alarming as the scandals above mentioned. For example,

• Clemson University is spending $55 million on an athletics complex that will feature a mini-golf course, sand volleyball courts, laser tag, a movie theater, bowling  lanes, and a barber shop. This recreation palace is not open to all Clemson students or even to all Clemson athletes. It is reserved for the exclusive use of the Clemson Tiger football team!

• The University of Michigan added 77 new full-time positions to its athletics department between 2004 and 2014 adding $13 million to its payroll. That included the hiring of a longtime NBA marketing executive as “chief marketing officer” for Michigan’s athletics — a position that didn’t exist prior to his hire!

• The University of Mississippi college football program had a payroll that grew from $212,702 to $2,170,676 over the course of a decade.

And these are all public universities and the athletes are the ones who claim they are exploited and insist they should be paid to play. While there’s some truth in their claim, at least at Clemson their case would be a hard sell. But, wait, there’s more!

• Last year rapper “Big Scan” headlined at the University of Minnesota’s homecoming concert. His booking fee was a staggering$75,000. To add insult to injury, the University charged its own students $20.00 each to attend the concert.

• California State University at Fullerton is set to spend almost $400,000 on this year’s “spring concert.” It hasn’t yet even announced who’s performing.

• The University of Michigan built a dorm featuring a luxury dining hall where students can enjoy salmon fillets, lamb, and shark.

• The University of Massachusetts at Amherst has a dining hall with a pub, saunas, and ten racquetball courts.

All of this is occurring at a time when the quality of higher education is on a downward slide. Incoming students, even at “select” colleges and universities, are often required to take remedial courses; grade inflation is rampant — to the point where Columbia University medical school won’t take Harvard graduates because they all have a 4.0 grade — the “A” grade has become meaningless; “entitled” students demand that courses be easy and they be given high grades, just as they will do when they graduate and seek employment with little work and high salaries; core academic requirements have been all but gutted at even the most prestigious universities despite the fact that students are generally less well prepared for college work than they were a decade ago and the average college student has little knowledge of history or political science, reads and writes at a grammar-school level, and cannot calculate the tip in a restaurant.

To make natters worse, colleges are introducing courses and majors that have little or no academic merit and will leave the student unprepared for a changing and complex future. For example:

• Plymouth State University offers a B.S. in “Adventure Education” to “teach you how to use the Great Outdoors to expose children, adults, and at-risk populations to challenging adventures, personal growth, and self-discovery.”

• Bowling Green State University offers a B.A. in Popular Culture. Students can earn a minor in Folklore.

• The University of Connecticut offers a B.F.A. in Puppet Arts.

It would appear that the problems in higher education at a time when costs are skyrocketing do not attach themselves only to athletics scandals. There is something rotten in the state of higher education and there appear to be very few who are either aware there is a problem or willing and/or able to do anything about it. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni continues to work to raise awareness in the hope that alumni, at least, will bring pressure to bear on the colleges and universities that take large amounts of student’s money without offering them much in return. But, as you can imagine it is an uphill battle at a time when competition for bodies in the classroom is ferocious and “entitled” students are led to expect that they will be provided a quality education in a country-club atmosphere where the football game and the party on the weekend are the main concern. Education be damned! Where’s the beer?

Priorities?

A recent news story tells us all we need to know (and then some) about what really matters in American higher education. Here’s how the story begins:

Proving it’s not only small, private, liberal-arts colleges that are susceptible to financial distress, Louisiana State University (LSU) announced that it’s in the midst of drawing up a financial exigency plan.

Bloomberg News, which reported the development, called the plan “equivalent to a college bankruptcy” and noted that it would let LSU fire tenured faculty and restructure its finances.

The Baton Rouge-based university with over 30,000 students is drafting the plan, in part, because the most recently proposed budgetary cuts by Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal threaten to severely impact the higher-education system in the state. The governor’s plans would cut the budgets for Louisiana’s colleges and universities to the tune of 82%, according to Bloomberg.

The president and chancellor of LSU, F. King Alexander, stressed the bankruptcy plan was essential since there has been little movement in the state’s legislature to make updates to the budget.

“We don’t say that to scare people,” Alexander was quoted as saying in The Times-Picayune. “Basically, it is how we are going to survive.”

(Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/lsu-is-drafting-a-financial-exigency-plan-2015-4#ixzz3YKJHEFxy)

The economic struggles of small liberal arts colleges are well-known, but this is the first news regarding the financial struggles of a major university and the obvious fact that large universities have so much more fat to trim than do small colleges hardly needs to be mentioned. However, the news that L.S.U. may have to make draconian cut-backs, including the firing of tenured faculty, is a shocker. But it should be read in the context of several salient facts: Les Miles, the L.S.U. football coach makes $4.3 million a year and has 17 assistant coaches whose salaries are almost certainly higher than the tenured faculty who might be dismissed. In addition, like all other major Colleges, L.S.U. is allowed 85 “full-ride” athletic “scholarships.” Assuming that all of these are out-of-state students (which is a fair assumption) this amounts to $325,397.00 per year — just for football.

The “restructuring” may be a bluff on the part of the president, of course, to bring the legislature to heel. But a much bigger bluff would be the threat to drop L.S.U. football — or any of the sixteen sports teams. Now that would get their attention! But, come to think of it, the bluff almost certainly wouldn’t work: the legislators know that L.S.U. would never touch the athletic teams! Tenured faculty for sure, but don’t touch the coaches or the athletics program. They know what really matters in major American colleges and universities — and it’s not education.

Cheating As A Rule

The possibility of a cheating scandal at one of the nation’s most prestigious universities has raised concern in many circles. So a recent story begins:

STANFORD, Calif. (AP) — An unusually high number of students at Stanford University are suspected of cheating during the most recent term, putting faculty members and administrators of the prestigious institution on alert.

University Provost John Etchemendy sent a letter to faculty members highlighting what he called “troubling allegations” that stem from “a smattering of concerns from a number of winter courses,” the San Jose Mercury News reported Friday. Etchemendy said the students are cheating themselves and risk severe consequences.

When I taught at the University of Rhode Island years ago word came down to our department that a copy of someone’s logic final had gotten out. We all had to come in a 5:00 AM and write a common final exam that would be given to all students, even though there were five of us and we all taught the course differently. It was a nightmare and most students badly failed, I’m sorry to say. The innocent were punished along with the guilty. Later, it was learned that a plastic overlay from the mimeograph machine (remember them??) had been pilfered from the trash and was being used to sell copies of one of the finals at one of the fraternities. In any event, students lined up to buy the exam though someone eventually blew the whistle. We had no idea whose exam it was, and that’s why we all had to come up with a common exam. The administration knew which fraternity was involved, but that fraternity was never disciplined because the university “didn’t want a scandal.”

Cheating is not new, of course. Just recall Tom Lehrer’s wonderful song long ago about plagiarism and those who cheat, graduate, and are “forgotten with the rest.”  We have learned what universities will do to “avoid a scandal” — The Paterno scandal comes to mind. It seems that not only in athletics, but in the university climate as a whole the possibility of a scandal leads administrators to do strange things to “cover up.” That, in itself, is a scandal since the universities are supposed to lead by example and this is a very poor example indeed. But it appears to be the norm. The common defense is: hey, I’m just  doing what the others do — which seems to the cornerstone of this culture’s ethics  — so we should not be surprised.

Anyone who has taught at a college or university is familiar with the drill involved to check on the sources of student papers and watch carefully during exams to see that no one is looking where they shouldn’t be. It’s commonplace, though it most assuredly should not be.

So we have a perfect right to ask why and wish that it were otherwise. Stanford University has strict rules about cheating and that’s a good thing. Let’s hope those who are caught with their fingers in the cookie jar are appropriately punished. The notion that an action is perfectly right if others are doing it is the most shallow, even cynical, sort of ethics. Cheating is wrong. It may be widespread, but it is wrong — not only in universities, but anywhere.

‘Nuff Said

I have remarked ad nauseam about the absurdity of Division I athletics which have nothing whatever to do with what colleges and universities are supposed to be all  about. Indeed, I have even gone so far as to say that they detract from what the colleges and universities are supposed to be all about. For those who still have any lingering doubts, there is this little tidbit that was published in this week’s Sports Illustrated under the heading of “Go Figure.”

“$792,845.68. Total cost of an eight-day exhibition trip to the Bahamas last August for Kentucky basketball players, coaches, staff, and 57 boosters. Among the individual costs was a $23,855.50 reception dinner.”

Meanwhile there are people out there living in cardboard boxes and scrounging around for food in garbage cans. One would like to think that a college education would sensitize young men and women to the plight of the disadvantaged, but it is doubtful as long as they are treated like royalty. Such treatment cannot help but turn their heads — which are already half-way up their butts.

The Tail Still Wags

A recent story caught my eye. The headline made me wonder if there was still hope for the education of students at major football colleges:

The University of Alabama-Birmingham will officially shut down its football program at the end of the season, the school announced Tuesday.

UAB becomes the first Football Bowl Subdivision/Division I-A school to drop football since Pacific in 1995.

A release by the university cited the results of a review conducted by CarrSports Consulting that said in order to preserve the greater good of the athletic department, UAB needed to end football, bowling and rifle at the end of the 2014-15 academic year.

But after I read a bit I realized a couple of things. To begin with, this university’s football team is not a “major player” as they  say. It’s among the lesser lights of college football. Further, they shut down the football program to “preserve the greater good of the athletic department,” whatever that means. I did think it funny that they also shut down the bowling and rifle teams — I mean, seriously, what do such activities have to do with education? And that’s the point here: major college sports have allowed the tail to wag the dog, as I noted many years ago. The higher purpose of education, to help young people gain control of their own minds, has been lost in the tizzy to (a) get into the fast lane and make big bucks, and (b) make sure the kids have fun and don’t transfer elsewhere. This is why so many colleges and universities have become summer camps, with recreational facilities that are designed to make sure the students are happy and continue to pay their inflated tuition fees without flinching. (They can pay back the loans later on. For now, let’s just make sure they come to our place and stay.)

When Robert Hutchins dropped intercollegiate sports at The University of Chicago back in the dark ages, it was done for the right reasons — to guarantee the integrity of the educational program at the university which Hutchins recognized as the only real purpose of the university. Despite the hue and cry that followed his outrageous move, the university not only survived, but it thrived and is among the best academic institutions in the world today, recognized everywhere for its commitment to the students’ “greater good” and not the “greater good of the athletic department.” The former is what is important here, and while UAB did the right thing, it did so for the wrong reasons. Thus, while I had hoped it might be a sign of good things to come, I returned to earth after a moment of euphoria and realized that it means little given the relative size of the program and the fact that it was all about costs and not in the least about educating young people.

What’s It Worth?

I used to watch “Antiques Roadshow,” one of the very few shows on public television that people actually watch in great numbers. But its popularity as well as the nature of the show itself are worth consideration. The former depends on the latter. But what is the show about? What does it mean? What are the subtle, hidden suggestions the show passes along to us? These are questions worth considering.

People bring family heirlooms and treasures to a city where cameras are set up and experts evaluate the worth of these treasures in dollars and cents. In a word, the “value” of things is translated before our eyes from delight, sentiment, and aesthetic appreciation to filthy lucre. It is a sign of what has been called the “commodification” of culture. In such a culture everything is turned into a commodity — including human labor — and a price is put on it which determines its value. Without the dollar sign attached to it, it has no value. We are so used to the process we no longer think about what has been lost in the translation. What things are really worth has given way to what price they can bring. “I love that painting, but is it worth anything?” This is absurd.  If you love the painting it has real value. You don’t need to attach a dollar sign to it.

The same sort of thing happens in “sport” which is the reduction of athleticism from something beautiful and valuable in itself for participants and spectators alike into a money-making proposition where television and promoters call the shots and the athletes are valued for what kind of market they create with their skills. The better ones make more money, and vice versa. Just think about what the commercialization of the Olympics has done. It has turned a series of athletic events that should amaze and astound us for the remarkable skill shown by the participants into a competitive spectacle where every medal earned is rewarded with dollars and carefully counted; winning has become not the main thing but the only thing that counts. It really isn’t: I don’t care if Vince Lombardy did say it. It is the event or the performance itself that should be valued, not wins and losses.

When I played and coached competitive tennis I loved to win. Don’t get me wrong. But I never fell into the trap of thinking that winning is what it’s all about. I played because I loved to play: to hit the good shot or to “be in the moment” when you know every shot will go where you want it to and nothing else matters. When I coached I always stressed performance. Let winning take care of itself; just give it your best effort. And I certainly would never have thought to put a price on winning or losing.

In a commodified culture something important is lost when these sorts of reductions take place. In reducing the value of heirlooms and family treasures to dollars and cents we lose the aesthetic and sentimental value of the objects themselves which has nothing whatever to do with money. In reducing athletics to sports we lose the thrill of watching another human being perform extraordinary feats of strength, skill, and movement as we worry about whether they will win or lose. Our three-dimensional world is hammered into a sheet.

We seem to have lost sight of why things are truly important to us in our urge to measure everything in terms of money. But how do we measure in this way the value of a child’s smile, a sunset, the trust the blind man has in his dog, or the love of another human? We can’t — certainly not in terms of dollars and cents. The important things don’t have a dollar value, they are valuable in themselves.