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Confessions of a Spoilsport: My Life and Hard Times Fighting Sports Corruption at an Old Eastern University (Penn State Press)

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To put my cards on the table at the first opportunity: I have recently retired from Rutgers, New Brunswick after 37 years on the Math faculty. For several years, I worked with Bill Dowling and the Rutgers 1000 to try to find a way of diverting the university from the cesspool that is big-time Div 1-A football. I am mentioned in the book in one or two places.

That said, I have to say that I don't miss teaching very much and that the atmosphere created by the dominant jockocracy, especially now that the "program" is a "winner", is an important factor in my indifference. Div 1A football is pure poison when one longs for an atmosphere where serious students predominate and their genuine intllectual curiosity flourishes. I have had such students, of course, and met quite a few of them in the defunct Honors Program, which Dowling accurately describes. These days, they seem like remnants of a doomed race.

Note that it's not jocks, as such, who now flourish in New Brunswick? The best and brightest of them--those who participate in the "non-revenue" sports as free individuals motivated only by their enthusiasm--have, in most cases, been victims of a wholesale purge (unreported in Dowling's book, alas, though it is the saddest and most ironic aspect of the moral rot that concerns him). Fencing, Crew, and Men's Tennis and Swimming have vanished without a trace, despite intense lobbying from outraged parents and alumni and universal bewilderment among undergrads. Why? The pretext is that they are "too expensive". But this happens as more and more cash is poured into a bloated and self-indulgent football program, in the form of luxury accommodations to entice recruits and astronomical pay-scales for coaches and administrators. If you need further reasons, such wholesale aboliton of varsity teams is a cheap and cynical way of "satisfying" Title IX requirements, so that there is no legal obstacle to providing the football team with all the cannon fodder it claims to need.

Likewise, the roster of listed courses continues to decline across the board, especially the small specialized courses that give undergrads access to serious scholarship and research as opposed to once-over-lightly survey courses. The physical plant is ill-maintained. Even the newest buildings, poorly designed to begin with, are allowed to decay in short order. The Banks of the Old Raritan are now tilted so that all the loose cash flows directly into the football program's coffers, with a bit diverted to basketball. The univeristy boasts of the academic success rates of its "student athletes"; funnny thing, though: I've never seen one in any of my classes and I strongly suspect that that if transcripts were on the public record, there would be little sign of anything that deserves to be called higher education.

Alas, the same is true of all too many ordinary students. The student culture has simply plunged into "party school" mode, which is why, as a previous evaluator notes, its a pretty rag-tag bunch, academically, despite the continued presence of a first class faculty. [By the way, to address another point brought up in the previous post, the reason Rutgers outranks such schools as Nebraska is purely a matter of faculty quality; there are still departments at the school that outshine anything in the Ivies. My own department has been consistently listed among the top 15 or so for decades (from a research point of view, of course).] But even the most loyal faculty get pretty disgusted at seeing some lunkhead of a football coach who is making ten times what they are (salary alone, excluding all the little side-deals that fill a coach's pockets when his minions do what they're supposed to and knock their brains out to get a bowl invitation without ever seeing serious money themselves). I know of a few cases where top scholars have gone on to other venues after long Rutgers careers, and I don't think the jockocracy can be let off the hook.

I think Dowling leaves some other factors in the decline of Rutgers (and universities in general) unvisited, since his focus is exclusively on the depradations of the Div 1A program. The snottiness, cynicism, and off-the-shelf nihilism of what may be called the postmodern turn in the humanities convinced many students that their teachers were self-indulgent and out of touch, blind to their own gullibility. So, too, the heavy emphasis on "identity politics" and all the machinery of mandatory righteousness (usually called "political correctness") that came with the package. Academic quirkiness of this kind drove off far more students than it recruited, so far as the life of the mind is concerned.

Equal blame goes to the ethos of pure utilitarianism that colonized much of the academic world utterly indifferent to the vapors of postmodernism. Too many programs and departments, along with their students, came to view their function as credentializing bureaucrats, technocrats, and corporate functionaries, without any concern for deeper cultural values unconcerned with the generation of high incomes and vocational perks.

But, still, there is something about the omniverous football culture that dwarfs everything else in determining the ethics and values that are commonly understood to characterize a campus. If you have a big-time program, you know damned well that sooner or later some high-ranking administrator is going to be caught cheating and lying on a grand scale, and that it will be the chief goal of the top dogs to paper the whole busines over and get back to business as usual. Meanwhile, the program will pass tons of meat on the hoof through the system every year, chewing most of it up past the point of usefulness, and sending the poor kids who signed up for football glory out into the world with no real education and a host of joint problems that will grow worse over the years.

As Dowling points out, the people responsible for this meltdown at Rutgers were for the most part local businessmen and politicians for whom access to a skybox at the stadium of a ranked team is the summum bonum of existence. President Bloustein, who might have known better, wasn't able to hold them off (I think Dowling treats Bloustein too generously, by the way). Presidents Lawrence and McCormick were in their pocket from the getgo. How a decent academic, like McCormick, decays into that forlorn state, I do not know. It's the American version of "Die Blaue Engel", I suppose.

In any case, Dowling has said what needed to be said. The jock-sniffers will howl, either because they are emotional cripples, or because they are cynical parasites who thrive on the crumbs that are dropped from the table of big-time NCAA sports. To hell with them.

Ever since it joined the Big East football conference under former president Francis Lawrence, Rutgers' rankings and admission standards have moved downwards. William Dowling here describes the battles of the Rutgers 1000 group (to which he belonged) against the corruption and cynicism of 'big time' athletics at Rutgers, and details the harm done by 'booster culture' to the intellectual and academic tradititons of America's 8th-oldest university.

For those who believe that universities exist primarily for the transmission of knowledge and free intellectual enquiry, this is not a pretty story. It details how, under a weak president chosen by a board of govenors concerned foremost with 'making it big' in sports, Rutgers withdrew from over a century of competition with schools like Princeton and Cornell and modelled its sports program on institutions like Virginia Tech and Miami. The consequences - including the flight of many of the brightest students, and a run down, crowded, shabby campus offset against the first-class athletic facilities provided for 'student athletes' are well documented in the book.

As a Rutgers student, it angers me that my university has thrown away at least $150 million over the past 15 years on football alone - money that could otherwise have gone into scholarships, new buildings, and facilities for ALL students. In these days of hype and hooplah over a 'winning' football program at Rutgers, it is worth remembering the price Rutgers has paid and continues to pay for such 'success'. I salute Professor Dowling for detailing the numerous reasons why many of us at Rutgers view div 1A football as an expensive sham that does far more harm than good to this great university.

It is difficult to acknowledge the corruption of an ideal, especially when that ideal has been embodied in an institution of higher learning for over two hundred years. Reading this book makes that acknowledgement inevitable.
As a current undergraduate at Rutgers University, I can attest to the accuracy with which Professor Dowling describes the academic and athletic environment that surrounds me from September to May. But the book's greatest value does not lie in its description of the greatest problem that American universities face. The narrative of student, faculty, and alumni opposition to the corruption of ideals that are the symbolic core of their university is what is truly amazing. It is proof that education still exists as an ideal, not just as a means to an end. This book should be read by every student who values education and its promise. I am certain that it will then be a matter of time before we see our university become the builder of men and women that it once was.

William Dowling is a professor at Rutgers who lives to teach bright, inquisitive students. But since Rutgers opted to move its football team into the Big East conference, he began noticing that the quality of his students was diminishing drastically. Was it possible that big-time football was actually ruining the academic reputation of the college so the best high school students no longer were applying? Was the intellectual elite turned off by the rah rah emphasis on football?
Indeed, he discovered, that was the case. And worse, his current top students began transferring to other colleges for the same reason.
To reverse the trend Professor Dowling attempted to raise the alarm as his RU1000 group sought to do what it could to get the Rutgers chancellor and board of directors to return to small-time football before Rutgers' educational standards fell so low it no longer was rated an elite college.
Alas, the efforts of Dowling and those professors and students who cared so deeply about the academic standards of Rutgers failed, as boosters, corporate sponsors, and football-crazy alums and students painted their faces red and cheered Rutgers to a spectacular season in 2007. As the football budget ballooned, Dowling and his group protested cuts in the academic budget. The betrayal to the core purpose of his beloved university was too much for Dowling to accept without comment.
In a brilliant book that lays bare the high cost to education and educators at sports-crazed colleges, Dowling makes one wonder whether many of our colleges have been corrupted beyond repair.
In the interest of fairness, I must report that part of his description of corruption at other colleges includes a discussion of my book Personal Fouls, which was about the corruption of North Carolina State basketball coach Jim Valvano. The college media machine tried to make mince meat out of me after that book came out. It'll be interesting to see what it tries to do to Professor Dowling.
This book should be required reading for anyone seriously interested in American higher education.

Dowling, a Rutgers English professor, argues that commercialized division 1a athletics negatively effect the intellectual rigor and atmosphere of the colleges and universities that are involved in them.

In the book, Dowling states that he has witnessed the following in his 20+ years at Rutgers:
1) much larger classes
2) an explosion in the cost of tuition
3) classrooms in an ever-increasing state of disrepair
4) decreasing morale among the faculty
5) the elimination of a number of non-revenue sports, including men's swimming and the crew teams
6) at least 100 million dollars spent on the football and basketball teams (scholarships, coaches, perks, facilities, etc...)

Dowling inspired a number of undergraduate students to create Rutgers1000 in the early 1990's. The goal of Rutgers1000 was to remove Rutgers from division 1a sports and to make Rutgers a non-athletic scholarship university. While the students, faculty and alumni all had branches of Rutgers1000, Dowling focuses on the student and alumni groups in his book.

Dowling details some of Rutgers1000's explanations that are listed on their website in his chapter "Warriors on the Web":
1)most Div 1a football teams lose money - the few programs that make money put the money right back into the football program
2)there is a big difference between exposure (Miami, Nebraska) and reputation (Berkeley, Harvard) - big-time athletics result in exposure, not reputation
3)if Freshmen go to a school because of a final four or bowl game appearance, these are not the kind of students that a college or university wants
4)Michigan is one of the few examples of a good academic school that also has a good Div 1a sports program - supporters of big time athletics often cite Michigan; this is false logic, as Michigan is an exception rather than the norm

Dowling details a number of scandals that have rocked colleges and universities over the last 30 years. He explains that there is a common pattern in the way they are usually handled:
1)college officials express shock
2)an investigative committee is established
3)there is a protest that the scandal does not truly represent the university
4)there is an announcement that "nothing like this will ever happen again"

This timely and riveting book beautifully describes what happens when big-time college sports, in this case football, take precedent over the quality of education at an Eastern university (Rutgers). The author, a professor of English at Rutgers, describes the valiant student-led effort to return college sports at Rutgers to the era when football players were indeed student athletes (emphasis on student) and the opponents were Princeton, and the rest of the Ivy League, Bucknell, Colgate and other private eastern schools with colonial roots. He describes how funds are stripped from non-revenue sports (crew, fencing) to build "professional" sports facilities for the football team at the expense of resources for the non-athetlic student body. The role of the New Jersey legislature, the Rutgers Admmissions office and the Rutger's Board in enabling the diminution of the intellectual quality of a great university for a few apearances on ESPN is especially sad

This well-written book has added facts to my fears about the impact of an exaggerated emphasis on football. At some institutions it has had a negative impact on education of college students. It is definitely worth reading if you are afraid it could be happening at your alma mater.

The flaws in Professor Dowling's arguments are that he takes much space to equate high SAT scores with high academic achievement. The Rutgers 1000 also weakened their case by mocking the University of Nebraska--inferring that our alma mater would be "lowered" to the academic standards of a "football school." This was naive and ignorant.

The problem with the SAT argument is, at least from my experience in New Jersey, is that the top student will gravitate to the top school, an Ivy League institution for example, if their family can pay the freight. In addition, colleges have moved in the direction of not requiring the SAT because they question its use as an indicator of college success. Not to mention that college applicants with the highese SAT scores tend to come from good to excellent public and private schools and families with high incomes. Dowling mentions his own working class roots, yet the Rutgers 1000 emphasized that the best test takers, based on a test some consider "elitist," are the high achievers they want?

If Rutgers was serious about competing more directly with Ivy League schools it would need to do more than drop scholarship athletics: it have to be a smaller, more selective, more rigorous institution--and practically tuition free to in-state students--just like the University of California before Ronald Reagan became governor. I don't know if this approach is more or less expensive than supporting a Big East football team, but I'd be curious to find out.

Dowling ignores that, under President Lawrence, Rutgers became a member of the Association of American Universities, a roster of the nation's leading research institutions--that already included the University of Nebraska-Lincoln--the "football school." I'm quite sure that Nebraska requires the same academic credentials of its faculty as Rutgers does, otherwise they would not be part of this select association.

I went into two published sources: the Yale Daily News College Guide and the Chronicles of Higher Education to compare Rutgers and Nebraska. Some highlights:

+ Endowment: Nebraska $1.1 billion, Rutgers $540 million
+ In-state tuition: Nebraska $5,867, Rutgers $9,958
+ National Merit Scholars entering in 2006: Nebraska 60, Rutgers less than 30
+ Yield rate (percentage of admitted freshman who choose the school): Nebraska 65%, Rutgers 33%
+ Number of undergraduate students at main campus: Nebraska 17,000, Rutgers 24,000

The year's U.S. News rankings, however, rank Rutgers tied for 20th among national public universities. Putting my comparisons above in context, that's an amazing accomplishment for a school that has a smaller endowment than Nebraska! Other public "football schools" ranked ahead of Rutgers like Berkeley, Michigan, Illinois, Carolina and Texas, also have larger endowments, more merit scholarships and charge less tuition than Rutgers.

I'm glad I went to Rutgers, but the folks who came up with the "Hubie Cornpone" award should be ashamed.

This is a terribly written book, from a man that has an agenda against Rutgers and its students. He has made racist comments towards athletes, and generally has disdain for the non-academic elite. For your own sanity, stay away!