First off, I’m not anti sports. Yes, I’m writing this in a room with a banjo, an ironic Dennis Rodman jersey and the Allman Brothers on the stereo, but that doesn’t mean I can’t or don’t appreciate OU’s athletic success.
Collegiate sports occupy the special place in my heart, right next to high-quality domestic beer and The Cheesecake Factory. So I’m proud to be a Bobcat in the year when the school claimed its first bowl victory (who’s famous, now, potatoes?!) and made a nearly historic Cinderella run during March Madness. (The only difference between this and a “historic run” is the couple of inches D.J. Cooper missed that last shot of regulation by.)
I can even pull out a version of the defense used by people who are 90 percent sure they aren’t being racist: I have a friend on the football team.
That said, there’s a correlation I’d like to examine: in the same year as these unprecedented feats by the two sports that will get ESPN talking, we’ve gained the rest of our national headlines from a No. 1 ranking our administrators don’t embrace. And while some might say our arrival at “elite mid-major” status requires the mountains to crumble (and maybe that boulder proved them right), our presence on a list of “elite party schools” is nothing new.
I’ve never argued that funding the sports teams at this university is a bad way to get publicity — this year is a vindication everything ol’ Roddy McD has worked for. What I’ve said for a long time, though, is that the kind of publicity successful football and basketball teams bring isn’t always the kind an institution like a university should be so dogged in seeking.
I see just a few dots to connect between the arguments made about athletic success helping recruiting and the No. 1 party school ranking: if you use sports to recruit, the recruited students are going to be sports fans. And judging from all the Browns flags on Palmer, college-aged sports fans embrace the No. 1 party school, Brohio University image.
Enrollment numbers show that recruiting by sports works — if Palmer Street residents are the kind of students this university values. I don’t mean to write off everyone there but living on Mill Street for the past two quarters showed me that for every flat-billed, snap-backed frat boy worth talking to, there are ten of his brothers who want to know who I know here.
The point of a university isn’t to promote an athletic team, despite what THE cousin up in Columbus might want you to think. When I sat in “College Prep” English classes in high school, the teacher told me the whole point of post-secondary education was to teach people to think critically.
After hearing years of words like “budget cuts,” it sounds like the administrators put this mission on the back burner. If I had the chance, I’d snidely remind Roderich McGitmunny that there are no “Bobcats” without Ohio University.
I see a Robert-Frostian fork in the road before this university. On one side is the noble albeit lightweight pretentious opportunity to be a beacon of research and liberal arts right on the border of an American region clouded over with coal dust.
On the other, is the road to the Final Four, nicknames like “Giant Killer,” and an inherent and Gommorian university that makes even Arizona State cross its legs out of instinct.
The legacy of Prez McDavis will be staked to the direction he chooses. If he wants to have his “mid-major elite” cake, that’s fine — he’ll probably get to eat it, too.
But the next time a couple million dollars squirm on the chopping block, I think he should take a good hard look at who and/or what are really working to fulfill this mission: “So enter daily that thou mayest grow in knowledge, wisdom, and love.”
Max Cothrel is a junior studying journalism and creative writing.
