No Reason To Clean Dirty Hands
Very early in the
semester, after reading “Live and Learn”, by Louis Menand, my section discussed
the topic of education at The University of Michigan. More specifically, we
discussed how well higher educational institutions really separate out the more
intelligent students from the less intelligent students. What I thought was
interesting is a point that a peer brought up about the idea of athletes at
school. As students at Michigan, I can safely infer that a large factor in
deciding to come to this school was not only the academics but also the
athletics. The University of Michigan is very special because it has the unique
mix of both academics and athletics. This school very well knows the importance
of their sports teams not only to the students here, but more importantly, to
future students who aspire to go to college. As a result, they strive to
maintain the high athletic reputation that they have, keeping this school such
a rare and unique institution. In order to do this, they must invest in recruiting
the best athletes in the country, which often can have a cost academically, as
in many circumstances, scholarships are given for sports that give students who
are not academically qualified the opportunity to come to this school. As of
late, many colleges have adopted further techniques to get these athletes to
attend their schools. And this brings in the issue of dirty hands.
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| Average GPA & Test Scores for Elite College Recruits |
Dirty
Hands is the action of doing something wrong in order get something positive. In the perspective of a college who has a history of strong athletics,
they have often adopted unorthodox techniques in order to maintain this
reputation. One major institution, The University of Southern California, has
been a leader in these crimes.
As
most sports fans would know, the USC Trojans have one of the most celebrated
histories in all of college football. 11 National Championships, 38 Pac-10
titles, and seven Heisman trophy winners define their success. Which brings me
to Reggie Bush. For anyone who watched Reggie Bush play at USC, he was possibly
the best college running back in history. His success led him to winning the
Heisman trophy and getting drafted second overall in the NFL draft. His value
to not only his team, but also the school itself was enormous. As I stated earlier,
the idea of having the best player in the country, and one of the best teams in
the country, would certainly attract many aspiring college students to attend
USC. Again, this school would pretty
much do anything to ensure his attendance at their school. And they did.
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| Bush chosen second overall by the New Orleans Saints |
It
wasn’t until after a few seasons in the NFL did the information release that
USC had used illegal methods to persuade Bush to come to their school. During
his time attending the University of Southern California, Reggie Bush and his family
were thought to have accepted financial benefits worth more than $100,000 from
marketing agents. Obviously this is not legal, as a non-professional athlete
cannot be paid. (Hence why college football jerseys for sale never have names
on them) These allegations were later found true which resulted in Bush being
the first player ever to have to relinquish a Heisman trophy, and a whole lot
of sanctions for USC, preventing them from playing in any post-season games for
the next two years and forcing them to give away numerous athletic scholarships.
The
Dirty Hands references from this scenario are obvious. Many schools risk getting their hands dirty to pull these top athletes to their schools, which in turn,
earn massive amounts of revenue for the institution. (Estimated in the millions
for Bush) So is having Dirty Hands worth it? Although the punishments are
unfortunate, I believe schools will continue to practice these techniques
because of the money these athletes bring to the school. Even after all the
punishments they receive, the school really isn’t effected that badly to really
outweigh the benefits and discourage them from continuing to commit these
crimes.
I'm not completely sure what you're asking in your last paragraph. Did the school's decision to "get their hands dirty" pay off in this case? It seems like it, or at least it seems as if the financial ramifications were fairly tame. The problem with assessing circumstances such as these retroactively is that it tends to undermine the risk involved in the initial decision-making process. USC took on a huge risk by committing these violations; the punishments could have been far, far worse and one needs to consider the response from the public. I guess they did get off easy this time, but every instance of Dirty Hands involves a certain amount of moral guilt and in this example I would say no, it wasn't worth it.
ReplyDeleteThe NCAA exists to preserve the sport of college football as it is today; they maintain the rules of the game and ensure a fair, competitive playing field exists for the teams. I agree with you, that athletics have become a major aspect of university life for many schools and influence where people want to go to school. However, I think that using this as a justification for illegally recruiting athletes to schools is very narrow-minded. When you think of the big picture, if all the schools thought this way they could effectively ruin the sport of football by making the NCAA completely irrelevant. It may be tempting to think that teams could run a league without a controlling body or recruiting rules, but every professional league sets similar rules to ensure that people actually watch competitive games. Essentially I am arguing that it is in the best interest of the schools to follow the rules in order to preserve the order of the system that is mutually beneficial to all of them. In a way its very similar to the concept that allows government to exist. The citizens of nations sacrifice some personal freedom in order to preserve an order that produces better circumstances for everyone involved. In this way, the act of breaking the rules risks more than the simple punishment inflicted by the NCAA; it risks undermining what the NCAA provides to all the universities involved in college athletics.
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