I would like to give you some images. Images from my life. Real images. Not made up images. Believe me-To begin with I attended a high school in Manhattan. It was founded in 1847 and was an old brick building with waxed wooden floors. The rooms had high ceilings and big windows. We were in the middle of the garment district. Nobody went out for lunch. We had a gym but no fields or grass. I was on the tumbling team and we practiced on the roof. I was on the track team and we practiced in Brooklyn. In the winter we traveled to the Bronx and trained on the track of NYU. Then I took a subway from the Bronx to Penn Station in Manhattan. Then I took the Long Island Railroad to where I lived. Most nights I was home by seven thirty. In the dark. On Saturdays when we did not have a track meet, I went to Manhattan to go to lower Fourth Avenue. Book Row. Used books for five cents, ten cents and a quarter. I dragged a book bag home on many a Saturday. I loved the city and the book stores. Now and then I can still find an old French book or philosophy book tucked in a corner of my house from that time period. My son attended William and Mary. He played soccer for four seasons. We loved to visit him. The old brick buildings were in the style of the Wren period in England. The Wren building itself had candles above the first floor. The students loved it. On Sunday all the students got dressed up and went to church. The women wore long skirts and the men wore blue blazers. I spent some time at Oxford in England. There the students wore long black gowns to class. I loved to watch the activity in the area. Individuals could be seen running in the forest. Others rowed on the river. Athletics were low keyed. Quiet. Lonely. Barely noticed. I have been to several universities in Holland. The University of Amsterdam has no campus. No gym. No student union, and no green grass. The only common element is the library. In Enschede the students spend their spare time in brown bars. Bars stained d from the smoke of cigarettes over the course of many years. All of the institutions mentioned above have one thing in common. Scholorship. Today in America we now seem to be obsessed with athletics. Not Scholastics. Not the books. Not the ivy walls or brick, or big windows. Rather, it is on the big gym, the stadium and huge crowds. Not the isolated runner at Oxford, or running in the dark at NYU. And the athletes are not scholars. The eight big basketball schools have not had any players graduate in a period of six years. Think of that. And the recent scandals show that coaches, AD's and even one college president were in on the recruiting of non-scholastic players. One player had a certificate in welding and was admitted to the college. An aside- In 1979 I was coaching a junior college team. After a week of pre-season training, the AD came on the field. He had the team sit down. Then he called out names. We lost five players who were deficient in their class work. In addition, one lied to us; he had played at the college level for two years. We lost six players in one day. But we survived. Scholarship won the day. I told my son to go to college to get a good education. He graduated from William and Mary and has a good job today. To me that is the purpose of college. To become educated. Athletics are nice. A fit mind in a fit body, and all of that good stuff. Why go to college to just play a sport? Why should such a person take up space that a student wants and needs? What is happening to scholarship in America? Have universities become minor leagues for basketball, football and perhaps soccer? I offer no solutions. But we need to reexamine the role of the university. (There are several excellent essays on this topic. "What is a University?" John Hutchins wrote one and Cardinal Newman wrote another. Read them. Many current university presidents would not understand them.) I am writing all of this in the hope that coaches and parents will send their children to college to get an education, not play ball. Stop looking at the size of the stadium. Stop looking at the size of the soccer fields. Look at the library. The ivy walls. The brick. And a cool wooded area nearby. And running water in a stream. Listen not for the cheers of the crowds, but for the silence allowing meditation and thinking. A good education can last a lifetime. Team sports are momentary pleasures in the life of a student. I am seventy two years old; I am still a student.

 

Alan Maher