Football frenzies

O.K., people, you know who I am. Watching 60 minutes tonight about the huge driving force that football is in our universities, I was sickened. Here is this huge amount of money spent on the football programs, five million paid to the coach of Michigan (or was it Alabama?).

I know that many folks love their teams. My co in-laws go to every alumni game and bleat their brains out supporting it. I wonder how they would feel if our grandson was beating his head and body on the field as a regular practice?

Here's a proposal: Separate the football from the academic! Those football players should just play football with all the violence and danger and money. Make it a sort of sub professional league. Those young folks who wish to participate in this blood sport could do it without also having to do the charade of also being students. Perhaps they could also have some support about how to make it into professional teams and get on with a meaningful life.

What has football got to do with acquiring an education? Think of it- that brilliant girl or boy, starting out to save the world by studying environmental science has no interest in damaging his/her brain with the violence of football.

Let's put football in the same realm as casino gambling. Just go for it as the violent sport it is (kind of like dog fighting, maybe). Let it be totally profit driven, a business people can support or not.

But, this violent sport of football has no place in academia that I can see. Young people who are about getting an education need to do just that. If all college football programs went into another league, not connected to their college or  university we would actually see how much alumni support there is. Maybe not pretty, but realistic.

Sports have an important place in any academic program, but to have football with all its violence and entitlement be the driver of money acquisition seems to me to be callous and unethical. I am proud to be an Ivy League alumna with a crappy football team. I only wish they would dispense with it entirely!