March Madness?

Cluefon
    By Dan Dudis

It always surprises me how many Yalies are ../sports fanatics. Case in point: the NCAA basketball tournament. When I returned to Yale from spring break, I was dismayed to find that many of my friends were avidly following this exercise in silliness. I must confess that I really don't know anything about the tournament. Nor do I want to. The few interviews I've seen with some of the players have convinced me that NCAA basketball is an appalling mockery of higher education.

These people are in college, and yet all the players I've seen on TV appear to have the reading skills of eighth graders. We attend Yale University, an august institution that values scholarship and learning. Presumably, we share these values. After all, it's not our talent for bouncing a large ball on a polished hardwood floor that endeared us to the admissions committee. Why then, are so many of us obsessed with basketball, football, baseball, and other ../sports? These activities require no thought; worse, they are played, at the professional level and at larger schools, by people who often appear to be incapable of thought.

It would be nice if this veneration of the multicolored, variously sized, multifariously textured, and differently shaped balls and the men who play with them were simply a harmless diversion or passing fad, like Leo or heroin chic. Unfortunately, such a rosy scenario is not the case. Fans flock in ever-increasing numbers to stadiums to see "their" teams play—even though "their" teams go on strike with a frequency that would make flight attendants envious, and even though "their" teams consist of players who are ever more outrageously compensated for their on-field activities. The players are increasingly transient, showing no allegiance to "their" teams, cities, and pathetically misguided fans. Yet these same people pay ridiculously inflated ticket prices for the dubious pleasure of watching "their" teams play. They purchase team-related apparel and paraphernalia in outrageous quantities. In short, America's heroes are illiterate thugs like Latrell Sprewell and intolerant airheads like Martina Hingis. Whatever happened to valuing rational intelligence, artistic expression, and creative innovation?

Do children dream of being president anymore? Of being an astronaut, or a scientist, or an intrepid journalist? No. They just want to be like Mike. What is the cost to society when these children become adults and are too uneducated and unskilled to do anything productive? The intemperate value contemporary American society places upon team ../sports and the unattainable dreams this emphasis fosters damage this nation's future productivity. It is time that we realized that ../sports are not simply fun and games.

Consider the case of the University of Minnesota men's basketball team. Several members of the team paid a woman to do all their homework for them. At best, the university turned a blind eye to these shenanigans; at worst, it paid the woman with university money. When all this was exposed in the press, was there outrage at the players and duplicitous university officials? No. Minnesota Barbarian-in-Chief Jesse Ventura was upset not about the players' cheating but about their removal from the team, which ruined Minnesota's chances in the NCAA tournament. This kind of reaction might be understandable from a man who never graduated from a four-year college, but how does one explain Yale's obsession with March Madness?

Surely we all know that the Minnesota case is just the tip of the iceberg. Surely we realize that basketball players at big schools aren't really students. They don't do the same work or take the same classes as real students. Yet, perversely, these non-students become the public faces and most popular representatives of their respective institutions of higher learning—and it is the higher learning that becomes lost in the "March Madness." Yale is one of our greatest institutions of higher learning; let's act like we belong here. So turn off, tune out, and ignore the game—whatever game. Just do it.

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