The Family, the Culture, and Sports

                       The Family, the Culture, and Sports

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 5/13/18

            How much professional coaches are paid is none of my business.  I can stay away from their games in protest if I think that salaries or tickets are too high.  But what Georgia’s tax-supported universities pay their coaches is my business as well as that of almost 10 million other Georgians.

            If UGA coach Kirby Smart’s new 7-year, $49 million contract is paid even in small part with tax money, I do protest its exorbitance.  Even if part of the salary comes from televised games and other goodies, taxpayers are still providing the university for the coach’s team to play at.  Since it takes a village to fund a big college coach’s salary, seems to me the villagers have a right to know where every dollar of the salary comes from.

            The national salary range for professors with a doctor’s degree is $51,855 - $151,284.  This fact simply makes questions about priorities (academics vs. athletics) and the wise, fair use of public funds dance around in my head.

            Yes, sports are a religion, not just across the state line at you know where, but in Georgia as well.  

              We all know about the shameful excesses of college sports.  College and professional coaches make millions a year, partly because of the support of countless young dads who must take out a small loan to take their two sons to a ballgame.

            As for many professional athletes, their egos are apparently greater than the courage of their team owners and league commissioners.  Imagine any employer being fearful to state clearly what his or her employees may or may not do while on the job.  Yet, NFL owners apparently have a mortal fear of telling their players (employees) they must respect the national anthem while they are at work. 

 Quite a few pro athletes were lifted out of poverty in the amount of time it took to sign their names, only to soon join their team mates in challenging their boss’s authority.  It’s the bosses who are really to blame.  The word boss used to mean something.

            In spite of these excesses, particularly the cowardly inaction of NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, sports have served our nation well through local parks, high schools, college, and actually the pros.  Sports helped end racial segregation.  No one can deny that sports at every level have helped bridge the racial divide.

            Just as important is the influence that coaches have had on teens and college young adults.  I can only hope that coaches are still as powerfully and positively influential now as they were for the 45 years I was around them. (That’s from high school days when I was being coached through the 37 years I was a proud colleague of coaches.)

 What lad or lass who loves their sport doesn’t understand the emotional roller coaster their coaches so often ride?  Gruff one moment, smiles the next.  A stern rebuke; a word of sincere commendation.  I’m persuaded that good coaches who move so effectively back and forth between correction and encouragement are models of good parenting.

            In our high schools, coaches are revered.  Typically, they are strong classroom teachers.  They know how to illustrate and demonstrate, not just tell.  Usually, they are funny, a trait needed more than ever, given the amount of brokenness that walks into the school building every morning.

            Good male coaches teach guys that men can and often should be tender.  Good female coaches teach girls that women can and often should be tough.  I’ve never worked with a male coach who didn’t exemplify masculinity or a female coach who didn’t exemplify femininity.  Oops!   Masculinity and femininity are out of step with the notions and feelings of the effete New Sexuality proponents (trans, inter, binary, etc.).  But notions and feelings aren’t reality.  School sports have a way of teaching reality while fostering discipline, endurance, and that ugly word, competition.

            In their infancy, sports were heralded for the teaching of character and promotion of sportsmanship.  By mid-twentieth century much of this aura was displaced by self-glory and the intrusion of the market.  The ungrateful athletes of the NFL indicate that sports are no longer the last refuge of patriotism.

            Still, these excesses and evils do not alter the inherent value of sports.  School isn’t out yet, but I guarantee you that every coach you know is thinking about next year.  Coaches work hard.

            Nobody can make me not love Kirby Smart or his manly predecessor, but the powers that be who set their salaries and turn our universities into farm teams are furthering the degradation of sports instead of promoting sports.

Roger Hines

5/9/18.