My heart rate is through the roof!
First, let me be real clear that I pretty much hate U.S. big money college athletics at a fairly visceral level. That’s a long story, tied up in deep ways with growing up in Texas, and we won’t go there. Suffice it to say that I have real problems with the whole deal.
Second, let me be equally clear that I don’t hate the kids involved; I’m not into blaming the victims in a deeply screwed up system. I may not go to UMM’s games, but I was happy for them when they won the UMAC this semester, and when Coach Ken Crandall got named UMAC coach of the year. Ken’s served on our Scholastic Committee with me for several years, and he’s a valuable campus resource on many levels, and it’s too bad (for us) that his success had led to him being recruited away.
Now all that’s out of the way, I just watched a little more than the last quarter of the Fiesta Bowl, where Boise State eeked out an absolutely amazing, heart stopping, wildly exciting, oh-my-god, lots of four letter words and screaming and shouting victory over the Oklahoma University. Boise were underdogs going in, and some OU folks were apparently talking a lot of trash in advance of the game, and it was really nice to see a smaller program beat a major football power (i.e., a school with some pretty confused educational priorities) like OU.
And not only did they win, but they won in the most exciting possible way. After leading most of the game, they let OU take the lead in the waning moments, then tied it in the last seconds, and then squeeked it out in overtime. By the end we were all in Mom and Dad’s bedroom (Dad had been watching the game there), and while Dad couldn’t scream and shout (his voice is currently quite weak from radiation), we did plenty of it for him. It was probably a lot more excitement then a cancer patient needed, but once we were sucked in there was really no coming out again. Congrats to the underdogs!
Now I should be getting some sleep, but my adrenaline levels are so high, it’s not really an option. I’ll have to read or something to wind down…
No tag for this post.
January 24th, 2007 at 16:42
…. of course to those of us who have lived in the Boise area it was even more exciting, if that is possible.
And, I agree with the rest of your post, too. I have watched my undergraduate alma mater transform from a nice university with some inspiring athletes associated (Steve Prefontaine …), to a division of Nike football program with a university attached. Not pretty if you ask me.
January 28th, 2007 at 23:23
One of the things I loved about Reed was that it had no formalized teams. There were plenty of sports, and there was even a Reedie that went to some national competition in squash, but none of those distracting teams sucking up everyone’s attention (and money). UT Austin, on the other hand…
Morris has wrestled with some of these things, and engaged in an unfortunate experiment with scholarships in an effort to be more competative in Div II. Ultimately, though, we managed to arrange to move to Div III, which eliminates the scholarship issue and has made our teams more competative. I personally still have grave doubts about the wisdom of the resources and energy sucked up by the really expensive sports (esp. football), but it’s a lot better than it was.