Machiavelli, Sportsmanship, and College Football

Rivalry week of college football has just concluded. After seeing a few of these games and hearing about some of the events that historically have given this week of football it’s name, I am questioning sportsmanship’s place in college football today.

Perhaps one of the best-known rivalries in college football.

In our current collegiate sport environment, where athletic departments are under more and more pressure to win, and win often, there is an ongoing discussion asking “at what costs”. Niccolò Machiavelli, in his famous book, The Prince, outlines many components of successful leadership and power. I believe that college football programs have began to embrace a Machiavellian approach. Although this has led to a more competitive program, it has begun to remove the element of sportsmanship from the game.

Rule Changes Equal Game Change?

After reading Tracy’s article about football, I began to question things that I normally accept as rote. I asked myself what defined a class, a game, and a relationship. It is interesting because we normally accept things like football as a set activity, but fail to recognize the fact that it is really a reflection of all of the gradual changes that have taken place over the years. Just like Tejada-Flores’ Rock Climbing article, the game is really decided by the players.

Refs decide a game with an infamous call

Tracy argues that “the most provocative rule change” is the removal of kick-offs from the pro bowl which effectively says that you do not need kickoffs to play football. I would agree with that statement. As a former football player, I always hated being on the kickoff because it would just tire me out for offense. However, there are always those players whose careers were made on special teams, and by eliminating the kickoff, you basically eliminate their careers. I experienced this firsthand in the sport of lacrosse.

For the Love of the Game

This past week, I had the privilege to attend two LSA Theme Semester Events, the showing of Miracle with an introduction by UM instructor John Bacon and the Values of College Sports Conference, where Amy Perko and Taylor Branch commented on their reasoning of why college sports should stay around.

Stamp depicting a shot by Rob McClanahan, a player on the 1980 US Mens National Hockey Team, against the Soviet Union

During both sessions a general idea began to form. People played sports because they enjoyed it. They won because they enjoyed the journey to winning, playing the game. Kids want to continue playing the sport that they love so they work their way up the proverbial ladder of levels of play, each with varying levels of competition.

College Sports

Film Poster for Miracle, Copyright 2004, Walt Disney Film

This week, I went to two events of theme; on November 13th, I went ‘Showing of Miracle with an introduction by John U. Bacon’, and on 14th and 15th, ‘Values of College Sport Conference’.

The 2004 film, Miracle, directed by Gavin O’Connor, spotlights the story of the 1980 US Olympic Men’s ice hockey team. Herb Brooks, a main coach, trains a team in order to beat the Soviet team, and eventually brings a gold medal.

The conference mainly dealt with benefit and problems of college sports. Especially, Amy Perco, Executive Director of the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Atheltics, gave a lecture; she stated that despite financial conflicts and risk of injury, college encourages sports program.

Also, Taylor Branch, Pulitzer Prize and MacArthur Fellowship winning author, gave a lecture and spotlighted the conflict between sports and academic he insisted that students should be students, and priority task should be studying.

Hobbesian College Rivalries?

Two weekends ago, (the weekend of the Michigan vs. Michigan State game), I visited a few friends at Michigan State University. Since it was the weekend of the big game, we were naturally sporting our Michigan gear. My older sister graduated from Michigan State and I have quite a few friends  who are currently attending. For this reason, subconsciously, I was under the impression that this was a “friendly” in-state rivalry. Reflecting retrospectively, this was probably naïve.

Video’s like this were found all over social media leading up to the big game.

Present-Day Machiavellians?

In 1991, five freshmen stepped onto the University of Michigan and throughout their two years together, transcended basketball culture on and off the court. You could probably guess who they were right?

Steve Fisher and the Fab Five used to be all smiles

Well of course it’s the Fab Five! The team made up of Chris Webber, Jalen Rose, Juwan Howard, Jimmy King, and Ray Jackson. Who doesn’t know about them?

Now ask a person who was the guy at the sidelines barking instructions at those five players and the answer may be harder to come by. Steve Fisher, despite his notoriety as the head coach of the infamous Fab Five as well as successful tenure pre-Fab Five, is not a name thrown around loosely in Ann Arbor. Someone with his track record should be glorified just as much as Michigan legends such as Bo Schembechler, Lloyd Carr, and even current basketball coach, John Beilein. So why is it that the Fab Five is so famous (or infamous), but their own leader is little known outside the realm of basketball fans? 

The NCAA’s Fleeting Facade of Amateurism

“[Amateurism]’s one of the most fundamental principles of the NCAA and intercollegiate athletics. They have always seen and assumed that intercollegiate athletics is about the notion that these are members of the student body. They’re not hired employees conducting games for entertainment. They’re not a random group of folks that just come together to play sports.”

—National Collegiate Athletic Association President Mark Emmert.

The NCAA is a corrupt institution that operates under the fantastical guise of “amateurism”. In reality, however, amateurism at the NCAA Division 1 level is a sham. The NCAA’s stranglehold on so-called “student-athletes” is outdated and ridiculous.

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Amateurism is an outdated ideal that no longer has a place in significant modern sports. Amateurism is the notion that competitors play their sport solely for the intrinsic value of playing their sport. Furthermore, rules in amateur sports are supposed to benefit those playing the game as opposed to those observing it. However amateurism is an outdated remnant of a past time when television and gate revenues did not exist.

As first noted by Eric Dunning almost 20 years ago, there is a growing schism in modern sports. He suggests that amateur sports are disappearing as sports have become so prized by society that many people seem to have a religious devotion to them. Dunning discusses the fall of amateurism in modern sports by mentioning the British Rugby Football Union (RFU). The RFU has struggled since the late 1800’s to uphold its pure amateur values as the number of spectators and the reliance of clubs on commercial and spectator revenues have grown. Additionally, the increase in spectators, hiring of full-time officials, allegations of players being paid, and the proliferation of leagues and cups have destroyed the once proud amateurism present in the RFU. However, the RFU still lays claim to the amateurism of its athletes, even though these players do most of the heavy lifting in increasing the profit margins of the RFU. This claim of amateurism is merely just that—a claim. The real motive behind the RFU’s insistence on their athletes being recognized as amateurs is greed for the RFU does not want to hand over the athletes’ fair share of the pot to them. The reprehensible actions of the RFU are not too dissimilar from the actions of an organization across the pond—the NCAA.

The Collapse of Michigan Football

Happy and dedicated U of M football fans

Being students at the University of Michigan, we all realize how important out football team is to the overall school, and how much money the school makes by having a successful program. In order to achieve this goal of a successful football program, our athletic department often pays schools, such as Appalachian State, with football programs in the lower-teir FCS conference (as apposed to the higher-teir FBS that Michigan and other Big 10 teams are in) up to one million dollars just to play our team. Our athletics program does this in the sole hope that the game against these types of teams will serve as an opportunity to boost fan morale and player confidence. Additionally, a blowout win (no matter who we are playing) will make boosters (people that add funds to the football program) extremely happy, and they in turn will give the athletics program at Michigan even more money!

We pay teams so that we can blow them out, and they make more money by doing so!