Football uber Alles 2
In today’s local rag, Bob Molinaro calls out the media crocodiles for their tears. A nugget:
But you can’t teach those who won’t learn. Nick Saban, Urban Meyer, Les Miles and other sideline Svengalis will continue to receive the royal treatment from TV they’ve come to expect – the kind Joe Paterno was accorded – for the simple reason that a moratorium on hero worship isn’t good for ratings.
Cult worship by TV networks, and also media with a far smaller financial stake in the game, leads not just to coddling but to the deliberate misinterpretation of a coach’s responsibilities and his school’s failings.
Read it.
July 25, 2012 at 1:58 pm
Self-reflection doesn’t come naturally to media, but when NCAA president Mark Emmert asks if college athletics have “the right balance in our culture …” Certainly not but PSU is going to get the longest cold shower ever. The school and community hitched their collective drays to the football program and now, economically, they’ll all suffer together. What were once prosperous local businesses, because of the football season, will now not be. What may have been extravagantly supported research and teaching chairs will be scrambling. They just tore most of the heart out of the place’s economic being.
July 25, 2012 at 2:18 pm
Radio Times had an interesting and reasonably balanced show on this yesterday:
http://whyy.org/cms/radiotimes/2012/07/24/penn-state-the-ncaa-and-next-steps/