Duking it out over college sports
May our athletic program never resemble Duke’s.
Sure, Duke finished 18th to Rice’s 89th in last year’s United States Sports Academy Director’s Cup standings, which rank universities based on their performances in all sports. But Duke students, faculty and administrators have allowed their university — undoubtedly one of the nation’s finest — to become merely a sideshow to their perennial championship contending men’s basketball team.
For two days this summer, the soap opera known as the Los Angeles Lakers left the glitz of Hollywood for a mid-sized college town across the country. The Lakers reportedly offered Duke University head men’s basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski $40 million — $40 million! — to coach the Los Angeles squad for five years.
I knew Krzyzewski’s decision was imminent, so I wasn’t surprised when my daily treadmill and “SportsCenter” session carried an announcement that Coach K would remain at Duke. What shocked me, though, was the segment that followed: “The Duke student whose letter meant more than Kobe’s phone call.”
After a hill climb and a commercial break, I — along with every other sports fan in America — met Andrew Humphries, a Duke junior, though not an athlete. He read aloud passages of a letter he had written to Krzyzewski, which included the following: “Duke basketball is the reason I came to this university, plain and simple.”
Say what?
Don’t get me wrong — I love sports, especially college sports. But I love them in their proper context. I loved it last May, when our men’s tennis team was rewarded for its on-campus involvement with a capacity crowd of students for its Western Athletic Conference championship match against SMU. I love the football players that paint their faces and captain their chug teams at Beer Bike. In short, I love it when student-athletes at least vaguely resemble non-athletes in their day-to-day lives.
I don’t love it when a basketball coach — even one as great as Krzyzewski — is a university’s most recognizable, powerful and influential employee. Lest you think I am exaggerating, no less a source than Sports Illustrated noted that, “Richard Brodhead, who could hardly have faced a more fiery baptism as Duke’s incoming president, latched onto a bullhorn in Krzyzewskiville, the tented village visible from the coach’s palatial on-campus office, and campaigned for the incumbent to remain incumbent.”
In that same article, Jack McCallum went on to say that “it’s pretty clear that Brodhead’s door will be wide open whenever Coach K has something to discuss.”
That’s correct — Richard Brodhead, who has a bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate from Yale, has written or edited more than a dozen books, and has served as dean of Yale’s undergraduate program, will be taking advice on university matters from Mike Krzyzewski, whose educational resume consists of a bachelor’s degree from West Point.
I was at peace with my decision to attend Rice the day I mailed the card to Duke declining my spot in their class of 2006. But I was never so elated with my decision as when I saw, on that same “SportsCenter” episode, Duke students rallying and chanting, encouraging Krzyzewski to stay in Durham. Clearly this perverse basketball-first phenomenon at Duke is not limited to Humphries.
Closer to home, head football coach Ken Hatfield and head men’s basketball coach Willis Wilson are recognizable figures on campus but certainly less so than President Gillis was and President Leebron will be. To the best of my knowledge, no non-athlete came to Rice because of Hatfield or Wilson, nor does any non-athlete consider either “his coach,” as Humphries did Krzyzewski.
Picture it now — our own new president, armed with a bullhorn, at the entrance to Reckling Park, spearheading an effort to convince head baseball coach Wayne Graham to turn down a lucrative contract from the New York Yankees.
Can’t see it? Neither can I.
And thank God for that.
Amber Obermeyer is a Baker College junior and sports editor.
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