‘When the rule came in allowing us to play freshmen,’ explained the coach, ‘we had no further need for a freshman team, so we dropped it. And with the emphasis we were putting on our varsity, we couldn’t afford a junior varsity, so we dropped that too. We identify the best sixteen and spend all our efforts on them. Now if a boy comes to us on scholarship, and we see that he can’t cut the mustard, why, we take him aside and say, “Look, Eddie, or Tom or whatever his name is. You were real great in high school, but you just aren’t going to make it here at St. Jude’s. Look at the men ahead of you. Look at the great freshmen who’ll always be better than you are. But if you want to stay with basketball, you can help me run the locker room, or the publicity office, or help with practice, or whatever.” ’
St. Jude’s runs its entire basketball program, involving a $7,000,000 palestra and a yearly budget of about $650,000, for just sixteen players.
But such a program can pay off. In recent years two unknown schools, starting from scratch, have exploded into the big time. Austin Peay, a new university in Tennessee, named after a local politician, recruited just one superstar from the asphalt courts of Brooklyn, Fly Williams, and overnight Peay became national news, with Fly standing second in national scoring at 29.9 points a game.
Oral Roberts, in Tulsa, enjoyed an even more spectacular rise. A religious school founded by the famous faith healer, it boasted a topflight campus costing $40,000,000, plus a healthy endowment and a basketball-social center costing $5,500,000. From the moment of opening, Reverend Roberts knew what he wanted. He has said, ‘I believe that athletics has a mission to bring people to God, and a great university like ours must have a team. Football is too expensive and it requires the university to find too many star players. Basketball is simpler. We’ll specialize in basketball.’
And he did. Combing the south, he came up with a first group of really fine players who, in their first two years among the small colleges, went 21–5 and 27–4 while running up enormous scores. He decided to enter the major-college division, where he had the same spectacular success. He then started recruiting nationwide, attracting a handful of first-rate players who took the school to the NCAA play-offs and the NIT in New York. When I wrote this they were in the semi-finals of the latter tournament, having defeated teams that looked on paper to be much more powerful than they.
Oral Roberts—the minister, that is, not the school—uses extraordinary devices to lure spectators into the coliseums when his university plays. When they came into Madison Square Garden in December 1971 to participate in a doubleheader, he sent 55,957 letters to his followers in the metropolitan area, pleading with them to attend the game:
Like everything else at Oral Roberts, athletics is part of our Christian witness. The players on our basketball team are all Christian boys. When we received this invitation to play in Madison Square Garden, we felt led of the Lord to make it an opportunity of witness.
Records of the game in which Oral Roberts defeated Hofstra 83–74, after having been down by five at the half, show that only 7,286 paying customers appeared, and more than three-quarters of these came to see the other teams. Disappointed though he may have been, after the game Reverend Roberts assembled some 750 of his followers in the rotunda of the Garden and assured them that ‘this was a victory for God, not for basketball.’
From studying such programs in football and basketball I have developed certain convictions as to how an average American college or university ought to structure its athletic program, but before I make any prescription I must share with the reader my personal predilections, so that he will be better able to assess what I am about to propose.
First, the United States is the only nation in the world, so far as I know, which demands that its schools like Harvard, Ohio State and Claremont assume responsibility for providing the public with sports entertainment. Ours is a unique system which has no historical sanction or application elsewhere. It would be unthinkable for the University of Bologna, a most ancient and honorable school, to provide scholarships to illiterate soccer players so that they could entertain the other cities of northern Italy, and it would be equally preposterous for either the Sorbonne or Oxford to do so in their countries. Our system is an American phenomenon, a historical accident which developed from the exciting football games played by Yale and Harvard and to a lesser extent Princeton and certain other schools during the closing years of the nineteenth century. If we had had at that time professional teams which provided public football entertainment, we might not have placed the burden on our schools. But we had no professional teams, so our schools were handed the job.
Second, if an ideal American educational system were being launched afresh, few would want to saddle it with the responsibility for public sports entertainment. I certainly would not. But since, by a quirk of history, it is so saddled, the tradition has become ingrained and I see not the remotest chance of altering it. I therefore approve of continuing it, so long as certain safeguards are installed. Categorically, I believe that our schools must continue to offer sports entertainment, even though comparable institutions throughout the rest of the world are excused from doing so.
Third, I see nothing wrong in having a college or a university provide training for the young man or woman who wants to devote his adult life to sports. My reasoning is twofold: 1) American society has ordained that sports shall be a major aspect of our national life, with major attention, major financial support and major coverage in the media. How possibly can a major aspect of life be ignored by our schools? 2) If it is permissible to train young musicians and actors in our universities, and endow munificent departments to do so, why is it not equally legitimate to train young athletes, and endow them with a stadium?
Fourth, because our schools have volunteered to serve as unpaid training grounds for future professionals, and because some of the lucky schools with good sports reputations can earn a good deal of money from the semi-professional football and basketball teams they operate, the temptation to recruit young men skilled at games but totally unfitted for academic work is overpowering. We must seriously ask if such behavior is legitimate for an academic institution. There are honorable answers, and I know some of them, but if we do not face this matter forthrightly, we are going to run into trouble. I could fill the rest of this chapter with hilarious stories of recruiting mishaps, but I no longer find them amusing.
The first of the two men who impressed me with their insights regarding these problems was Don Canham, the charismatic former track coach and businessman who was selected some years ago to guide athletic affairs at the University of Michigan. I spent part of two days with him in November 1973, just prior to the dramatic game with Ohio State that would determine which team would go to the Rose Bowl.
‘I’m so excited about this damned game, I don’t think I’ll be able to stay and watch it,’ he told me. ‘I’ll put in an appearance at the stadium and then duck out. Because this game means everything to us.’
‘Under Big Ten rules,’ I asked, ‘isn’t it really immaterial whether you go to the Rose Bowl or not? Don’t you get your share of the gate whether you play or not?’
‘Technically correct, but you miss the important point,’ he said, rising and walking about his office near the hockey rink that had been recently built in the old Yost Field House. ‘The Big Ten earns about one million dollars from the Rose Bowl, and each of our ten teams shares the split. We get about one hundred thousand. So it’s not the money that counts. It’s that public exposure the visiting coach gets on television.’
‘Is television that important?’
‘It’s everything. Ohio State went out last year. Woody Hayes was all over the screen, pre-game, middle of the game, post-game. Very quiet. Very gentlemanly. Saying all the right things. I could visualize families in every small town telling their boys, “That’s the kind of coach you ought to have, son.” If he goes back this year, and appears on television again, we might have to stop recruiting in cer
tain areas.
‘Look, I have an enormous hole in the ground out there. Seats 105,500. And it’s my job to keep it filled.’ He showed me a copy of the radical advertisement he had been running in national magazines. ‘How to Mix Business with Pleasure … Try Michigan Football.’ It was a classy Madison Avenue pitch to businessmen in all parts of America to do their business entertaining at a Michigan game: ‘Tailgate picnics … the nation’s top marching band … every seat excellent … a unique way to entertain … Michigan has won three Big Ten titles in the last four years … send me your ticket needs and I will personally attend to them.’ While ticket sales at some Big Ten schools were declining, Michigan’s were growing.
But Canham was not resting on his laurels. ‘If we don’t win tomorrow, and get Bo Schembechler on national TV, we’re in trouble. Because when you recruit, the basics you can offer a boy are little better than what the other guy can offer. But if you can go into the family kitchen and say, “Son, if you come to Michigan, you’ll be on national TV. Your family can sit right here and see you. On national TV.” ’
He paused, then said confidentially, ‘You take …’ (and he named a team which I will not disclose). ‘How can they possibly compete with Ohio State or us? They’re never on TV. They never make a bowl trip. What can they promise the boy in high school? That’s why, the way things are now, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.’
I rattled off the names of eight teams which stood near the bottom of their various conferences. ‘Can they possibly survive?’
‘I have the gravest doubts. Take …’ (and he specified a team I knew to be in trouble). ‘How can they expect their state legislature to keep pouring money down their rat hole? Three years in a row 1–10, except once it was 0–11. They can’t possibly recruit if the boy they’re talking to knows these figures. And I’ll tell you this. You let Ohio State dominate the next two or three Rose Bowls, with Woody Hayes on national TV saying all the proper things, and we’ll have a rough time recruiting too … 105,500 spectators or not. Because today’s player wants national exposure, hopes to land a professional contract—and TV’s the only way to do it.’
But when I asked if conferences like the Big Ten or the Southeastern might have to disband, he said, ‘Never! Because any club in either of the conferences you named has the capacity to rise from the ashes. Look at the records,’ and he showed me a table giving the finishing positions of the Big Ten from 1960 through 1972 (I have added 1973–75) and this showed graphically the ebb and flow of success during that period. In that span every school except Northwestern had won the title at least once.
THE BIG TEN—FINAL STANDINGS, 1960–1975
I pointed to the poor records of Iowa, Indiana and Wisconsin, and asked if they might be forced to withdraw.
‘Not so,’ Canham protested. ‘Any one of them could turn it around in a couple of years.’ But I doubted the possibility, given the financial and publicity advantages Ohio State and Michigan enjoyed. ‘The Big Two and the Eight Dwarfs’ was the way cynics were referring to the conference.
Then Canham showed me a rough of his budget for 1973–74. “We’ll handle about four million dollars. We’ll spend about four million, one hundred thousand, with some seven hundred thousand going to grants-in-aid to student athletes.’
‘How much goes to servicing debt on past expenditures?’
‘About two hundred thousand dollars. And another two hundred thousand for improving our facilities with things like Tartan Turf for the stadium and a new running track.’
I asked how much income he got from television and he had the figures: ‘Well over two hundred thousand dollars plus another hundred thousand from the Rose Bowl, even though we didn’t go last year.’
And so it went, the fiscal report of a brilliant man who knew that he could keep his system viable only by excessive advertising of a constantly winning team. ‘That’s why the game tomorrow is so crucial,’ he said. ‘We’ve got to win. We’ve simply got to win. To keep our image before the national audience.’
As you may remember, the game that year (1973) was a tingler. Ohio State rushed to a 10–0 lead at the half, and it should have been more like 28–0 if Woody Hayes had used his talent properly. I could visualize Don Canham at home, his head in his hands, dreading the second half.
But at the whistle Michigan sprang to life and kicked Ohio State all around the stadium. Quickly they tied the game at 10–10, and then put on two magnificent drives, each of which ended in a missed field goal. The game was a draw but Michigan clearly was the better team.
By all the rules of logic and precedent Michigan should have been selected to represent the Big Ten in the Rose Bowl against Southern California; Ohio State had gone the preceding year; Michigan had been superior in the tie game; and it would do well in California. However, in one of the closing plays Michigan’s stellar quarterback, Dennis Franklin, had suffered a damaged throwing arm when an Ohio State player tackled him needlessly. The athletic directors of the Big Ten, who then had responsibility for selecting the conference representative when two teams tied for first, held a poorly disciplined phone discussion Saturday night and Sunday morning, and decided that Michigan without quarterback Franklin was too great a risk. Anxious to pick up any extra publicity, they selected Ohio State, and Woody Hayes was on national television again.
In 1974 Michigan and Ohio State again played for the championship, and this time Woody won by the score of 12–10. So for the third straight year he dominated the New Year’s Day television channels, and Michigan’s problem of recruiting worsened.
It was perverse. Over a period of three years Don Canham’s Michigan had compiled the best record in the nation, 30–2–1, and had probably been one of the top two or three teams if not the top, yet by the fall of the cards it had appeared in not one bowl game.
At various times I kept asking Canham three questions which perplex football people today. ‘Should the Big Ten drop its restrictive rule which allows only one representative to play in a Bowl Game each year?’ Canham says yes, the present rule, which also operates in the Pacific Eight Conference, prevents the best teams from competing. Michigan is strongly of the opinion that it has been discriminated against in this regard. It should have been in three bowl games, with attendant financial and publicity returns. (In 1975 the Big Ten altered its rules, allowing second-place Michigan to play Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl.)
‘Is Frank Broyles of Arkansas right when he suggests that the various conferences break up, with the top teams from all parts of the country joining with the major independents to form a super-league?’ Canham, in late 1973, rejected this proposal, but the expert manner in which he discussed it satisfied me that he has at least contemplated the possibility. He said that he could see no advantage to a super-league in which the Michigans, Ohio States and Notre Dames competed against themselves. He rather preferred the present system of a mixed schedule, but when I pointed out that teams like Oklahoma were massacring their opponents, because they played so many patsies whom they should not be playing, he said that this could be corrected by more realistic scheduling. But it seemed to me that every correction he suggested could better be made by establishing a super-league, and that before too many years passed, he would become an advocate.
‘Why is the Big Eight consistently the best conference in the nation?’ Canham bristled at this heresy, to which I was a convert, and stoutly denied it, affirming his faith in the true religion, the Big Ten. My points were manifold: that this western league which comprised Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Kansas, Kansas State, Iowa State, Missouri, Colorado and Nebraska was better balanced than the others, with the bottom teams always capable of knocking off the top; that for long stretches it produced the national champion, or at least the realistic one; that it appeared to present a better brand of play; that it yearly sent at least half of its members to bowl games; that it sent more graduates into the professional ranks; etc. etc. One by one he knocked down my arguments. The Big Eight
awarded more full scholarships. Its rules were so flexible that all its teams could garner bowl money if invitations were extended. (In one year, five of eight did.) And it dominated its geographic area. At the end of Canham’s spirited rebuttal I got the impression that the Big Ten represented class, while the Big Eight were the parvenus, and I will admit that he shook some of my preconceptions. Regarding the defense of standards, the Big Ten is still a majestic conference; regarding scoring power I’d still take the Big Eight, and if one hundred interconference games were scheduled involving all the teams over a span of years, I would expect the Big Eight to prevail by about 70–30.
If I were president of either a Big Ten or a Big Eight university, I’d want Don Canham as my athletic director. He’s young; he’s sharp; he sees the total picture as well as anyone; and he’s innovative. He has that great hole in the ground which seats 105,500 people, and he keeps it more or less filled while operating under the strict rules of one of America’s top universities. I am not sure that Canham could do the same at Iowa or South Carolina or Washington State, but he’d certainly give it a try. In the meantime, Michigan, with its multiple championships in all sports, is a mecca in the university scene.
The second man on whom I relied for guidance came to my attention by accident, and a most fortunate one it was. I had spoken on cultural matters to a gathering of college presidents, and afterwards they asked me if there was anything they might do to reciprocate, and I surprised them by saying that I’d like to talk with some of them about athletic programs at their schools. So they convened an informal breakfast meeting at which Stephen Horn of Long Beach gave the details of his sad experience when one of his coaches ran wild, got Long Beach put on probation, cost his players a chance at a title, and then moved on to a better job. Bud Davis, of Idaho State, related an even sadder story. When Colorado won the Big Eight championship in 1961 and went to the Orange Bowl, grotesque irregularities were uncovered, and its popular coach had to be fired. In an inexplicable move, the football-crazy university appointed as his successor Davis, the alumni director, who would lead his team to such triumphs as Iowa State 57–Colorado 19, Oklahoma 62–Colorado 0 and Missouri 57–Colorado 0. Says Davis, ‘When we played Missouri, we could get only twenty-five able-bodied players on the plane, and when we landed at Columbia only twenty-three were brave enough to get off.’