Dowling, Wiliam C. Confessions of a Spoilsport : My Life and Hard Times Fighting Sports Corruption at an Old Eastern University. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007. Print.
The Author:
William Dowling was a professor at Rutgers University, and spent years "fighting corruption" that he believed to stem from Rutger's athletic programs
Summary:
Dowling's argument is that college athletics are not beneficial to colleges and universities. Dowling believes that the tremendous costs of college athletics would be better spent on academics. Additionally, Dowling believes that schools with big time division 1A athletic programs attract a certain type of "party animal" student. This type of student does not necessarily treat their education as their number one priority. A student body that is not interested in their education will ultimately drive the most tenured and important professors away from a university, and lead to a degradation of the school's academic standing.
The problems with Dowling's argument is that he bases his argument that college athletics are a burden to universities solely on the effects that Div-1a sports can have on an institution's academic reputation. In today's college culture, privatization is the most powerful force. Privatization is affecting everything from the budget's of this countries biggest universities, to college admissions. In a world very much effected by privatization, building a brand image can be much more beneficial than maintaining a spot among the most selective universities. I do not mean to say that a sound academic reputation is worthless, or that being a college sports powerhouse means everything to a university, but I do maintain that a college sports program will do more for a school's brand image.
Quotes:
"Academics and big-time athletics can go hand in hand. A successful athletic program can help draw the community to the campus, and raise the university's profile in the public eye" (Dowling, 166).
This is a quote of Rutgers President Richard McCormick, in which McCormick is expressing his stance on athletics at Rutgers. The Rutgers 1000, a group of alumni that was fighting hard to remove Div-1a athletics, had hoped that McCormick would remove athletics upon taking over as university president. When McCormick arrived at Rutgers, he took a pro-sports stance. As detailed in the explanations in the following quotes, this provides Rutgers with a way to build its brand image.
"It was the Coca-Cola campaign that did the most to teach us that the issue of Div-1a sports was inseparable from the more general issue of university commercialization" (Dowling 84).
Dowling is opposed to commercialization, and therefore privatization. Today we know that the privatization of colleges and universities is inevitable and necessary. Privatization is the reason that brand name and brand image are increasingly important. Elite private schools, such as the Ivy leagues, can use their Ivy League membership to create a positive brand image. State public institution, although they can be large and academically excellent, cannot claim Ivy league membership to build their brand image. Bigtime collegiate athletic programs are an option to build a highly visible and marketable brand image.
"Boise State in Idaho...failed even to make the U.S. News rankings of the top 248 institutions in the United States" (Dowling 132).
Then i would ask Dowling, why is it that Boise State is so well known all across America? The answer of course is the recent success of their football program. Dowling attempts to make the point that having a powerful football program has caused Boise to slip in academic standing. However, I think it is more likely that without its football program, Boise would be a state school known to few nation wide. They would not have an academic or athletic reputation in order to back their brand. Dowling does provide the statistic that Boise is not academically elite, and says the cause for that is its athletic programs. Boise has no history of being academically elite before it participated in athletics, or before its teams were successful, so saying its recent success can be correlated to its weak academic standing does not make sense.
Conclusion:
In chapter 4, Dowling offers ways in which exposure from athletics is not useful for building a brand image. He calls his theories things such as: "Everyone knows O.J.", "The Flutie Factor", "What About Duke", "Rose Bowl Bump", and "Big Rock Candy Mountain". With these theories, Dowling aims to say that the attention and publicity from Div-1a sports is bad attention.
Much of the information from Brian Goff's "Effects of University Athletics on the University: A Review and Extension of Empirical Assessment", as well as other sources, takes a stance against Dowling. In fact, Goff uses a lot of statistical analysis to show that what Dowling says is not entirely accurate. Overall, Dowling does do a good job of displaying the counter argument against the argument I hope to make.
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