Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Buzz Bissinger has been known to have a strong opinion or two. The outspoken writer, perhaps best known as the author of Friday Night Lights, will be at NYU’s Skirball Center tomorrow night for an Intelligence Squared U.S. Debates event on the motion to "Ban College Football". The debate will be streamed on FORA.tv. In part one of our two-part interview, we talked to Bissinger about why college football should be banned, a potential system of paying players and how he arrived at his opinions on the issue.
So you're in New York [tomorrow] for a debate about banning college football. Do you feel that all of college football should be banned or is it just the BCS? I think all of college football should be banned. I have a feeling these programs don't make any money and no one is really, on any level, presenting a good argument to me as to why they should exist in an academic setting.
This whole idea of a student-athlete to me is something of a joke—though it is better at schools that don't emphasize football. But football is emphasized a lot at Ivy League schools and then certainly at the BCS level it's ridiculous. These guys have no time to study because of the demands placed upon them. They're exploited and most of the BCS schools lose money!
There are very few schools that make money on football and if they make money on football it doesn't go back into the general fund for general student use it goes back into supporting non-revenue sports. You look at the University of Maryland; in order to keep a football program alive that's losing money they've gotten rid of eight non-revenue sports. And what exactly does football have to do with academics? The answer is nothing.
If you're eliminating football do you think that a lot of these other programs get eliminated? I know you said you don't feel that football is a revenue generator in most BCS schools. Football by far loses the most money and then I think schools are going to have to make a case-by-case basis on which sports survive. In general, I think there are way too many sports offered at schools. I don't say this to be a jerk—I like sports—but college is for learning. they're not for entertainment, they're not for distraction. There are too many distractions in college settings already. People with far more knowledge than me say that universities are failing and the reason they are failing is that there are too many distractions.
One thing you may want to do—and you may want to do this for football, to keep it alive—find a benefactor to pay for it. The reason University of Oregon has a good football team all of a sudden is because of Phil Knight. Phil Knight has given hundreds of millions of dollars to build a football program. If you want to do that, that's fine, let individuals pick up the slack because they probably will. There's another option. Sports is a headache for college presidents, I don't think they like it. They don't like dealing with it, they don't like dealing with the scandals. Spin if off, in effect, make them into minor league systems, triple-A teams for the university. The university sells the naming rights and they negotiate a certain set fee and then it's out of the university's system. That's very, very complicated because of legal issues and Title 9. I don't think that's ever going to happen and frankly I don't think football will ever be banned.
People say it enables kids—from impoverished settings or the inner city or kids without good educations—it gives them an opportunity to go to college and learn. They don't have time to learn! They're there to play football. You ask any major college athlete—whether it's lacrosse or football or soccer or basketball—they'll tell you, "We're here to play a sport. We're not here to study." The demands are ridiculous, graduation rates are meaningless. What was supposed to be the cleanest program in the country, the great "Grand Experiment," turned out to be the dirtiest and the most horrific, which was Penn State. For whatever reason these guys, by all accounts—and granted there hasn't been a trial, but by what has been publicly divulged in terms of actual court records—they turned their back on an alleged sexual predator.
So you think while you think football is the shining example, or the worst example, you think sports in general should possibly be eliminated?
You could have it at the club level. You can make it very competitive at the club level. What also happens now is these schools travel enormous distances to play games. So that means you're missing class, you're spending money. At the very least schedule games with teams that are closer to you or have it at the club level. That's what the concept was to have a well-rounded student. That concept is a joke! But these guys aren't student-athletes, they don't integrate with the student body, they're not well-rounded. They don't have time to be well-rounded!
You can have lacrosse at a club level and it can be competitive and it can be fun and it won't take the demands that it takes now. You can do the same with football. We are in an amazingly competitive society now. I have a son in college now and the first thing the parents ask—and that includes me—is, "Are you having a good time?" Well, the first question should be, "Are you learning anything? Are you being pushed? Are you being demanded?" and I think sports in college is the major distraction. These kids, study after study, I saw this when I wrote about Duke for Vanity Fair, they don't integrate. They're like an island and ocean unto themselves. That's true at Williams. Williams gives a tremendous amount of athletic preference. They play sports and all the kids stick to their own sports so it's not even like they're part of a student body. In football they're both privileged and passed through and they're exploited. They should get paid. And what do they really get out of it in the end? A lot of cheers? That's really not enough for life.
So if these athletes—these college football players or lacrosse players or basketball players—if there was a system they could actually get paid in, would you think that's better? I would feel better. I still think you have the problem that it's an enormous distraction, it costs a lot of money, it does suck the air out of the room but I would feel better that at least these players aren't being exploited. They really are being exploited and there's no...I don't really understand it. Those suits have been filed and there's been no resolution.
You look at a Cam Newton or a Tim Tebow and these guys generated millions of dollars for the schools, both in terms of success, merchandise and they're not getting a cent. That's not right! That simply isn't right. At this point I think college football exists for one reason: it's not because they're integrated into academics it's because it's the best thing that ever happened to the NFL! Free farm system! So at the very least let the NFL kick in a billion dollars that goes into a general fund, you can figure out a way to do it where it's split between universities. They pay nothing! That is really, really wrong.
But I still think you have the fundamental problem of sports...It's all about winning. It's all about winning at any cost. In the early 1900s it was much more honest—and this was an Ivy League thing, that's where football was big—[players] would go to these schools, be recruited, not be expected to go to class, do whatever the hell they wanted and they actually would get a share of the gate receipts! That's a hell of a lot more honest than what we do now.
So you think a system where some athletes, perhaps, get a portion of the gate receipts or maybe their jersey sales... It would have to be worked out. I don't know if you could do a portion of the gate receipts, though you could argue that you should. At the very least they should get the equivalent of what they're given in scholarship money.
So let's say tuition is $30,000 a year. Yeah, they should get $30,000 a year because they're not there to study.
So don't even bother with the scholarship just give them the money. Give them the money, give them the cash. Let them go to school for free and give them the cash. If they want to go to class that's fine, if they don't they don't. And a lot of them don't. It's a year-round pursuit, it's not just the football season. But as I say, no one has ever supplied an effective argument to me as to why football exists at all on academic campuses.
People say it helps with contributions or exposure. I don't know if that's true, I've read studies but the research on that is very, very murky. It may help with expose, in some schools it might help with applications for a brief time but those are exceptions. Schools have dropped football. The biggest program that I know of that dropped football was the University of Chicago in the 1930s. They were in the Big 10 so they were a big time program. The president there just said, "This has nothing to do with the academic experience." I don't think the University of Chicago suffered, it is still one of the great learning institutions in the world. It may still be true today but at a certain point it had more professors who were Nobel Prize winners than anybody else. So we can live without it.
So even the system they have in Ivy League schools doesn't work in your mind right now? No, although I will say in general the graduation rate for student athletes from Ivy League schools is better. The difference is kids who go to Ivy League schools don't have the expectation that they're going to play in the pros where I think a lot of these kids—whether it's realistic or not—playing at major BCS schools do have that expectation. Look at the attendance at Ivy League football games. Penn has Franklin Field and it's a lot to maintain and if it was at the club level I don't think anyone would suffer and I don't think anyone would particularly miss it.
Did you have a particular turning point for your position on banning college football? It's evolved over time. Certainly I think the biggest turning point came writing Friday Night Lights and seeing the dangers of a town that had become increasingly obsessed with high school football. I was a big football fan but it made me less of a football fan. It's something I've studied off and on since the book was written, which was over 20 years ago. Everyone said Friday Night Lights is a cautionary tale. Well, I wish it that it was, but it wasn't. Sports has become far more consuming because the avalanche of money is enormous because of ESPN. ESPN has affected sports more than any other entity in history. It's very hard for schools to turn that money down even though, as I say, there are very few schools that I know of that actually put some of that money into the general fund. It all goes back into the athletic department. I've asked myself what kind of purpose this really serves. The answer I come back with, and this has evolved, is really none.
So as you mentioned, Friday Night Lights, you feel that with your history of experience what Boobie Miles went through and his hopes of playing professional ball... There are thousands of Boobies out there. They get to the college level and they're great athletes but they may get hurt or they may not be good enough. They've put all their eggs in the basket of football, they're treated as football animals. They're treated as kids who are only there to play football and have no other purpose in life. What happens if they don't make it to the pros? And even if they make it to the pros, the average shelf-life is three years, it's not very long. They don't retire with that much money and they have no job skills, they have no skills. So how are they served? They're not. They're Boobie Miles, he just got it on the high school level.
So you think the system is bad from high school, college, professional... Yeah, I think there are such things as major high schools too. It's rife with dangerous exploitation because the whole idea of the student-athlete, anyone who is honest will say it's a joke. There have been examples of teachers—certainly in Texas but also other colleges—teachers who have blown the whistle. They're the ones who get penalized.
I know in high school football in Texas there was a woman who flunked the starting quarterback who was about to go to the playoffs; she was removed from her job and put in an empty building. There have been whistle blowers in college and they've been the ones who are disciplined. The great Joe Paterno was always involved in disciplinary hearings and rulings saying, "This guy shouldn't be disciplined and this guy shouldn't be disciplined." These football coaches wield enormous power and everyone is scared of them. They are good fundraisers and they make a lot of money and presidents are just loathe to take them off. At the end of the day, what do they do? They coach football, they play a lot of golf in the off-season, they schmooze.
Part of it is, if you're this young, black man in Texas or Mississippi—even in New York—you have probably no way out and you see basketball, football as your way out, do you think that's something that has to change culturally? It should change culturally. Henry Gates said this long, long ago; it's a fallacy. A fallacy fed by the media because, frankly, the only time blacks see themselves consistently portrayed positively is on the sports pages. Gates went to an inner city community and said, "What do you think there are more of: pro football players or lawyers?" and all the kids raised their hands and said, "pro football players." He said, "What do you think there are more of: pro basketball players or doctors?" and they all said, "pro basketball players." Then he gave the statistics of the odds of making it in those sports versus the odds of becoming a lawyer or doctor if you study.
It's completely skewed. It's a bill of goods, it's not a way out. It may be a way out for four years, it may be a way out of fun and games and getting a lot of cheers and being privileged but what happens after those four years? What if you are taken from the inner city and you're a kid who goes to college and if you need remedial help you get it but that's not what the emphasis is on. Trust me, I saw in high school what was demanded of these kids in terms of football, in terms of knowledge. It's a lot!
Studying offenses, defenses, films. That can translate into other areas but the difference is you don't get 20,000 people who go to an English class. It isn't a way out. It's sold as a way out but it's not a way out. It's a way out for a very, very small portion. So if you're going to have them in a college setting and they're going to go into the pros, teach them! As it is now, they can do these independent studies or silly courses that are going to teach them nothing. Majoring in phys ed, what the hell is that gonna teach you?
So if we're going to have these "student-athletes" that are thinking about going to the NFL or professional leagues we should at least teach them. Yes, at the college level. I think the NFL does some of it. Let's just admit that they're not student-athletes, they're athletes. TV perpetuates this because it's in their interest. Student-athlete this, student-athlete that. The NCAA says student-athlete all the time and it's bunch of bullshit and they know it's a bunch of bullshit. They're not student-athletes, they're athletes, and they would tell you that themselves. Now are there isolated examples of kids who are really smart and manage to study despite the demands placed upon them by football? Sure. But those are isolated examples.
So back to the youth of America dreaming that they can become professional athletes: how do we change this perception as a society and a country? It's hard to change things in society. I've always felt that pro athletes should almost do a kind of version of that TV series Scared Straight where lifers would talk to kids about, if you commit a crime and you commit a murder or commit a robbery you're going to be in prison and prison is hell. I think they should go into inner cities and say, "You know what? You're never going to be like me. I was one of the million, I was very lucky, it was a combination of skill, talent and luck. If you think you're going to be like me, you're out of your mind. You're not so you've got to wipe that away." I don't think that's done very much.
Aren't athletes always saying, "Work hard." Yeah, work hard and you can be like me. It's wrong. It's selling a false fill of goods, it just is. I know we're talking about football but look what's happening in basketball. They're not going for education, they're playing for one year because they have to because that's what the NBA requires. If they're good they go to the pros and a lot of them—because of being not ready to go to the pros, immaturity—don't make it. Hard work will get you anywhere," well not in sports! So many things can happen, like with Boobie. You get hurt, someone comes along who's better, you get into a conflict with the coach, you gain too much weight—whatever! You lose a step of speed and there are 16 kids behind you who can take over. It's a bad dream, it is. I don't want to take away anyone's dream but it's a bad dream.
