Money, drugs, sex and alcohol are all words that can be associated with college athletics these days. It’s no secret at this point, especially after the recent scandals involving big-name schools around the country.
Colorado had the incident where a female member of the football team was allegedly raped by both students of the school and high school students being recruited. Ohio State had the notorious Maurice Clarrett episode involving an alleged exchange of money to players, a clear violation of NCAA rules. And then there is the Baylor incident, which had perhaps the worst outcome of corruption when basketball player Patrick Dennehy, who received money and other illegal profits from coaches, was allegedly murdered by a teammate.
College sports are beginning to sound like a bad soap opera. Last year I experienced a taste of what it’s all about when I visited a number of colleges in hopes of playing football. What I learned, however, is how little football had to do with anything. The schools I visited were not high-profile Division I schools like Colorado or Ohio State. They were smaller, Division II and III colleges that don’t offer scholarships, so I figured they would be much more civilized and more similar to high school. I was wrong. I visited numerous schools and stayed overnight for football recruiting weekends at two schools in particular. These were the two schools I was most interested in playing football at.
I stayed over at these colleges to get a decent idea of what the football program was like. Like I said earlier, football didn’t have too much to do with it. Now, some of the actions that took place during these weekends are more prone to shock the general public rather than an 18-year-old in the 21st century, like myself. At one point during my first visit, the quarterback of this team was snorting prescription painkiller Vicodin up his nose, at which point another player inquired if he was snorting “blow” (more commonly known as cocaine). I was later informed that a lot of the upperclassmen on the team would get drunk the night before football games during the season. In short, my visit did not make a very good impression on the quality of this football team. The “football-recruiting visit” only involved football for a few hours.
About a month later I stayed overnight at a second recruiting weekend, this time at a different college. I happened to visit when the team there was pledging and witnessed college hazing firsthand. “The seniors are choosing three freshman to be cupids tonight!,” one freshman told my host in a both humored and anxious tone, shortly after I arrived to the dorms. That night, three freshmen would be transformed into these “cupids”, appropriate for the occasion, since it was Valentine’s Day. Later that night at a senior’s house, those three freshmen were brought into a room on the upper level of the house, with the door shut and locked. A few hours later, the three emerged from the room, incoherent, and wearing only thongs, painted red all over in recognition of the holiday. Actually, only two made it downstairs, the third remained on the steps as he threw up continuously. I was later waitlisted from this school after being informed by the head coach that being accepted to the school “wouldn’t be a problem.”
Some may say that “boys will be boys” and this is something that will go on no matter what. But where do you draw the line? You can’t say that corruption at all of these institutions is okay, as long as it doesn’t lead to rape or murder like it did at Colorado and Baylor. Because it was the same type of wrongdoing that takes place at the schools I visited that leads to the tragic actions at other schools. Hopefully there is some kind of change on the horizon.
I love sports, especially football, and everybody who knows me will tell you that. But plain and simple, this was not the football I knew. I didn’t end up enrolling in either of the two colleges, and while these incidents were not the overriding reason for my decision, they definitely had an effect on it. Coming out of a small high school, college football turned out to be a whole different ball game.
My sense of college recruiting was obviously a negative one, which is not to say that everyone has a similar impression. There are plenty of successful college athletes at all levels who did not run into the same roadblock that I did. There are also many college athletes out there who are genuinely respectable. I cannot come out and say that this goes on at every college because I only know this about two schools. But I will say that I wouldn’t be surprised if this type of recruiting turned out to be evident at many institutions.
As a sportswriter, the game is what I enjoy to write about, rather than the game outside the game. After my personal experiences with college sports and the senseless fights that took place at NFL, NBA and college football games recently, I believe, unless there is some kind of change in the system, sports will continue on this path. The game used to be sweat, strength and heart, but now, with money, drugs and other misconduct, the line that separates the field or court from life is a thin one.
Perhaps someday in the future we can go back to a world of sports that seems so distant at this point, the days when baseball wasn’t steeped in steroid controversy. When you could read about your favorite professional team in the sports section, and not in the police reports. Maybe. But for now, reality says the sun is setting on sports.
Time is running out. And the game is almost gone.
Eric Athas is a Collegian columnist.
