—The Daily Collegian Fall Sports Preview Friday, September 13, 1974
Big-time a
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hletics in the
How <jo you justify its existence?
In television paydays a'one in the
Penn State football program collected
$200,000 for a nationally televised loss to
Tennessee, $145,000 for clobbering lowa in
a regionally televised fray, and a cool
quarter million for branding the Texas
Longhorns-in the Cottop Bowl. That was
only extra revenue.
Every itime the gates open at Beaver
Stadium this fall, the gross receipts will be
close to $300,000. The gates will open six
times.
There will also be alumni contributions,
program sales and . refreshment. con
cessions. ‘ *
In all, it adds up to enough money to run
the entire men’s .and women’s athletic
"Sr''"
by Rick Starr
Collegian Sports Editor
programs, involving hundreds of athletes,
hundreds of road trips, and mountains of
expensive athletic equipment. You could
fill an employment agency with the
bureaucrats and coaches in Rec Hall.
Things’ are big at Penn State and
athletics are no exception. But as a branch
of tiie university, the big-time athletic
program must justify its existence within
the community. Penn State football coach
Joe Patemo, points to goals as a
justification.
“The goals of intercollegiate football
have to be consistent with the goals of the
university or 'football will die,” he said.
His words make a fitting epitaph on the
grave of college football at the University
of Chicago. | *.
Robert Maynard Hutchins, President of
the University of Chicago in 1929, didn’t let
the sport diej however. He killed it. For
exactly the reasons Patemo cites above.
Nowhere in the university is there a less
understood relationship than that of big
time, professionalized athletics to the
university community.
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Athletics and education have not always
been partners. In ancient Greek education
the emphasis j was placed on developing
the ehtire man, mentally and physically,
mind in harmony with body.
In spite of the rise in mass spectator
sports and professional athletics in an
cient Rome, j intellectual and athletic
pursuits remained close. But when the
church assumed the duties of education
throughout the middle ages, the concepts
of physical man and intellectual man
polarized.
It was not i until the mid 1800’s that
athletic activity again was afforded a
substantive place in formal education.
Today athletics have grown to such
proportions that they seem to dominate
some universities. To most Americans,
Penn State means little more than a
winning football program, j
Even the people who attend College here
knew who Joe Paterno was long before
they ever heajrd of University President
John W. Oswald. Yet Oswald’s stature
within the University, his responsibilities
to the- students, his duties to the commun
ity far overshadow a football coach. _
To accurately assess big-time athletics,
all of its assets and liabilities to the
university must be examined.
It has been argued that big-time
athletics eminently justifiable