Like many people I have been watching the first football playoffs and other bowl games. One of my favorite networks is the SEC network and particularly the Paul Feinbaum show. One of the revealing and sometimes entertaining aspects of this show are the callers and their passion and opinions about their favorite teams. But watching Feinbaum’s live call-in show during the Alabama vs. Ohio State game made me think. Have we gone too far with our passion and emphasis to the point that this is no longer just a game or competition between schools but something that many of us define our personal, state and cultural identity on? The anger and almost vitriolic attack on coaches and players for loosing seems to me to be inconsistent with the fact that this is a game and other then providing entertainment does little to address the many social, economic and personal issues we face in the 21st Century. Yes I know we pay coaches a lot of money to win games. But is that really the best place to spend our money and are we emphasizing the right values? The current climate in higher education is not good. We are loosing ground to many other countries in the quality and quantity of graduates. We are living in a time when most state legislatures are reducing support for higher education. The response of most institutions is to increase use of low-salaried adjuncts, pay low faculty salaries except for the salaries for the “research stars”, football coaches and basketball coaches. It is worth noting that the “research stars” and high paid coaches do not spend much or any time in the classroom at most colleges and universities.

I grew up at a time where people at least expressed the opinion that the value of sports was to teach values such as respect, leadership, teamwork and work ethic. In the current college football environment the bigger and richer schools appear to tolerate bad behavior from athletes as long as the team wins and competes for championships. My own alma mater is a great example of what may be misplaced priorities. After four years of transforming the culture on the football team at the University of Florida to one that focused on success in the classroom, being good citizens and quality individuals, Will Muschamp was fired because he did not win enough games. At the time Coach Muschamp was fired the Academic Progress Rate (APR) for the football program was the highest in program history, arrests and other personal conduct violations were almost non-existent and his players admired and respected him. They seemed to get his message and compared to previous football programs in the state there was very little negative press about his program except for not winning enough games. Most of the commentators and even some of the fans admit that given enough time Coach Muschamp would have also turned around the won-loss record and started competing for championships – but the fan base and in particular the big money donors were not willing to be patient and wait.

Remember Aesop’s Fable about the Tortoise and the Hare? This was held up to my generation as an important value that it was not necessarily how fast you got to a goal but how steadily and methodically you moved toward that goal. We were taught that the trip and how well you made that trip was more important than the destination.

My takeaway from these musings is that maybe we are becoming a society that is not too wise about where we spend our money, what we set as our highest priorities and are too impatient to do things the right way.