Baylor

It's as if God decided to deliver me some headlines tailor-made for a blog about sports and faith.

On Thursday, heads started rolling at Baylor University. Proceedings were announced to fire the school's president, athletic director, and head football coach. (The athletic director has since saved the school the trouble by resigning.)

As you've quite possibly heard by now, the terminations were carried out in response to a report from a law firm investigating allegations of sexual abuse against female students at Baylor, many (but not all) by members of the football program. The university's Board of Regents issued a Findings of Fact report which speaks to nothing less than institutional failure, particularly regarding Title IX and the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) reauthorization of 2013, both for the university as a whole and the athletic department and football in program in particular.

Predictably, the story has spawned a great deal of pontificating, high-minded speculation about culture change in college sports, and predictably self-interested tweets from Baylor players and ship-jumping by recruits. In the meantime, the university has named an interim president (who I think was once a New Testament professor of mine, not at my most recent seminary stop) and an acting head coach, Jim Grobe, once of Wake Forest. This is an interesting hire; Grobe, who retired from Wake just a couple of years ago, looks like a true interim hire -- someone who will not, and quite possibly does not want to be, considered for the permanent position, but will get the team through the coming season.

Grobe also has a track record, albeit not as impressive as that of fired coach Art Briles, of success at a  school not accustomed to it. His overall record wasn't great, but Jim Grobe coached Wake Forest to an ACC championship and an Orange Bowl bid. That remains one of the most impressive "wait, what?" accomplishments in athletic history.

Briles's success at Baylor looks similar, with the exception of apparently being more lasting. The school's football team now plays at a shiny new stadium that would never have happened without the success of recent seasons there, with players like Heisman Trophy winner Robert Griffin III and a lot of attention to the program and, by some remote extension, the school.

The allegations, which were being investigated for almost a year by the Philadelphia law firm Pepper Hamilton, have rained all over that success like a particularly nasty Plains thunderstorm.

Where this case stands apart from so many others is this:

Baylor University is a Christian institution of higher education. Its website will tell you so.

As a former student at a Christian college and a former professor at a Christian university, that does make my ears prick up in this case. Unchallenged sexual assault doesn't really go very well with such a self-description.

A university Board of Regents (or trustees or governors, as they are variously named at different schools) can be a vexing thing, making prescriptions about educational matters in which they have no ability or expertise or, in the case of a Christian institution of higher education, expecting the school to serve as little more than an extended Sunday school.

In this case, I am trying to read events at Baylor optimistically. The Board of Regents at Baylor, I am hoping, really valued Baylor being a Christian institution (whatever that means), even at the expense of all that football glory.

Much of the commentary around the Baylor case has not commented on this aspect of the school's identity. A few have, but many have not. This may be why what has happened at Baylor won't really be a sign of general culture change after all. Most of your big-time football franchises in the NCAA don't have that particular pressure to live up to Christian principles, even if their coach is barely concealed preacher-wannabe. If pressure comes to clean up a situation like this one, it comes mostly through threat of legal action. (Sadly, the desire to do right by the university's female students doesn't really seem to register at most universities.)

So no, I'm not looking for any kind of culture change from this situation, outside of Baylor at minimum. As for Baylor itself only time will tell.

*Some commentary after the fact has suggested that Briles saw himself as a guarantor of second chances, for players who had gotten into trouble at other schools. Well, if you're going to give out second chances, you are obligated to put in place a system of oversight to make sure those second chances don't end up bringing harm or assault to others. If you don't, your gracious second chance starts to look awfully opportunistic. There is zero evidence that any such oversight was ever put in place in these cases. 

**I'm going to forego the wide-open opportunity for schadenfreude that the university's president, a man who made his reputation zealously pursuing what he saw as a sexual misdeed, is now losing his job over failing to pursue charges of sexual assault at all. At least I'm mostly going to forego it.

Where this becomes challenging for us is in the conflict between Baylor's much-proclaimed Christian identity and its increasing desire for success in the cutthroat world of college football. What had looked like a great story rapidly denegerated into a story of soul-selling, looking the other way in the face of one of the most vile and unchristian, not to mention criminal, things that one human being can do to another. Whether Baylor's football team will ever regain its lofty heights is pretty doubtful. What Baylor would be willing to do in order to get there, we shall see.

I don't, despite the title of this blog, hold to the notion that football (or any other sport) is a religion. I am beginning to wonder, however, if sport is a belief system. And I am beginning to wonder if that belief system is at all compatible with the following of Christ that is the call of any self-proclaimed Christian. (And yes, this does bear implications for the usual subject of this blog. We'll get there.) On this, I am less optimistic. And while football may be the place where the belief system of sport and the Christian walk are most in conflict, I fear what it may mean for the relation of the Christ-follower and the big-time sport that so fills up the culture in which we live.

An image from Baylor's website.

Irresponsible

Note: Once-a-week blogging for the time being. Need to do more organizational work now.

Another note: The rumination on fun has to go on hold, since the NFL has behaved badly again, or perhaps more accurately, gotten called out for it.



When Congress -- Congress!! -- calls you out, you've messed up.

A congressional study released this week found that the NFL attempted to throw its weight around, using its much-ballyhooed contributions to brain trauma research to control which scientists would be supported by the National Institutes of Health, the intended recipient of those funds. What had been touted as an "unrestricted gift" apparently had strings attached after all.

I don't think anyone is particularly surprised by this revelation. If anything, it merely confirms what has been increasingly clear for some time: the NFL is going to play by the tobacco playbook of the 1950s and 60s, doing everything in its power to muddy the science so it can go on making staggering sums of money. A researcher like Dr. Robert Stern, who previously had the temerity to follow the science in his work at Boston University, whose CTE Center has been at the forefront of such science as has been going on so far on the subject, was unacceptable to the NFL. So, they tried to keep the money from going to BU, and when they failed, they pulled their money.

This is the behavior of an organization with something, a lot of something, to hide.

Side note: I find it fascinating that BU continues to field a football team.

I suppose what is impressive about this congressional report is that part of the NFL strategy for making the concussion issue go away (not so much actual concussions, mind you, not to mention all the other hits that actually add up to CTE for too many players) involves political donations. Evidently they didn't manage to target the right members of Congress yet.

Ethical takeaway: this is the organization you are funding when you buy a ticket or a replica jersey or other bit of NFL merchandise, and probably even when you subscribe to that whole NFL Sunday Ticket deal.

You know this, right? Whatever your old childhood loyalties may have been, do they obligate you to continue to participate in this kind of blatant BSing and irresponsible stewardship of the players in the league's employ, past, present, and future? You might as well have been contributing to Philip Morris or Reynolds back in the day.

Other bits of news around the subject, possibly to be revisited:

1. Bubba Smith had stage 3 CTE when he died five years ago. Some remember him as a fearsome defensive star. Others remember him from the Police Academy movies or other film or TV roles, or maybe even the old Miller Lite "tastes great/less filling" ads. (Current research identifies four stages of CTE.) He would not even be the first NFL-star-turned-actor to be so identified; Alex Karras, of Blazing Saddles and Webster, also was found to have CTE at his death.

2. Thurman Thomas is still living. Last month he gave an account of the toll football took on his brain.

3. Meanwhile, the guys just coming into the NFL from last month's football meat market-palooza are still largely convinced they're invincible.

4. A (probably soon-to-be-former) NFL general manager, Doug Whaley of the Buffalo Bills, suggested that people probably really should not be playing football.

And from other sports:

5. Action sports has its first CTE diagnosis. I confess I had not even considered that sport, though it's certainly believable that its participants suffer plenty of blows to the head.

6. Another sport you don't necessarily think about: auto racing. A few weeks ago one of its bigger stars, Dale Earnhardt Jr., announced he would be donating his brain for CTE research after his death.

7. So will Brandi Chastain, former Women's World Cup champion (the one who scored the winning goal and gave the sportsbra its day in the sun, remember?). This is particularly noteworthy, as very little research on brain trauma and sports so far has involved female athletes.

8. Also from soccer: an MLS player has had to change his game after five documented concussions, cutting down on leading with his head.

9. The National Hockey League's brass was caught in newly released emails speculating about the possible connections between the deaths of three of its players and their primary on-ice occupation: fighting.

10. The NHL won't get off the hook; a class-action lawsuit by former players was allowed to go forward.

ESPN heard you say it, Mr. Whaley; too late to walk it back...

What is "fun" in modern sports?

About four years ago I read and shared on social media this article, written in the face of a near-beanball brawl, about the "unwritten rules" of baseball. In the wake of the donnybrook between the Texas Rangers and Toronto Blue Jays earler this week, it was humorously ironic to see that old story burble up from the dark recesses of Facebook.

Baseball has been having a rather strange season in at least one respect; it seems, this season more than most, to be torn over what seems an odd question to be asked about grown men playing games: is baseball fun?

This is primarily the work of Bryce Harper, young Washington Nationals outfielder, reigning Most Valuable Player in the NL, and self-appointed provocateur of Making Baseball Fun Again. His early-season push on "fun" has garnered the kid a pretty striking amount of attention for a sport that hasn't quite known what to do with outspoken players whose production on the field has backed up and surpassed their mouths off of it, mostly because there have been so few such players.

The "fun" campaign has manifested itself in many ways, some of them regrettably like a certain presidential candidate who shall not be named here, others rather more conventional (appearing on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon). Other players have been joining the campaign, entire teams have had their opinion solicited, and so forth and so on.

In the meantime, the un-fun parts of the game have also manifested themselves, as in that knockdown drag-out brawl between the Rangers and Blue Jays. Here is where Serious Baseball rears its head with ugly-looking consequences. When Toronto's Jose Bautista unleashed a hard take-out slide at the Rangers' Roughned Odor (RO-ned O-door, before you get confused), threw a punch at Bautista. Not the usual baseball "punch," which is more of an ineffectual shove, but a real, prepared and premeditated roundhouse punch. Odor got eight games' worth of suspension for the punch, and Bautista for the attempt to deposit Odor in the left-field seats.

Baseball (unlike, say, the NFL) has come to the conclusion that it would rather not see its players (particularly its expensive ones) end up mangled on the field, as has happened to a few catchers (see Posey, Buster) in the past couple of decades and now seems to be an issue among shortstops and second basemen. Late last season it was Jung-Ho Kang of the Pittsburgh Pirates getting wiped out by the Los Angeles Dodgers' Chase Utley, suffering an injury from which he is still recovering. As a result the Pirates were missing one of their most important offensive weapons in their wild-card playoff game against the Chicago Cubs. One can argue that MLB manages to care for its players and their health at least to some degree, or one can argue that owners want to protect their investments, or one can argue that the league would like to have its stars on the field for important things like the playoffs. And all of those three probably contain some truth.

But the business of "unwritten rules" plays into the Rangers-Jays affair, if only because of what happened in last year's American League Division Series between those two teams. Bautista, one of the more dangerous hitters in the AL, connected for a home run that gave the Jays the winning margin in the decisive game of that series, and unleashed an epic bat flip upon doing so.

Bat flips are of course evil incarnate, an invention of Satan himself.

Or that's what you'd think based on the reaction at the time.

Admittedly, Bautista's bat flip was at least as much a bat fling as flip. Pretty severe. But then, in the situation, that's not as surprising as it would seem. In the previous half-inning, due to a bizarre confluence of events, it appeared the Jays were going to be eliminated because of a catcher's return throw to the pitcher that somehow struck the bat of the Rangers' hitter before it could get back to the pitcher. That would have been far and away the most bizarre and crushing way to lose a playoff game and series in the history of history itself.

It is my opinion (probably an unpopular one, but that's hardly new in this blog) that for Bautista to be unemotional in that situation would have been incredibly dishonest and false. That was a huge emotional moment, with tons at stake.

Somehow, though, Sam Dyson, the Rangers pitcher, decided that the bat flip was all about him.

Pro tip, pitchers: when a batter hits a climactic home run to win a ballgame and especially a playoff game and series, the last thing that hitter is thinking about is you. You simply are not important enough to "show up."

Now I don't think that anybody was exactly having "fun" in that moment back in October. And this goes to my concern with Harper's "fun" campaign. And also this goes to why I consider this story worth blogging about in the place of the usual subject matter of this blog.

Part of the problem with football and its traumatic effects on too many brains is that football, along with other sports, has assumed a position in society way beyond what it can or should ethically sustain. It's too big and too expensive and too much of an idol.

And idols aren't fun. Not even American Idols.

Also: fun is a nice part of sports, even on the more individual non-professional level, but that's not quite everything that there is to sports.

There are far stronger forces at play in games -- like catharsis, probably what was happening with Bautista back in October.

But there are things missing, almost as if by design, in big-time sports that can't quite be solved with a call to "make baseball fun again."

When the title of my blog applies so broadly across sports ("it ain't a religion, son, it's ... ), "fun" just isn't strong enough to be the answer to the question.

First of all, you have to figure out what the question is.

(To be continued...)

The Flip.

The two- (or three-) way street

Loyalty is an awfully strange word in sports.

There's the whole business of which loyalty we're talking about.

There's the question of coach or manager loyalty to players. Players' loyalty to coaches or managers. On the pro level, ownership adds another level to the loyalty question. And then there are the fans, the ones who, in Jerry Seinfeld's words, root for laundry.

Loyalty got an unfortunate social media workout last night, apparently, in the recruiting life of the Texas A & M University football franchise. Notice the word "recruiting" in that sentence. In other words, the question of the loyalty of football players who are, technically, not yet part of the program or franchise became an open question, and as a result, some football players who were planning to join that program are now no longer planning to do so.

A little background is in order; a more detailed sketch of the events leading to this impasse is here. To be brief, the program has had some difficulties holding on to the highly touted quarterbacks who have variously played for or committed to the franchise, to the point of losing players who had made "oral commitments" to play at Texas A & M. Up to last night, the main shocking news was that the two quarterbacks who got most of the playing time last season had decided to transfer to other schools.

Seeing the instability, Tate Martell, a highly ranked high school quarterback who had made an oral commitment to A & M before his junior year of high school (yes, junior year), made the strange announcement that while he was still committed to A & M, he was going to take advantage of all five of the official visits a high schooler is allowed to make to different football franchises. While this might sound a little like telling your girlfriend that while you're still dating her exclusively that you're going to go on dates with four other women, one could argue that the franchise is "dating" a whole bunch of other quarterbacks while theoretically remaining "committed" to you.

Whatever the reason, Martell made the decision to "decommit" from Texas A & M, re-opening his recruiting process more fully and spilling some beans on who else had expressed interest. This was last night, a little more than two weeks after the decision to make all his visits.

For whatever strange reason, one of A & M's coaches, Aaron Moorehead (the wide receivers coach), then fired off a series of tweets on the subject of loyalty. It was hard to escape the notion that Moorehead (the college coach, the presumed adult in the room) was going off on Martell, the 17-year-old high school quarterback). Moorehead, because of NCAA rules, couldn't mention the name of a recruit who had not yet signed a letter of intent (which Martell is not eligible to do until this coming February), maintained that he wasn't tweeting about who people thought he was tweeting about, but went right on tweeting in a way that more or less said that these tweets about loyalty were "relevant" to the situation that everybody thought he was tweeting about.

Meanwhile other recruits took notice. A highly-ranked receiver, taking notice of the words of his "future coach", used Twitter to announce his own decommitment. (This receiver, Mannie Netherly, has already received an offer from the Mississippi franchise. Things do change quickly.) This didn't stop Moorehead from tweeting, adding that kids these days were too sensitive and "soft." This in turn persuaded another recruit, not committed to Texas A & M but still considering the franchiie, to decide he was no longer considering the program. Another player, not even an A & M recruit, offered the opinion that the tweetstorm (apparently that's a thing now) had probably cost A & M about twenty-five recruits, while others weighed in on one side or the other.

Today brought the mandatory apology from Moorehead and vague insinuations by head coach Kevin Sumlin that Moorehead might lose his social media privileges.

Please tell me I'm not the only one who finds the whole business bizarre on its face. I can't possibly begin to enumerate the dumbfounded and I-can't-believe-I-have-to-ask questions this provokes in me, but just to name a few:

1) Making "oral commitments" before junior year of high school? Since when is that ever a good idea? And yes, I've heard the stories of offers to kids in junior high, I just don't want to acknolwedge them. I suppose on some level that making such an early commitment theoretically allows a kid to play his last two years of high-school ball without all the distraction of a full-blown recruiting process, but I have my doubts that this theory really works out that well in practice. And who's to say that any of the coaches who recruit you as a sophomore are going to even be around by the time you're a senior, much less ready to join the franchise?

An "oral commitment" is a strange thing. It is utterly without backing. It has, really, about as much credibility as your promise to your doctor to exercise more and cut back on the sweet stuff.

2) Coaches are not really the best people to go tweeting or otherwise browbeating about "loyalty" to a program. To pick on the currently humiliated Moorehead: is he really saying that he plans to spend his entire career as A & M's wide receivers coach?

Even in my short stay in academia I climbed the career ladder. I moved, after three years of teaching at a small evangelical school in south Florida, to a much larger state university out in the plains, one with one of the better music programs in the country and with much more interest in basketball than baseball. For me, the appeal was threefold: a slight pay bump (but also a move to a much less expensive place to live, which heightened the effect), a chance to work with graduate students and not undergrads only, and, well, the prestige of the music program there. Such a move was no declaration of disaffection for my previous school, but I will never doubt that it was the right thing to do at that time in that career and will never regret it.

It's hard for me to believe that Moorehead isn't going to want to climb the career ladder in football coaching at some point. And hey, this is the good ol' USA; nobody's really going to begrudge him that privilege. He might move to another school for an opportunity to be an offensive coordinator, or maybe even a head coach, or he might make a move to the NFL. (Of course, how much the publicity from this incident will affect such opportunities for him in the future remains to be seen.) But a system that allows him to demand such loyalty out of players who might not even be at A & M before he climbs the next step on the coaching ladder is a broken system, isn't it?

3) Twitter, boy, I don't know... .

4) I won't even get into the degree to which this whole process is utterly divorced from the basic concept of a college or university education... .

5) And because you know this blog is going to go there whenever the chance arises, this coach (the one tweeting how kids these days are too sensitive or soft) is somehow being trusted with, among other things, the health of the players who play under his direction, including yes, the health of their brains. Sound like a good idea to you?

6) I haven't waded into the cesspool of comment sections or Twitter replies to get any reactions from fans of A & M or other franchises, the ones rooting for laundry. I'm not going to, but I'm going to guess that it's ugly and vile and petty towards the de-committers, and obnoxiously defensive of Moorehead. That apparently is what fanhood requires (auto-correct wanted to change that word to "manhood." In that case I have to concede that auto-correct might have a point). Defend the franchise against any and all assaults, including any physical ones committed by players or coaches, but turn on the franchise and demand blood if it doesn't win enough games. I guess that's fan loyalty.

In this case, this particular situation is unique to college, and to college football somewhat. College basketball has its own profound corruptions and irregularities, but early recruiting just doesn't have quite the same hold on that game. Coach-hopping is maybe even worse, though. On the pro level, loyalty is deeply intertwined with money. (Not that it isn't on the college level, but for those actually playing it is mostly future money at stake.)

In all seriousness, I am not sure it requires a faith-based ethical viewpoint to make a person wonder if it would be best just to shake one's head and walk away from the whole business. A basic rational mind and sense of human decency might well be enough.

How nice that he bounced back so quickly...

A settlement, but (maybe) not an escape

I'm still recovering, to some degree, from watching that first round of the NFL draft, and I will get back to some observations on that before too long. In the meantime, though, a couple of pieces of news that are of interest in understanding what the NFL knew and when it knew it have passed through in the past couple of weeks, and they're worth a quick comment.

It did not pass the notice of this blog that the long-disputed settlement between the NFL and a large number of retired players was approved by an appellate court about two weeks ago.

Nobody involved considers the settlement perfect (even the NFL, I suspect, but for different reasons), but the judge ruling on the case opined that it was not warranted to hold out for anything better. About 20,000 former players will potentially be covered by the settlement, al though a small handful of players did not participate in the settlement and are likely to continue action against the league. (Additionally, a number of families of players who were not diagnosed with CTE until after the settlement cutoff date -- Ken Stabler comes to mind -- are unlikely to accept being cut off from financial restitution.)

You can read the article for the gory legal details as you wish. For a great many people, the most damning result of that settlement was this: because of the acceptance of the settlement, there were two possible results caught up in these two quotes from the ESPN article above:

...thereby potentially ending a troubled chapter in league history.

and:

The settlement deal means the NFL might never have to disclose what and when it knew about the risks and treatment of concussions.

Now for many, this was the most damaging part of the settlement; the NFL was able to get off the hook without any admission of guilt, and there would be nothing in the settlement to hold the NFL accountable for what it knew, and when, and what it did to obscure it. In the eyes of too many, this was a poor result, even if a number of former players were able to receive funds within three to four months, possibly.

In the words of a TV foof associated with college football, not the NFL: not so fast, my friend.

Those initial reports were leaving out one party with quite an interest in the settlement, and in particular its distribution, as well as any other monies that might be disbursed for medical treatment for those former players: the insurance industry.

A New York state judge ruled that NFL officials and doctors had to be made available for questions, and in fact to answer questions, from insurers who want no part of paying up to a billion dollars* in potential settlement money if the NFL was not being honest about its knowledge of concussions and brain trauma and their effects. As well, documents pertinent to that knowledge and informaiton were also required to be made available.

*While the official amount of the settlement is $765 million, the actual compensation fund in the settlement (estimated at $675 million) is in fact uncapped; a separate $75 million medical monitoring fund was also uncapped as part of the settlement. Therefore, the actual amount of money spent could be much higher. The NFL estimates in court documents that they expect to disburse no more than $900 million, but the amount could be higher. 

When or how this will happen is yet to be determined, but (if anybody actually pays attention) this could be a significant development in getting at the truth of the NFL's involvement with (potentially) covering up what it knew of the damage the game was doing to its players. This could be damning in any future cases of litigation against the league (while 20,000 players may be expected to be covered, such information may well draw others out of the woodwork), and will potentially just look bad for the league. Bad enough to finally shake its stranglehold on its fan base? I'm not holding my breath. Bad enough to make the whole enterprise look less appealing to athletes with any other sports options? Sure. Bad enough to raise, at long last, enough ethical doubt about the game for something to give in this society? Who knows?

One point that has been wondered about in the past: what about current players? As much as I may not respect or trust the league, I don't think current players need to be included. Heartless? I don't think so. Whatever might yet be revealed about how long and how much the NFL knew, you don't need the NFL's acknowledgment to know what the risks are now. At some point, it's a player's responsibility to protect his own health now. You don't want to take that risk? Don't play. At least a few players are making that choice, as recent headlines have shown.

Anyway, this potential questioning, and its potential results ... something to watch.

You never know where important information will turn up.