Transcripts For CSPAN2 Allen Paul And John LeBar Marching To

CSPAN2 Allen Paul And John LeBar Marching Toward Madness July 11, 2024

After the american dream. You can also watch all of our past programs any time at booktv. Org. Good evening everyone, i have been working with our coauthors to maximize the visual presence. Theyve written a very engaging book thats attracted many review since it came out a few months ago. The basic premise of the book is that the most important thing that the athletes get is a quality education. The book is structured into four sections, the history of the scholar athlete, profiles of high achieving athletes and how scholar athletes when and how to reform the system. The book makes the case that varsity athletics and Academic Excellence are not mutually exclusive. Both play an Important Role in the development of personal bonds and core values that lead to a happy and productive life. To add to the voice today the current pandemic is causing athletes, universities and the public to question the status quo. We will be using an interview format today there will be plenty of time for audience questions. As rebecca mentioned, please submit them using the q a button at the bottom of your screen. We are delighted to have john a as our moderator. He was a scholar athlete at university and played tennis under coach john lebar. Now hes a tenured professor at harvard in one of the foremost authorities on the Antislavery Movement as a professor professor of english and africanamerican studies. John has written two big sellers and many other books for scholarly audiences. He served as historical on two major Motion Pictures and i understand his lectures are among the largest and most popular in harvard. Johnb. Thanks jane. Its a great pleasure and honor to serve as moderator tonight and its great to see coach. I been in touch with him off and on, you are both great inspirations in terms of how to remain brilliant and lucid and industrious into the 60s and 70s, i dont know how old you are but you are a lot older than i am. Let me begin with the question, what inspired you to write marching toward madness . I know because i read them, you published other books, but more about the crowds and the art of tennis so to speak. What inspired you to write marching toward madness . After 53 years of teaching and coaching at three different institutions, i have concluded that bigtime athletics have lost their way. I wanted to show into this book by illustrating players that i have had and still in touch with and how successfully we are being both great scholars and great athletes at the same time. This book is something ive always wanted to do because i think this message needs to get out to everybody that these two things, academics and athletics are not exclusively opposed to each other. You can do both, it takes effort but you can. Thats what inspired me to show everybody its possible. Allen, your career, youve been a very successful journalist and writer, you published as mentioned of the acclaimed book and details stalins massacre of abwhat led you to collaborate with coach lebar . How did your relationship began . How did it evolve . I would love to know more about the collaborative aspect of the book, partly because i coauthored and collaborated on books myself. Collaboration as you well know can be quite tricky. We have the good fortune to be introduced by one of the students that john is biased and abto ask him if he wanted to write this book he asked if he knew someone that might serve the writing role and he recommended me. So our friend tom white in Tennessee State brought us together for a launch and getting us involved in this project was not a hard decision for me. I had listened to john halfway through the lunch before i was convinced that he really brought an encyclopedia knowledge to this challenge. He did it from both sides of the equation. He led dennis from the bottom rung of the acc to the very top. He graduated, his players all graduated, every one of them got a new degree and almost half of them went on to get graduating degrees. The academic side of the equation he served for 15 years as director of undergraduate studies so it was clear that john would be a great guy to team with. I also sensed and that lunch discussion that john was full of great stories. He had maintained lifetime relationships with his players and these guys that really had done some extraordinary things. That told me that there was a lot of Human Interest material to go with the more substantive material about problems with college athletics. Finally, i just like to say it was evident by the end of that lunch that john and i probably could establish a high level of rapport. I have to say, this turned out to be the best collaboration of my career. Thats great, you briefly mentioned or alluded to the problems of College Sports, i wondered if you could outline and more details of the problem of College Sports and solutions of the book authors. Allen, you can add to that. One of the problems that i think is most prevalent to everybody is that our these athletes really students . Or are they athletic performers. The universities have to make a decision as to what they are going to be and i think the only way to do that is to be sure to let everybody know that is on the varsity team or any team at the university that academics come first. And athletics come next. The other problem is athletes spent about 40 hours per week in their pursuit of athletic excellence. If you spend 40 hours a week in there, im not sure how much time you will have left for academics because you are actually exhausted mentally and physically after that total commitment. The other one i think is fun is the most prevalent is the win at all costs. I think weve gone into a situation where if you lose, there must be something wrong with you. Losing is not always bad but winning at all cost brings about in coaches the temptation to cheat to win. If you cheat and you win, you dont get fired if you win but if you lose who get fired immediately so the two are just in total conflict. I think those are some of the main issues i think we have ab did you want to add anything to that . I think you covered it very well. I would just add that this is a huge aspect of this problem is a tremendous pressures that are exuberant up and down the line of these universities the boards of trustees, the president s office through to the athletic departments in every level there is tremendous pressure exerted on the athletic departments to perform and win at all cost becomes the main piece of the whole exercise. I think i could illustrate this with a great story that you have in the book. Its about a very prominent president of Oklahoma University widely respected man in 1951 he was testifying to the Oklahoma Legislature on the budget plan and when he got through sleepy old senator woke up staring at himself and he said i want to know what kind of Football Team will have this year. Without batting an eye doctor a said, we are trying to build a university that our Football Team can be proud of. That was widely misinterpreted and there are stories that were nationally criticized mr. ab doctor cross who was an esteemed academic. The point is still relevant today. The athletic establishment of our major universities all want to know and want assurances about, Football Team we will have this year. Interesting. You both refer to football and bigmoney sports so just to followup question in terms of your solutions, do you see a distinction between football, basketball, for example, versus tennis, swimming. And what are, if youre in a position of power, and the head of the ncaa, what solutions would you implement implement to recover the scholar athlete student athlete ideal . I think in my opinion the very first thing we have to do is convince the most important thing is to get an education. I think the people that are really in charge of the universities are the trustees of the universities and the trustees make the voluntary practices may be held in addition. You can readily determine our guests even how thats gonna work out because the coach is really an autocrat in most cases and the coach is going to require additional 20 hours a week in the student athlete is going to have a very difficult time not complying with the request. We need to and the abof the athlete and that is a huge problem part and parcel of that is the fact that many of these kids are on a one year book if they dont play well enough if they dont get injured they can be cut. This is just not morally right, it needs to be addressed. I think changing the status of the relationship of the athlete when its a vital part of what needs to be done. Thank you. Both of you used the term scholar athlete and student athlete, is there a difference between the two . And if so, what is it and how does it relate to the solution of the problem of College Sports. I think theres a significant difference. The student athlete if you dont know a student athlete if they keep a 2. 0 grade average they are fine, no problem. The scholar athlete as i coached my tennis team assumed we would always have at least 3. 0 and have to maintain 3. 2 grade average when. Today with inflation almost everyone can maintain a 2. 0 grade average. The other point is scholar athlete in my opinion i would think allens also, have the opportunity to to give back so significant things to society and we post in our book several players to show what they give back after becoming physicians or lawyers or mbas or whatever. This is critical. Doesnt mean you cant do that if you are not the scholar athlete but it just means when you are a scholar athlete, your probabilities are significantly higher to making contributions. I dont know if alan wants to add to that. I would just say, in addition, there is sort of a timeline involved in this comparison between the student athlete of today and the scholar athlete of yesterday the late 19th century up to world war ii the scholar athlete was one of the quintessential ideals in American Society was made famous one of the first scholar athletes of great note is William Henry lewis played football for harvard in 1892 93. He was the first black allamerican in the country. He went on to great professional success and became the highest ranking black in the u. S. Government as an assistant u. S. Attorney general. People admired him. 1899 i think october 26 the issue 1899 and had two students standing in front of the University Gate with a hand on each others shoulder, if this was an iconic image in the article the magazine talked about how this is emerging into something apartment in American Society. Thats the kind of thing continued all through the first half of the 20th century and it was embellished by fantastic athletes like byron white who later became a u. S. Supreme Court Justice he was a consensus allamerican in 1937, a first in everything, every class he entered he was the first tenant. He was also a Rhodes Scholar and became a very successful professional football player, almost simultaneously. These images are what stuck in the publics mind and all of that began to decline after world war ii when we had a series of very very extraordinary cheating scandals and the public began to sour on the athlete and whether the athlete was being educated. Thats great, and its true for decades and decades Rhodes Scholars also tended also to be athletes. Its true. What do you two see as the Major Barriers to reform . Is it money . Ncaa . If you could do one or two things to change the system . What would be the Major Barriers to reforming it . And being able to recover the scholar athlete idea . In my opinion, i think you just have to go back to the universities and try to sell them on the idea that they are not in the entertainment business they are in the business of education and once they get that cemented in their dossier, if you go and look at Universities Mission statements i think i found one or two Mission Statements of all the university Mission Statements that even mention athletics. Mentions of universities is kind of deluded when you have student athletes who clearly dont perform well academically overall and so we have to say to ourselves, whats the best thing we can do for a student who comes to the university is to give them a firstclass education that will last them the rest of their lives if they go into the pro sports their career will be anywhere from three, five, six years what they do after that with no degree . I think we have to convince universities that theyve lost their sight they put too much emphasis on the athletic side, showmanship, thats what i think. Alan . I will just add one thing. A huge problem, huge barrier to reforming the system is what to do about the ncaa . The ncaa has lost tremendous credibility. It will either have to be ultimately have to be reformed or replaced. We can in the discussion we can get into options for a new alternative to the ncaa. Its a major issue that confronts and stipends progress to genuine form. Thank you. In the book you describe pay for play which is a relatively new term for paying College Athletes for endorsements. He described that as folly, why . One could argue that a College Athlete why not offer money to College Athletes as part of their sports and why would that have to get in the way of the scholar athlete . You want to take this, john . Go ahead, you start and i will chime in. I think this whole pay for play thing has spiraled somewhat out of control. Thats our perception of whats going on. Theres a couple of points here entirely overlooked in the bandwagon atmosphere with the College Players. First of all, how many are we talking about . Very likely or probably reliable estimate we are only talking about between 250 and 350 athletes nationwide so they are going to get under the current proposals the get the ability to license their name and the soul so called in il get the money to start to be hinging out of compensation, they are probably going to burn through it very quickly, they are going to leave School Without education. So its not a solution. John and i are adamantly in favor of compensating the College Player but the compensation needs to take the form of an education. Thats what is needed. How do we do that . We strongly feel that a portion of the Revenue Streams for march madness and the College Football playoff ought to be dedicated annually to this issue and ought to go to the universities with a major stake in the game and they should institute problems that in effect we call for lack of a better term, lifetime opportunity to complete the education, john can tell you about the next example, he knows about it personally. So they can go back at any time, they can get while they are there the classwork so they can play the sport without missing out entirely on the educational aspect. And the fun aspect of going to college. So if there is need for remedial study section, two should be applied. Yes we are for compensating the athlete, we think its a very very much needed solution and there is one at hand but its not just throw in a little bit of money at athletes and hope that it satisfies them and then they go away with no education. Thats great, john, do you want to add to that . I just want to say, the unintended consequences of the end il are astronomical. I will give you couple examples. What we call those people who get money do we call them students or employees . Will they have agents . And spend time more time now the 40 hours they have been spending on the team making commercials, signing autographs which leaves even less time for them to actually participate in academic endeavors. I just cant understand how this is even going to happen because right now there are several states have enacted laws in their state promoting nil and its so confusing because they are all different. Nobody knows who manages it, who orchestrates this whole mess. Is just going crazy because everybody has this guilt thing that athletes arent getting paid for bringing in this money. I agree we need to do something. I will give you an example. We think and athlete leaves early and doesnt get an education, drops out, plays pro, whatever, his scholarship should be for life. If he decides. For years a scholarship . The scholarship if he leaves and has two years left, his scholarship he could come back anytime he wants to and regain his scholarship. I will give you an example. 38 years old came back and got his degree this year at Duke University. We should say we want every one of these athletes to get a College Degree we think its very beneficial for the rest of their life. We are willing to say, we will pay it for the rest of your life but we dont think we should pay 250 people just because. They are going to make a fortune in the pros anyway. Thats my attitude. Its a great idea. You have a chapter in the book on, sports which is after the past 20 years a fairly new phenomenon. Pointing the way to reform. Can you elaborate on club sports . I will start and alan can chime in. , sports or in between abthey have to play other teams they have to run their own show themselves, their travel, pay for their own uniforms. I think one or two have a paid coach. I know ice hockey does. Most have a graduate student who cautions them and maybe gets abthe point of it is, they all feel get the same benefits you get from playing varsity athletics. We talked to several of them and they all say, we practiced 10 hours to 15 hours a week to get the most most of us are good scholars making great grades and most important thing to them is still the academics. But they learn a lot of things participating in Athletic Competition such as preparation, such as perseverance, never give up, those things can be learned that arent neces

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