‘Big-time’ sports engenders alumni loyalty, financial support

By Charlie Barnes, Executive Director - Seminole Boosters

Let’s assume Goliath was not a nimble fellow. Calibrating ancient measurements to modern scale is tricky, but scholars place Goliath at about nine and a half feet tall. Neither Yao Ming nor Manute Bol stands within two feet of that mark.

What David knew, and what every successful David knows, is that you must never allow the upper dog to make the rules. David volunteered for the fight because he thought he could win and he wanted the honor of defeating Goliath.

Imagine how the course of history might have changed had David asked to borrow a heavy shield and sword from one of the Israelite soldiers. Instead, David reasoned correctly that for all his noise and bluster and size, Goliath was a more or less stationary target. David simply stood off at a distance and slung rocks until the giant fell.

David vs. Goliath illustrates that there’s more than one way to do a thing, especially if you are willing to seek an alternate path to your goal.

Florida State University is a first-class, major research university. We are one of many, and most of us are members of established athletic conferences. All of these academic institutions work hard to grow stronger, to yield better results, to seek more effective ways of advancing the human condition

We use intercollegiate athletics to underwrite those efforts. The enormous popularity of college sports, coupled with the scale of money expended and received, attracts critical attention from a range of political and social leaders. Some of these people wish us well but also voice sincere concerns about the business of college athletics. Fair enough.

Other critics, however, are not so pure of heart.

It has become tradition among a certain self-impressed elite who really hate football to pour their unhappiness into that narrow span between season’s end and the start of bowl games. Like grouchy, Scroogian, finger-wagging Christmas ghosts, they appear in the late fall to vex us and tell us that we’re unworthy to call ourselves scholars.

Notable among these is essayist George Will, whose column “High on the Hog: Big Time College Sports” appeared in November. At about the same time, USA Today published a long piece that was critical of the compensation of college coaches. There was a snippy editorial in The New York Times and similar clucking by various other bandwagon columnists and pundits piling on.

Will is a brilliant writer with a wonderful command of language who once derided football for embracing “the two worst elements of American culture: violence and committee meetings.”

One of America’s intellectual giants, Will — along with his companions — rolls his eyes at “big-time college sports,” by which they nearly always mean football and basketball. Those two sports, or course, are the most wildly popular and actually pay their own way.

The critics miss the point. They don’t see things from our point of view, probably in the same way Goliath wondered why David wouldn’t face him toe-to-toe and fight like a man. Like David, FSU has created a different path to success.

Our university has only one mission: to coax mankind away from the darkness and toward the light. It is the same mission for all colleges and universities, and for all elements of civilization dedicated to the advancement of humanity. The world is dangerous. Every scholar knows that whatever horrors have visited mankind in the past wait patiently, too eager to come again. It is the business of FSU to defend civilization by offering the broadest, most enlightened education in all disciplines.

Our university has no “athletic mission.” There are legitimate academic values inherent in recreation studies and physical education, but important scholastic research is not advanced directly through intercollegiate athletics.

And yet, successful intercollegiate athletic programs are of enormous value to “David” institutions such as FSU and to others in the major Division I conferences. Intercollegiate sports create a powerful emotional infrastructure for tens of thousands of Seminole alumni, and tens of millions of Americans are regularly exposed to the good work of FSU through nationally televised games.

The big money that successful intercollegiate athletics generates for FSU arrives through the personal generosity of alumni who cherish their relationship with the school. It flows from the strength of our influence in the Florida Legislature. And money comes through the ingenuity and creative energies of our distinguished faculty, some of whom were recruited by the university’s high visibility, good national reputation and ability to pay.

Donors to the Seminole Boosters very often are donors of academic gifts as well. We know that a great deal of money walks into our university through the locker-room door. The same is true of the universities of Miami, Florida, North Carolina, Notre Dame and every other major institution with nationally prominent, winning programs.

Athletics provides the most pervasive image of our university on the national stage, and we use that recognition to advance our good work as an institution. We would not be the great university we are today if not for the broad financial and promotional impact of collegiate athletics.