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Football on the cultural left Sunday, May 11, 2008 By John Brummett Some people call it elitist football or snob football or even nerd football. But college football is what it is, genuine and unadulterated college football, played by actual higher education matriculants who are not on athletic scholarships and who are required to pursue standard, not contrived, academic studies. It's coached by people who get paid as faculty members and might coach something else. They're not made into millionaires getting extra remuneration for television shows and for wearing name-brand sports gear. And they're not exalted as cultural icons. This is NCAA Division III football, the alliance of small, academically stringent liberal arts colleges that clings to that anachronistic concept of the student-athlete. These schools offer nonscholarship intercollegiate football to enhance the general health and character of students, as well as to give faculty and alumni something to do. They also see a promotional or branding need to show up on sports pages now and again, merely to make their existence known in this sports-obsessed world. So now I can look forward to a crisp fall afternoon a few years hence, and to driving the half-hour to Conway to tailgate on wine and cheese and pesto and fresh fruit and raw vegetables, and to watching the Hendrix Warriors tangle with the Rhodes Whatevers and the Millsaps Somethings or Others, forward passes chopping through the air end over end, halfbacks breaking free of the line of scrimmage only to get caught from behind by similarly sized interior linemen, the runner majoring in art history and the tackler in economics. It'll be cultural-left football, played and observed by Obamaists, and by people who bowl like Obama. Last week the Hendrix Board of Trustees voted to embark on Division III football as soon as money could be raised for a fieldhouse and bleachers to accommodate literally dozens, if not scores, and a scoreboard to go with the existing, and artificially turfed, lacrosse field. That field is part of a massive new "wellness" complex on the campus that no less than Bill Bradley - the prototypical athlete-scholar - dedicated a few months ago. Yes, I said lacrosse. It's a fine sport, testing and vigorous. You run constantly like you're playing soccer or hockey. But you wear pads because you're apt to get clobbered like you're playing American football. You wield a stick like a horseless polo player. You pass on the move like a basketball player. And it turns out, a lacrosse field can be easily adapted for American football. The board's one condition was that the capital outlay for football must be raised privately. Money will not be diverted from academics, of course. Nor will any be diverted from lacrosse or tennis or swimming or any of those intercollegiate sporting niches that attract about a fourth of the Hendrix student population into life-enhancing participation. This might happen as early as 2009. It might be five years away. It has best be soon, U.S. District Judge William R. (Bill) Wilson told the sports blog of Arkansas Business. He played on the last Hendrix football team, in 1960, and in the last game, a 7-6 win over the Baptists from down at Ouachita. But Hendrix gave up football after that year because other schools in the Arkansas Intercollegiate Conference, having all that easy taxpayer money, started subsidizing sports. Now Wilson says he'll attend the first game of this new era, if he's still around. Note that he was in college in 1960. A Division III football player can do the math. ------- John Brummett is a columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock. His e-mail address is jbrummett@arkansasnews.com; his telephone number is (501) 374-0699. |
