Sports in America

by James A. Michener

  When Artemius Crandall ended his high school football career and was preparing to graduate, eighty-seven institutions of higher learning sent emissaries offering him scholarships that would pay all expenses plus spending money for four years of college training in such subjects as calculus, economics, history, chemistry and literature. At that stage his educational competency was as follows:

  He did not know the multiplication table, had no concept of its significance, could not even have made a guess as to what 8 × 7 was, and would have been astounded to learn that 7 × 8 yielded the same result as 8 × 7. He had never read a book; indeed, he had never once been in any house that had a book other than an unopened Bible. He was not illiterate, for he could read the sports pages of the local newspapers and understand what the writers were saying about him in their enthusiastic articles, but he comprehended few of the big words. He had no concept of history, no familiarity with any science, had never attended a laboratory session and did not know what a poem was. If strict standards were applied, he had the education of a normal third-grader, and yet he was a bright, intelligent young man with a fine character.

  How had such an abortion of the educational process been permitted? Because at every stage of his career he had been recognized as a marvelous potential athlete and pushed ahead. From the seventh grade on he had rarely attended class yet he had received top grades. In his junior and senior years he got straight A’s in subjects whose classes he attended one day in five and in which he did no work at all. In order to make him eligible for top scholarships, an adoring faculty twice gave him A’s in classes for which he was not even enrolled.

  What in hell were eighty-seven universities doing, offering scholarships which, if he could have accepted them all, would have totaled more than two million dollars? One coach said, ‘Artemius is no less prepared than many of the boys we already take. With a tutor to write his papers and see that he attends at least some of his classes, we’ll get him passing grades. And that’s all that counts.’ Another said, with some perspicacity, ‘He’s a damned sight better human material than most of the crumbums we have to do business with. He has character, and you’ll be amazed at what that kid will learn in a good college.’

  Thousands of boys not much better prepared than Artemius Crandall receive full academic scholarships year after year. The only explanation can be that my Criterion III—universities must provide public entertainment—supersedes all other considerations. Few colleges or conferences are blameless in this strange perversion of the educational process, and any who might seek to terminate such abuses would find themselves besieged by their alumni, who would argue that a boy doesn’t need too much book learning. It is not corrupt coaches who haul such boys to the academic doors; it is the general public who insist upon it.

  The statistical possibility of landing a paying job in professional sports is bleak. Every young black who is starting his career on the ghetto playing fields should bear in mind these probabilities. In a typical year there will be 200,000 schoolboy seniors eager to win basketball scholarships at some college, but since there are only 1,243 colleges playing the game, the scholarships available cannot exceed 12.000. Four years later the colleges will be graduating about 5,700 seniors, most of them hoping for a professional contract. But there are only 25 professional teams, and they draft somewhere around 200 players each year, but they actually offer contracts to only a portion of that number. About 55 college seniors will land salaried berths with the pros, but of them only about six will earn starting positions. The chances for the average high school hotshot are not alluring, and that is why thoughtful black social critics deplore the emphasis given to basketball in black mythology. The odds against the young would-be athlete are somewhat worse than those which face the would-be actor or novelist, and over the long haul the rewards are more meager.

  I first became aware of the tragedy involved in ended careers when I stood along the sidelines at a professional football camp with two scouts who had recruited the young men I had been watching over the past week. Now came the cutting time, and one of the scouts pointed to three young blacks, attractive, well-behaved rookies whom everyone liked, and said, ‘Tonight they come to the end of the trail. Tomorrow they wake up to reality.’

  When I asked what that meant, the other scout explained, ‘They’re being cut. The end of the line. And I’m afraid they’re not good enough to land a job anywhere else as free agents.’

  ‘That happens to a lot of us, in other ways,’ I said.

  ‘Not quite,’ the scout said. ‘Those three young men have not had an honest day’s experience since the seventh grade. They’ve been passed along as football heroes. Grade school, high school, college, everywhere they were handed grades. Tomorrow they wake up to the fact that they have no job, no degree, no education, no prospects.’ I thought that since he had helped draft the young men for one last fling at a corrupt system, he was being cynical about their departure. Not at all. He told me, ‘It breaks your heart to see dreams vanish this way. I’m not going to be here tonight. I can’t stand watching.’

  At the end of his professional career, even the successful black player faces unusual difficulties. Each year those who have been retired because of age or illness must start their lives over, and with lesser advantages than those pertaining to white veterans. The conspicuous case of the black who becomes a television sports announcer must not obscure the hundreds of cases of men who are left adrift. If they have ability and strong character, they can catch hold of something rewarding; if they have no special ability, their lives are apt to be frustrating, and no collection of headlines will help them attain the position they might have had if they had pursued an honest education instead of the spurious athletic route. Bob Love, black basketball star with the Chicago Bulls, made an interesting point:

  Sure the college scouts and coaches are wrong for exploiting the athletes. But many of the athletes are guilty also for letting themselves be used. Most of those who end up with nothing are brothers, too. That’s why I’m glad I went to a black college, Southern University at Baton Rouge, because they generally work harder to help the athletes get an education and learn a skill. They are interested in you as a man and not just an athlete.

  Even the highly successful black athlete runs the risk of establishing himself as a destructive behavior-pattern for younger blacks who cannot hope to emulate him. This may be the greatest problem of all. If the entire black community surrenders itself to the dream of a life in sports, while the white community is aspiring to a full-fledged body of options, the black community not only restricts itself to one of the most ephemeral life goals, but it denigrates itself, limits its talented youth, and appears juvenile in the eyes of others. It is as if a large portion of the black community had consciously set for itself the goal of providing gladiators for the white arenas, and that seems immoral.

  Too often the publicized salaries are illusory or even fake. Closer inspection needs to be given this tricky subject. Let’s take the best aspect first. A great superstar like Wilt Chamberlain, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar or Henry Aaron who can remain a professional for many years, drawing a top salary most of that time, can earn and save a good deal of money (but rather less than a man of equal talents in business or creativity might earn over the same span of years). It would be reasonable for any young black to dream of being a Willie Mays or a Jim Brown or a Bill Russell, for these extraordinary men had not only the approbation of an entire society but also a financial success which should keep them solvent for the rest of their lives. (Again, I would not trade their income, substantial as it was, for what a man of equal talents might have made in management or music or merchandising.)

  But when one comes to the overnight sensation who signs a contract for ‘a million dollars, guaranteed,’ I would always want to inspect the details. The agreement may call for five years of services, with so many conditional clauses that the young man has little chance of ever fulfilling them. There are deductions for age
nts’ fees and lawyers’ fees and proliferating expenses. There are cancellation clauses. And in the end I suspect that what the young man is getting is less than half a million dollars, over five years. Prorated over a working lifetime, that’s no great bargain.

  Two points should be considered. From what I know of intricate contracts in varied fields, I am satisfied that the athlete who hauls down one of the much-publicized deals would probably be much better off, weighing a whole lifetime, if he had played games for fun, renounced a professional career, and prepared himself for a profession which would assure him a constantly growing income from ages twenty-six through seventy. Look at the figures. The athlete picks up his one big contract, pays excessive expenses, lives beyond his means, and faces life at thirty-four forcibly retired from his sport and without a job that pays substantially. He becomes a bartender at the American Legion and his life income will be that first $500,000 plus little more. The trained man, on the other hand, works forty-five years at an average salary of $30,000—or perhaps much, much more—and his life’s earnings are $1,350,000 plus an honored place in his community. The advantage is so strongly in favor of the constant earner, and by such a large margin, that one must conclude that the athlete was victimized. He was short-changed.

  My second point is perhaps more important. I will grant that perhaps the young athlete had no other skill to sell, so that his contract, unsatisfactory in principle, may have been quite good for him personally. I will also grant that as a professional athlete he will have known a sense of glory that the non-athlete can never know, which would justify him in deeming the bargain a good one. But I do object most strenuously to having rather mediocre deals held up to a whole segment of society as the best a young man can shoot for. It is destructive to have a generation of black youths daydreaming about becoming the next Moses Malone, jumping right from high school to the pros ‘for a cool two million.’ Malone will be lucky if he gets his hands on two million and even luckier if he can save any of it.

  Sports are the opiate of the black masses, and must be evaluated more realistically. Here we reach one of the most difficult intellectual concepts in this entire field. I see no hope whatever for diminishing the obsession so many blacks have with sports. It is illogical for me to preach that black boys in the ghetto should build alternate hero-figures when Walt Frazier’s dazzling presence is so compelling, and I suspect that even thoughtful parents will prove powerless in trying to alter those childhood images. But an effort is being made; many black critics sense the destructiveness of sports within the black community far better than I, and they are beginning to be heard.

  Dr. Brown, whose forthcoming book will be entitled The Black Gladiator: Challenge to an American Myth, warns the black community: ‘Black youngsters pour their time and energy into sport, they’re deluded and seduced by the athletic flesh market, used and discarded. Most of them never get a pro contract, and most of them don’t graduate from college. So they’re left without the skills needed for servicing and enriching the community. That’s the rip-off.’

  Carl Rowan, the black columnist, has said that so far as black youth were concerned, American sports are ‘the great corrupter.’ He added, ‘The great athletic exploiters don’t care what a big, tall boy’s intellectual potential is. They are out after flesh, muscle, brawn, reflexes, during whatever period that young man can perform. What happens to the kid over the long haul is of no consequence to the recruiters, agents, coaches, team owners. Witness the sickening fact that the flesh peddlers have already moved down into junior high school with their under-the-table offers of cash, cars or whatever else is required to lock up a talented athlete.’

  One of the most perceptive essays I’ve read on this subject was written by a black columnist of the Chicago Sun-Times. Lacy Banks had to have more than his share of courage to write in this manner while working in a city with a large black population:

  Top-name athletes will get lots of scratch, big cars, luxury cribs, women and swimming pools of champagne. What I have to say is for the others. Most of you will fall short of making a pro team or signing a rich guaranteed contract. Your only settlement will be a multi-year pact of gloom. A great portion of you will suffer disappointment, unemployment, anxiety and even psychosis. Many will be minus a degree or viable vocation to show for your four or five years of college, and you will be relegated to common laborers’ working jobs you don’t like—jobs relatively demeaning to the superstar image you enjoyed during your heyday in sports. You will be a has-been and your most popular pastime may become standing around ghetto pool halls and taverns talking about your old jump shot … It’s no harm to work and hope for a successful career as a professional athlete. But make peace with the fact that it’s a long-shot possibility. Don’t bank everything on such a dream, no matter how good you are. You may be blinding yourself from other talents you possess.… Take soul singer Curtis Mayfield’s advice in an educational sense and Check out your mind. Check out your mind.

  It remained for Dr. Organ to issue the ultimate in warnings: ‘I believe that schools operating in Black Communities, and most especially Black colleges and universities, should abolish varsity athletics until obsession with organized sports by the youth of the Black Community is minimized, if not completely arrested.’ Since this is not practical, he makes two interesting recommendations: that each student be limited to participation in one sport, on the grounds that scholastic development is almost impossible if the child is participating in three or four sports a year; and that students be limited to two years of varsity sport in high school. ‘Some Black students participate in three or four sports each year, every year, from the sixth grade all the way through college. This is entirely too much.’ He concludes with a bitter recommendation: ‘The soundest option for the Black Community appears to be a massive exodus from varsity and professional athletics. This should be done for several generations, or for whatever period of time is required for the Black Community to achieve a reasonable standard of living. Organized sports have been a trap for black youth, from which few recover. The Black Community is more in need of teachers, not coaches: more in need of proper nutrition, not drugs; more in need of health scientists than center fielders; more in need of economists and business administrators than pivot men.’

  Let’s look at four of the early examples of rebellion against the stereotypes governing black athletes. In the months prior to the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City there was a rumbling among black track and field athletes in all parts of the nation. It centered, however, at San Jose State University, California, where the black sociology professor Dr. Edwards was drumming up support for a boycott of the Olympics by all black American athletes. His argument was forthright and calculated to be effective: blacks were being asked to perform abroad to bring international acclaim to a nation which spurned them at home. ‘A system of athletic slavery,’ he called it.

  A storm of public discussion followed his launching of the boycott; sportswriters condemned this attempt to drag athletics down to the cheap level of protest, and sentimentalists pointed out that a gesture like this was the very antithesis of the Olympic spirit. Dr. Edwards remained obdurate, however, and argued that the blacks had been subservient long enough. Now they must act.

  Dr. Edwards’ neighbors joined the debate. They shot his two dogs, dissected the bodies, and dumped the pieces on his front porch. He received telephoned death threats constantly, and surreptitious bribes amounting to more than $125,000 were offered if the blacks would call off their boycott.

  The proposed boycott failed, which was probably a good thing, but it certainly shook up the establishment. And it engineered two propaganda triumphs: Lew Alcindor (later Abdul-Jabbar), the world’s best amateur basketball player, said that the arguments in favor of the boycott were so convincing that he preferred not to represent the United States; and when Tommie Smith and John Carlos finished first and third in the two-hundred-meter dash, instead of standing at attention on the victory stand like goo
d citizens when ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ was played, they turned in a circle, giving the raised-fist symbol of the black liberation movement.

  The reader should try to recall his or her reactions to that inflammatory moment. I was appalled at the effrontery and approved when the United States Olympic Committee suspended the pair and gave them forty-eight hours to leave Mexico City, but that was before I began looking seriously into the condition of the black athlete.

  How far my education has come! When Bill Russell declined the honor of being inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame, as a consequence of the long years he and other black players had suffered discrimination at the hands of white coaches, owners and public, I applauded. I did so because Russell had been a constant, courageous advocate of social justice; when he was the supreme professional athlete in the United States, sharing world honors perhaps with another black, Pelé of Brazil, he could have shied away from racial confrontations, but he never did. Soft-spoken, never aggressive with his views, always the gentleman, he nevertheless persisted in his basic philosophy, and when a man does that he builds his own Hall of Fame, which in Russell’s case is even larger than the more popular one he rejected. Abdul-Jabbar and Russell have been model athletes in that they were able to keep their game and their humanity in tandem.

  On Thursday, October 16, 1969, the University of Wyoming Cowboys had a full head of steam on their way to another football conference championship and a high national rating. They had already won four straight games and seemed certain to extend their streak against Brigham Young on Saturday and San Jose State the following week.

  But on Friday, October 17, everything went to hell, and when the day was over, Wyoming hopes lay in shambles. What had happened was that fourteen black players, imported into all-white Laramie as paid athletes, had tied black bands about their left arms and walked as a group into the office of head coach Lloyd Eaton, a crew-cut, tough disciplinarian who had always promulgated one clearly understood rule for his players: they could not participate in any demonstrations. The job of a football player, in Eaton’s book, was to play football, and any side rumpus like civil rights or anti-Vietnam protests was a distraction which might damage the player’s capacity to play.