October 22, 2014--Roar Lion, Roar

In case you've been living off the grid and haven't noticed, it's football season.

The NFL is about halfway through its schedule and as far as I know no one has been arrested for spousal abuse for at least a month.

Florida State is Number 1 again and its Heisman-Trophy-winning quarterback, Jameis Winston, hasn't been caught selling autographs, arrested for DUI, or accused of sexual harassment. Also for the last few weeks.

And the footballers at Sayerville High School in New Jersey are maybe back in class and not at the moment abusing and sexually harassing their freshmen teammates.

Then, closer, to home, my college's football team, the Columbia Lions (not the disgraced Nittany ones) continue to lose almost every game they play. In fact, on Saturday they set an Ivy League record for the most loses in a row against a single team when they were beaten for the 18th consecutive time in 18 years by Penn by a score of 31 to 7.

Well, at least they scored.

Also, over the past two years they have lost 16 games in a row, which is dwarfed by what they perversely achieved back in the 1980s when they lost 44 straight. That is not a typo, they actually lost 44 games in a  row. About five years' worth of games.

This is even worse than when I was enrolled during the late 50s. As I recall (and I am by now not that good at recalling), while I huddled in the rickety wooden stands against the wind blowing off the Hudson River, the Lions won one or two games. Not per season, but during my entire four undergraduate years.

Why am I not ashamed of the Lion's dismal record? Why, in fact, am I feeling a little good about this pathetic history?

For one thing the team used to be a football force. One year, 1934, they beat otherwise all-powerful Army and went on to the Rose Bowl (you can look it up) and shut out Stanford, 7-0.

So we know about winning, though almost everyone who was a student at that time is dead or in deep decline.

Our quarterback back then was a Jewish kid from Brooklyn (just like me--the Jewish part), Sid Luckman, who, after graduating, joined the Chicago Bears and there had a Hall of Fame career.

And of course, of a very different sort, Jack Kerouac went to Columba on a football scholarship; but after one year, 1940, dropped out and, well, went on the road. Not with the team but with his pal Neil Cassady.

We used to chant, when getting our annual trouncing by Rutgers, about how though they might be better jocks we had Lionel Trilling. Not the coach but the literature savant. This made us feel superior in realms on a higher plane than football.

And so maybe last Saturday, while getting whipped for the 18th year in a row by Penn, the otherwise forlorn Columbia students who made the trek to Philadelphia reminded the opposition that, since 2000, we have had six Nobel Prize winners on our faculty while Penn, on the other hand, has had . . . well, twelve.

Clearly you can't win 'em all.

September 15, 2014--You Gotta Be a Football Hero . . .

There is so much hypocrisy when it comes to big time sports.

College kids in Division 1 schools play football and basketball in sold out stadiums which in many ways are TV studios since the big bucks come from the broadcast networks and cable outlets such as ESPN. But these athletes who are responsible for making millions for their schools are not allowed to have agents, accept free sneakers from Nike, much less get paid for their efforts.

Hypocrisy is rampant as well in professional sports, which unabashedly are all about money. The teams themselves are worth a fortune. The LA Clippers recently sold for $2.0 billion and the hapless Buffalo Bills are on the market and could yield a cool billion. Elite players can command up to $20 million a year for throwing passes, slam dunking, or hitting home runs. TV contracts to show NCAA football or basketball games earns teams tens of millions a year.

But in all sports, though making money is the bottom line, not unrelated to the drive for profits, athletes are expected to be role models, especially to children, and lead exemplary lives. Even though we turn them into literally larger-than-life superheroes, in their private lives we require these demigods to live normally. Even acts that to ordinary people might be considered misdemeanors can get them in serious trouble--suspended for a game or two or banned from playing and collecting their salaries for a year or even a lifetime.

While managing the Cincinnati Reds, the legendary Pete Rose was banned for life by the baseball commissioner for betting on games, though never against his own team. Again hypocritically, everyone knows that half the reason sports are as popular as they are is because of gambling, most of it illegal. Last year, for example, on the Super Bowl, on that one game, an estimated $119 million was wagered.

We are currently seeing more hypocrisy in action.

This time regarding the Baltimore Ravens' (former) running back Ray Price. "Former" is in parentheses because the Ravens terminated his contract when a video was broadcast of Price assaulting his then fiancée. The league itself became involved when the commissioner, Roger Goodell, (who earns $44 million a year) at first suspended him for two games but subsequently, under pressure from women's groups among others, made that suspension "indefinite."

What Rice did--and this isn't alleged--is reprehensible; but, to take a contrarian position, did what he did, as unacceptable as it is, justify ending his ability to earn a living as a football player? Especially since his now wife has forgiven him, asserting that what he did was, not to her, a relationship deal-breaker, and that he has apologized and wants to enter an anger management treatment program.

Yes, what the Ravens did, what the League did, was within their rights. The NFL Personal Conduct Policy statement, which is a part of every player's contract, stipulates that disciplinary action may be taken if a player commits "criminal offenses including, but not limited to, those involving: the use or threat of violence; domestic violence and other forms of partner abuse; theft and other property crimes; sex offenses . . ."

Disciplinary action is permitted, the statement continues, for "conduct that undermines or puts at risk the integrity and reputation of the NFL, NFL clubs, or NFL players."

It's all about "reputation," which owners and league officials feel is linked directly to their bottom line--more than $10 billion in 2013--and since women now make an estimated 45 percent of the NFL fan base . . .

Rice's case feels as if it might be a rush to judgement or at least punishment that doesn't fit the crime. Is this one horrible act enough for the Ravens to have the power to terminate his contract? Shouldn't the NFL's disciplinary process require a conviction in a court of law before taking away one's livelihood? Are there other workplace equivalents? If an IBMer committed spousal abuse would that in itself justify barring him from the high-tech industry as the suspension will surely lead to Rice being banned for life from future NFL employment?

It is also ironic that football itself is substantially about violence, presumably controlled violence (though ask the dozens of former players who are now suffering from traumatic brain injuries how controlled it was). Football is largely about 300-pound men in versions of body armor slamming into each other with enough force to knock opponents flat. Even unconscious. It is our form of gladiatorial combat.

Just a few years ago, in 2009, the New Orleans Saints were found to have instituted a practice where players earned cash bonuses for inflicting injuries on the opposition, with the most money awarded for injuring quarterbacks enough so that they would have to be carried off the field on stretchers.

Not incidentally, though some of these hits were flagrant, not once during the 2009-10 season did game officials penalize any of them. And when the NFL learned of Bountygate, the discipline meted out to the Saints were mere slaps on the wrist compared to those imposed on Ray Price.

November 26, 2013--Roar Lion, Roar

When decades ago I arrived at Columbia University's Morningside Heights campus for freshman orientation, upper classmen devoted themselves to two things--first, to find unique ways to haze and humiliate us (a favorite was making us at all times carry a roll of toilet paper) and, second, to teach us the three essential college songs--

The alma mater, Sans Souci ("What if tomorrow brings sorrow or anything other than joy?"); and the fight songs, Who Owns New York? ( "Who beat West Point the people say") and Roar Lion, Roar (" . . . and wake the echoes in the Hudson Valley").

Though we had two fight songs, my classmates and I quickly learned that the college had forgotten one thing--to get the football team to fight. My freshman year the team went 0 and 10, losing all its games by lopsided scores.

I was reminded of this last weekend when the Lions lost to Brown 48 to 7 and ended another winless season. Again they went 0 and 10. We couldn't even beat Brown where I always assumed no one played football since all the students were busy writing poetry or organizing food banks for the homeless.

Sure, half of Columbia students were premeds who slept in the zoology labs; but the other half came from normal high schools where sports were as important as SAT scores. Maybe more important. And yet, year after year, decade after decade, we were fortunate if we managed to win two games against godforsaken teams from downscale places such as Fordham in the Bronx and Monmouth College in West Long Branch, New Jersey. This year we lost to Monmouth 37-14 and to Fordham 52-7.

In the past 50 years the Lions managed just three winning seasons and in the last 100 years, only 23. Back in the day the team somehow managed to beat Army and that improbable victory was instantly memorialized in the lyrics to Who Owns New York--"Who beat West Point?"; and in 1934 we shocked Stanford and won the Rose Bowl 7-0. The Rose Bowl. Well before it hit the big time and well before my time. But still . . .

The best thing about Columbia football was the marching band, a ragtag group of about 19 sort-of musicians. In addition to the inevitable Roar Lion, Roar, where we sang about waking the echoes of the Hudson Valley (whatever that means), each week they came up with special material. Witty stuff about politics and college life.

My favorite was when one year we made the mistake of playing Rutgers University, a big-time team and like Monmouth (and Princeton!) in New Jersey.

At halftime, as usual, we were behind by about 30 points and to have pity on us Rutgers had already taken out its starters and deployed the junior varsity. Thankfully, it was time for the marching bands.

The Rutgers band, in resplendent uniforms and numbering at least 100, engaged in well-rehearsed and intricate routines and formations. They played a medley of other colleges' fight songs--Michigan's legendary--

Hail to the victors valiant
Hail to the conquering heroes
Hail, hail to Michigan
The leaders and best.

And Notre Dame's even more famous--

Cheer, cheer for old Notre Dame
Wake up the echoes cheering her name
Send the volley cheer on high,
Shake down the thunder from the sky.

What is it, I thought, about waking up all these echoes?

While having these thoughts, out sauntered the Columbia band in uniforms so rumpled that it looked as if they had been worn by their predecessors in Pasadena in 1934.

If you can believe it, the special material that day was about Columbia professors. About I. I. Rabi, a father of the atomic bomb who won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1944; about Moses Hadas, the world's leading authority on Greek literature; and my favorite, world-class literary critic, Lionel Trilling.

They taunted Rutgers and the team's fans, singing about how while we listened to Trilling lecture about Kafka, Rutgers students were studying such grimy subjects as mechanical engineering and cattle raising.

Mean spirited as it was, it helped make us feel better about ourselves while our pathetic Lions were getting their asses whipped.

Looking back on this, it seems so puerile. All of it. The hazing, the toilet paper, the school songs, fraternity life, and the obsession with football. (Columbia, however, did have a strong chess team!)

Rutgers, it turns out, had an excellent English department and Columbia had quite a good engineering school. Things were more complicated than they seemed. Even our alma mater was something to think about--San Souci, to be "carefree." Yet, "what if tomorrow brings sorrow or anything other than joy?" By now we know how true that is.