Humble’s Proposal Neglects a Need for Good and Bad Guys

From high atop many of the nation’s newspaper sports pages, syndicated columnist Howard Cosell checks in with this modest proposal:

Eliminate big-time college sports.

In fact, he insists, we have no choice.

Writes Cosell: “There is no other means to rid ourselves of the corruption and to stop the degradation of our educational system.”

Don’t worry, college sports fans. Howard tried to kill professional boxing, too, by leaving it. It was his way of protesting boxing’s brutality and sleaziness, which happen to be two of the sport’s most charming features.

Boxing, dazed and bleeding from Cosell’s sucker punch, gamely stayed on its feet and refused to quit. Today, professional boxing lives on, even though you can’t say the same about a lot of boxers’ brain cells.

Still, Cosell’s cry to abolish big-time college sports is bound to cause some anxiety for the fans and defenders of the college game. Their reaction is predictable.

“Let’s abolish big-time Howard Cosell,” they will say.

That’s too easy. It’s not easy to do; it’s easy to say.

Howard is too easy a target for derision. But in fairness, the man is intelligent, in many ways an outstanding journalist, and perhaps the No. 1 sports gadfly of our times. He cares.

In this campaign against college sports, however, Cosell may be in over his toupee.

In many colleges, big-time athletics have done more than establish a foothold and a following. They run the damn school and community. They are the damn school and community.

Take away football and basketball from some powerful jock schools and all you would have left would be a few dazed students searching for the chem lab.

But why stop with college football and basketball? Name a sport that doesn’t exert a powerful corrupting influence on society.

Baseball? Come learn the four S’s--Spitting, Snorting, Scratching and Striking.

Little League baseball? Great, until you involve anyone over the age of 12.

Soccer? You have to wonder about any sport where the worldwide goal total is regularly exceeded by the body count. If racing is the sport of kings, soccer spectating is the sport of coroners.

Sailing? Ah, the salt air, the bracing wind, the billowing sail . . . Say, is that a foreign spy taking snapshots of our keel?

Weightlifting? My steroid can lick your steroid. Oh yeah? Yeah. Maybe so, but at least, I don’t grow hair on my tongue.

Tennis? Now here’s a sport that brings out the best in all of us. Compared to most weekend players, John McEnroe is a sweetheart. And on the pro circuit, tanking, quitting, pouting and unethical deals are all part of the fun.

Golf? The University of Cheat.

Bowling? This is a tough sport to cheat at, unless you shave the pins, oil the alleys, doctor the ball . . . Oh, I’m up. Mind holding my beer and cigarette for me?

The Olympics? Boycotting, cheating, drug abuse, political propagandizing, shamateurism, terrorism, jingoism . . . Let’s see, three more events and we’ve got ourselves a decathlon.

The only sport I can think of that’s worth keeping, that is still uplifting and pure and free of corruption, is the Battle of the Network Superstars. Which, come to think of it, is hosted by Howard Cosell. What a coincidence.

Unfortunately, this sport is open only to a select few of us who meet the qualifying standards: Have your own TV series and a wardrobe of skimpy little sports outfits.

So, with that noteworthy exception, why stop at the colleges? Why not wipe out all sports? Drug dealers and gamblers and divorce lawyers would all go broke. Society would survive and, in time, maybe be the better for the loss.

Too easy.

What Howard doesn’t realize is that we need all sports. The more corrupt and degenerate, the better. Life is like politics and pro wrestling--you have to have good guys and bad guys, or else there’s just no point.

The character building comes in by overcoming the obstacles, rising above them, not by eliminating them.

Sport doesn’t build character so much as it challenges it and tests it. The struggle claims its share of casualties, but then maybe everybody’s character was not meant to be built.

Howard Cosell is an idealist, though. So he lectures and rails and pontificates and he sets himself up as a target of anger and laughter.

Then, when he really has a valid proposal, one with real merit, like this one to wipe out big-time college sports, nobody takes him seriously.

And we wind up with a ludicrous situation where more sports fans will be angry at Howard Cosell than are angry at Lefty Driesell.