Return of the America’s Cup

After weeks of Super Bowl hype in the media, we now have a similar to-do over Dennis Conner’s bringing back America’s Cup to the United States. People party all night, sing and dance in the streets, and carry on as if something singularly wonderful happened.

Conner and his crew have a parade in San Diego, meet with President Reagan in Washington, and have a ticker tape parade down Manhattan. It’s insanity of sorts and dramatizes our gross distortion of values.

Yachting is as far removed from the concerns of ordinary people as polo. It was and still is the sport of the super-rich who belong to posh, exclusive clubs. I wouldn’t mind the hype so much if it didn’t cost the taxpayers anything, but the reality is that wealthy club members and Fortune 500-sized companies get huge tax deductions to design, build, support and sail multimillion-dollar crafts while money for urgent but mundane things like education, health care, and help for the homeless go begging.

Politicians often mouth the cliche “getting our priorities in order.” But what kind of priority are we talking about when Conner and his men are feted at the White House and World Series champs and Super Bowl champs get the same treatment while the brightest high school students in the country were all but ignored when they want to the White House? President Reagan never addressed them; he simply waved and smiled at them while he hurried to his helicopter for a weekend at Camp David.

It has become traditional for big city mayors to head parades in honor of World Series champs, National Basketball Assn., Super Bowl champs, etc. Parades not only impede traffic and slow down businesses, but cost the taxpayers plenty for extra police and clean-up crews. And it’s not uncommon for cities to give major sports franchises sweetheart deals which amount to giveaways.

I remember Proposition B in Los Angeles. The city sold Chavez Ravine to the Dodgers for a small pittance, a mere fraction of of what it was really worth. Chavez Ravine was bought by state and local taxes as a site for low-cost housing for the poor. I urged people to vote against it. I still think that the whole deal was illegal and immoral; it denied a convenient, low-cost housing project for the poor.

Sportsmania infects both high school and college athletic programs to the point of distorting basic social values. It is a national disgrace that many athletes are functional illiterates; some can’t read restaurant menus; many--maybe most--do not graduate.

And coaches usually have salaries several times that of tenured professors. Some make as much as $200,000 per year, plus cushy perks on the side. Such a gross disparity between the salaries of the teaching staff and the coaching staff makes a mockery of our colleges and universities.

They should do what President Robert Hutchins did at the University of Chicago when I was a student there: withdraw from all intercollegiate competition, and turn all athletic facilities over to the students! As I recall, we had a student body of enthusiastic participants, not spectators. Hutchins said, “If you want a team to root for, adopt a professional team.”

In a recent international testing of high school students, in mathematics, our students placed last among industrialized countries. I suspect that if they were tested in other subjects, their test results would be equally dismal. I don’t know how we can turn things around so that we really do “get our priorities in order.”

President Reagan can certainly set the tone by emphasizing and encouraging learning. Legislators can pass laws that fund and support sound education. And the general public can insist on de-emphasizing sports, putting it in proper perspective, and supporting programs that enhance both the individual and society. But I think that would be asking too much of a public that demands entertainment and diversion above everything else.

DEWEY D. AJIOKA

San Marcos