What’s the Use of College If You Can’t Be a Star?

It was one of the most salubrious things I had read in a paper in a long time. I felt like cheering.

There, on the sports page, the headline read: “Ex-Player Sues.”

Beneath it, the story read: “A former Creighton University basketball player who says he was functionally illiterate when he left the Omaha school in 1982 has filed a lawsuit, charging that the educators there failed to teach him adequately. The lawsuit filed by Kevin Ross, now 30 years old, also accuses the university of breach of contract and seeks an unspecified amount of damages.

“Ross, whose problems gained national attention, contends in the lawsuit that Creighton recruited him when it knew or should have known that he was ‘ill-equipped and unable to successfully participate’ in the school’s curriculum.

“A university spokesman said yesterday in a telephone interview from Omaha: ‘Our hope was that Kevin would take advantage of the help that was being offered. The only thing that motivated Kevin was basketball. The thinking was that if basketball could be used to get him to go to class, get a degree and go out in the world and lead a useful life, then the whole thing was worth it.’ ”

I must say, I found this enormously cheering. I applaud the litigation wholeheartedly. I am now encouraged to go ahead with my own plans for a lawsuit. I intend to sue my own college for its shocking neglect of my athletic career when I was an undergraduate.

I mean, it was appalling, the lack of concern, the downright callousness.

You see, all I ever wanted to be really was somebody of whom they would say, “Well, old Jim, he’s not very bright--but what a slap shot!”

I was hoping they’d put me in some basket-weaving classes or remedial talking so as to leave a lot of time clear to concentrate on my jump shot.

Instead, what did they do? They stuck me in all those boring English classes, where I learned all those dull sonnets and read Shakespeare so I could have all those witty asides for faculty teas.

I came out of college, I couldn’t hit the curveball, my jumper was atrocious, I couldn’t post up on Toulouse-Lautrec. All I could really play was Trivial Pursuit. I got good at charades.

What I was, was stunted, really. They taught me how to write themes but not to read defenses. You ever stop to think of all the money I could be making if they could have turned me into something called Magic? Or Bo?

They couldn’t teach me about the high post, could they? Naw! Cosine of angles, indeed! Sides opposite equal angles are equal. Square roots. All that claptrap. I was the only guy in my block ever to read “War and Peace.” I still got picked last when they chose up sides for one o’cat.

Maybe they should have concentrated on my boxing. I kept getting these damned nosebleeds but they could have taught me how to get my nose out of the way. I coulda been a contender. You ever stop to think of all the money those clowns get for going 90 seconds with Mike Tyson? That could have been me if my college had been on the ball.

The school blew it. I’m a case of arrested athletic development, and it’s all their fault. You might think that what they did fitted me for the career I chose. (I really didn’t choose it but what else can you do when nobody teaches you the zone press?) Not so. I had a city editor once who hated college boys, particularly those who came out of journalism school. If you were a Nieman Fellow, he got apoplectic.

“Hey, college boy!” he’d yell. “Did they ever teach you in that ivy-covered nursery how to steal pictures off the dresser of a murder victim? Or how to count the heads in a trunk murder?”

I definitely think I should sue. Do you know how depressing it is to come out of college and have somebody say, “Well, Jim can do crossword puzzles all right--but have you ever seen him putt?”

It’s embarrassing. Humiliating. You think you can walk up to somebody and ask him if he’d like to go one on one in Elizabethan literature?

They didn’t even teach me how to play cards.

Some people may think Kevin Ross’ problem is not how they let him get out of college illiterate, but how they let him get in. I don’t buy that.

They’re going to say it wasn’t their fault I didn’t become a great athlete, either, that the opportunities were there, I just didn’t take advantage of them. But that’s a cop-out. Nobody invited me to any practices or gave me a uniform. Not one of those coaches walked up to me and said, “Kid, I’m going to make you a good tight end or my name isn’t Hoss.”

You notice nobody in the NBA or the NFL drafted me. I’m going to sue, all right. I’m going to strike a blow for every four-eyed, concave-chested kid who ever got neglected in college.

Who knows? I could have been Bo Jackson if my college had paid as much attention to my athletic career as Auburn did to his. I’m suing tomorrow. Maybe I can go in with Kevin Ross and we’ll have a joint action. Sounds to me like something the Supreme Court will want to rule on.