Q & A WITH JOHN SINGLETON : Boyz on the Track : On Screen and Off, He Takes the Direct Approach to College Athletics

The outspoken John Singleton, who became the youngest person nominated for an Academy Award as best director for his debut film, “Boyz N the Hood,” has turned his camera toward college athletics in his latest movie.

In “Higher Learning,” Malik (Omar Epps), an African American freshman track star at a fictional, predominantly white Southern California university, is torn between the advice he receives from a political science professor and a fellow student.

The professor (Laurence Fishburne) advises Malik to take advantage of academic opportunities that his scholarship affords him while the fellow student (Ice Cube) urges him to rebel against a system that he believes exploits African American athletes.

The 27-year-old Singleton, who grew up in Los Angeles and attended USC, talked about his views regarding college athletics during a recent interview.

Question: Were you an athlete?

Answer: Not an athlete in terms of the traditional school sense. I could always run fast and used to play football out in the street along with stickball and other stuff. I didn’t start joining teams until I got into my senior year in high school, when I started running on the varsity track team at Blair High School in Pasadena.

Q: Which event?

A: The intermediate hurdles. I always felt that I was too small to run hurdles, but when I went out for the team, the coach told me that’s what I’m doing now.

Q: Did you consider competing at USC?

A: No, not at all. I was never really interested in being an athlete. You know what I’m saying? I wanted to just make movies and be a filmmaker. I was always the kind of person that could never just do the typical thing. Like everybody around me wanted to be a basketball player or a football player or whatever. And all I wanted to do was make movies.

Q: But, in only your third film, one of the primary story lines concerns a college athlete. Why is it an important issue for you?

A: A black man can get somewhere economically through athletics, but it can also serve in the form of mental enslavement for a lot of young black people. Because if you look at it, it’s the only thing that white America looks to with black men that it applauds. You know, running and jumping type stuff. Anything besides doing something with your mind, whether it’s catching a touchdown pass or scoring 35 points or making a world record by running fast.

It all goes back to those days in slavery where they had two black men boxing knocking each other upside the head for entertainment. They would put black men in pits and make them fight each other to death.

See, we have all of these young black male children psyched up to believe that the only thing that they can do is become an athlete. So they think that their only key in life is to be an athlete, and then, when they don’t succeed, they feel like they won’t succeed in anything else.

You know, kids today look up to professional athletes and try to mirror them because that is the cool thing to do. But they should also have guys like (lawyer) Johnnie Cochran and other professionals as heroes.

Q: Why did you feature a track athlete instead of one in more glamorized sports such as football or basketball?

A: Because track and field was my sport, and it’s never really been shown on film. You know, you’ve never really seen a relay shown the way I show it. See, because I have a passion for track, it comes across in the film.

Q: Were your scenes with African American athletes running in circles around the track a metaphor?

A: A metaphor for a black man in America. You know, you gotta keep going to stay alive.

Q: Are today’s student athletes exploited?

A: Yes, I think they are. . . . It’s good if the athletes can get something out of it, but, normally, that’s not the case. For example, when I was in school, there were two (athletes) I know who were dreamers. They were in school. But if they got injured or whatever, they would have been like used goods.

Q: That has been a problem for African American athletes for a while now. Why do you think that it continues to happen?

A: Because we allow it to continue. But see, I give respect to a black man who can use his physical talents to lead to something else and have a strong mind too. You see my point? When you use your physical talents to get to that point where you use your mind to get somewhere you want to go in life, then that’s cool.

But when you allow them to exploit you just because of your body, then you’re a slave. No matter if you’re getting paid a million dollars a year to $30 million.

The money doesn’t really matter. What matters is whether or not you feel like you have freedom as a person. Do you really truly feel free in your mind and in your soul?

Q: Should student athletes be paid?

A: You have to wonder if the education they’re receiving is enough. Is a scholarship enough when they don’t have any spending money because they can’t work during the school year? In comparison to what the universities make on them, maybe they should get paid. I knew brothers that were going to school but didn’t have any money to buy clothes, go the movies and stuff like that. It’s really tough when you don’t have money for dates, and all you can do is just play ball, while schools make all this money from television coverage and clothing and stuff.

Q: Who is responsible for exploiting athletes?

A: Well, I think it’s all up to the individual. Look at Michael Jordan. He is the epitome of an athlete I really admire. He’s one of the greatest men to ever pick up a basketball, but he walked away from the game when he wanted to walk away from it. He has freedom. You know nobody owns him. He’s a businessman and everything. I love brothers like that who can take (athletics) and use it to their advantage and not just be exploited by a system.

Another is Muhammad Ali. Really, he was one of my most favorite men growing up because he’s a perfect example of a man who was not exploited. You know what I’m saying? He wouldn’t allow himself to be exploited. He did what he wanted to do at whatever time. He was a very great and proud man. Muhammad Ali had a positive effect on the self-esteem of a multiple generations of black men in this country. If there was no Muhammad Ali, then I don’t think that you have a Jordan. You know what I’m saying? What he did transcended blacks.

Q: At the end of “Higher Learning,” you do not disclose Malik’s decision. You leave people guessing whether he will continue to run for his scholarship or buck the system like his friend, Fudge, advised. Was there a statement you wanted to make?

A: No, I wanted to keep people guessing. I think that’s good. Because life is not sewn up in the end. I mean, you live and you die. Life is just not one big happy fairy tale. You know the character still has decisions to make.

Q: But what if he had decided to take Fudge’s advice? What would have been his options?

A: What are you asking me for? You’ve been to the movie. Think for yourself. Don’t ask me. You know I’m not supposed to tell people how to think. People have to think on their own.

Q: OK, but what if you’re a parent watching the movie and you have a young athlete in your family? What message do you want a parent to get from the film?

A: I don’t know because everybody’s gonna have their own individual opinion about the film. I guess I would raise my son and tell him that he’d have to work as hard on his mind as he does on his body. So that he’s completely strong. I don’t want him just learning how to be a good ballplayer. I’d want him to know how to do mathematics as well as he knows how to play ball. Young black men just don’t have anybody rooting them on to be physicians. To them, it ain’t cool to be into physics and sciences. I think that they should learn how to work a computer as well as the know-how to run the ball up the field.

Q: Were you like that?

A: I was the kinda dude who could smoke anybody around on my block, but I also could get down with my mind.

Q: What similarities were there between you and athletes when you were at USC?

A: I remember telling somebody during my sophomore year that I wanted to be just like the brothers who played football and basketball. I wanted to become a top recruit, just like they have in the NFL draft and the NBA draft. I wanted to do that, but I wanted to do it in a filming sense.

And I did it. I graduated from college, and I directed my first movie, “Boyz N the Hood,” and you know how that did.

Q: Because of the NCAA’s recent decision to raise academic requirements, Jesse Jackson and the Black Coaches Assn. are threatening to advise high school recruits to boycott colleges that have poor graduation rates and hiring records for African Americans. How do you feel about that?

A: I think that’s fair. Why should any black athlete go to a school that exploits them? I think athletes should have options. I think that it’s slavery for an athlete to be locked into a school that exploits him and then punish him if he wants to transfer. If schools are making all of this money from your talents, a brother should be able to go off to a different school if he’s not treated right.

Q: Do you think rules such as that should be changed?

A: Yeah, but they won’t because it’s not in (the universities’) best interest to change.

Q: So what should a recruit look for in choosing a school?

A: The best academic program that has the best athletic program.