That question is not entirely rhetorical. The question I actually want to ask is, Why should we continue our sports programs at UL?

It's important. Because if we cannot satisfactorily answer that second question, if we cannot give a crystal clear, coherent reason and strategy for what we are doing in athletics, and where we want to go...

...then we need to take a serious look at my first question.

There are many downsides to college sports-- enormous salaries and overhead costs, recurrent athlete misbehavior, academic scandals, detrimental influence from alumni and political figures, internal and external corruption. At most universities sports are ethically dangerous, expensive, and a distraction from the core mission of the University.

So again I would like to ask: Why should a University play intermural sports?

In a few institutions--granted, a very few, probably less than 100 of the 1400 significant colleges in the United States-- the competitive spirit fostered on the field spills over into the laboratory and into the classroom. Texas and Texas A&M are excellent examples of this. As the two schools struggle for dominance and bragging rights within their state and beyond, they produce high-quality academic and research programs.

In even fewer instances, that competition leads to a collaborative spirit that takes all of higher education forward. The University of California System is an excellent example, where UC-Davis, UC-Irvine, UC-Santa Barbara and UC-Santa Cruz are generally recognized as academic peers to Cal and UCLA, and are occasionally more difficult to get into than the two "big" schools. The state's academic strategy is so enlightened that even the rival California State System is reasonably well-funded.

But consider that this competitive spirit does not seem to produce excellence in K-12 education. In fact, according to the recent annual review by Education Week, the best public education tends to occur either in states without strong in-state athletic rivalries, or even in those largely lacking in big-time public college athletics. The Top 10 states for K-12 education are, in order: Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Vermont, Maryland, Minnesota, Virginia, North Dakota, and Pennsylvania.

On the other hand, the bottom 10 states are dominated by big-time sports schools. They are, from better to worst: Alabama, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Arizona, West Virginia, Nevada, New Mexico, Louisiana, and Mississippi. And as a caution regarding the preceding, the two states immediately ahead of these are Texas and California, states we have recognized as having excellent, excellently-funded universities. Is there an inverse relationship between big-time college sports, and a state's commitment to education? It is a question we should not gloss over.

So we see that athletic competition can lead to academic excellence, but it is rare; and apparently, there may be no correlation, or even an inverse correlation, between strong college athletics and a strong commitment to general education. We can next make the reasonable assumption that the level of commitment to education reflects the larger commitment to general advancement of the state. If the citizens of a state cannot see the value of education, if they are so disinterested that they will not commit to the education of their own children, how can we believe they would work to further their lives in longer-term, more sophisticated ways? This, then should serve as a warning for us here at UL: big-time sports can improve our quality of life, but if, and only if, we are very clear about our priorities, and equally clear as to how athletics fits into our strategies for realizing those priorities.

So let us suppose we create an athletics program that fosters academic excellence; we next need to ask the question, What is the value to the state of academic excellence in higher education? In the preceding, we saw several states that have invested heavily in their colleges, or at least in a few select colleges, but did not extend that commitment beyond the walls of the institutions. So excellence in higher education, particularly when limited to a few institutions, does not necessarily lead to the betterment of the rest of the state.

Clearly, in too many states academic excellence in higher education is largely divorced from any well-defined, practical benefit for the balance of the state. In fact, as a product of the sports mentality, "academic excellence" often just becomes another game to win: WE have more government funding, more grant money, more graduate programs, more students, more buildings, more library volumes, than YOU do. Go Team.

And if we consider the embarrassing educational commitment-- and, we have assumed, civic commitment -- in some of the preceding states, it seems that many universities would be hard-pressed to prove that they are producing fully-functioning citizens, leaders who will work to move the whole democracy forward.

So we need to look at college sports from the perspective of academics; but then we need to look at academics from the perspective of the democracy, the needs of the taxpayers who underwrite those academics. Because if we define, very clearly, what we want athletics to accomplish, I believe that we-- and here I am not referring to a generic 'we', but to this University, and this community-- then we can design both athletics and academics in a superior way, one that will improve our city, our region, and our state.

This discussion will continue in future essays.