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RAH. RAH. REE. HIT EM IN THE KNEE...
ometimes I don't know whether to curse my addiction
( to college football or thank God for it, since it seems to
be one of the few ways I can at least briefly get away
from whatever is hanging over my head either to rgad, write or
simply worry about. I do know that! have matured a bit over
the years to the point that the on-field performances of 18 and
19-year-olds now only affects my mood for five or six hours. I
might add that's a damn good thing, given the dismal recent
fortunes of the Georgia Bulldogs. At any rate, having spent
more than 30 years of my teaching career at four Southeastern
Conference schools, I am no stranger to absurd overemphasis
on football and certainly no babe-in-the-woods when it comes
to the corrupting potential of big-time college athletics.
My primary concern over the years has been the possible
conflict with the institution's academic integrity, but I have
to say I have personally encountered very little suggestion
of even the hint of pressure from any athletic department on
a campus where I have taught. When I have had occasion to
know them, the athletes in my classes have, with but one
exception, struck me as nice kids doing their best in what is
frequently an academic environment where they are clearly at a
disadvantage.
There are many angles here that are worrisome, not the
least of them being the painful spectacle of watching kids
who, for whatever reason, are simply not academically
qualified to be college students straining and strug
gling to eke out by the thinnest
of margins grades that will suf
fice to keep them in a school
whose playing field and courts
are the only places where they
truly belong. Certainly the dis
crepancy between the major finan
cial resources of many of these kids
and the free-spending Freddy Frats
and Sorority Suzies who swirl
about them on campus is pro
found, troubling and, I believe,
even dangerous. Every year
brings more stories of assault,
theft or robbery, with collegiate ath
letes at the center.
Oust such an episode is part of the
narrative of one Cameron 0. Newton, who
began his college experience at the University of Florida, where
he not only racked up 13 traffic offenses in just over a year but •
topped it off by being discovered by police to be in possession
of a stolen laptop, which he attempted to ditch by flinging out
the window of his dorm room. For this, he was charged with
grand theft, burglary, and obstructing justice. After admitting
his offense, he was placed in a pre-trial intervention program,
where, of course, the charges were allowed to wither and die.
More recently, reports have surfaced that Mr. Newton further
left his mark on the Gainesville campus by being charged with
three separate incidents of academic fraud. These charges,
which he has declined to deny, were apparently before the
campus judiciary when Newton decided to head for the decid
edly browner pastures of Blinn Junior College in Brenham, Tx.,
ostensibly because he feared he would get only limited playing
time so long as Honda's superstar quarterback Tim Tebow was
still around. After a stellar year on the gridiron for the Fighting
Blinnskis, Newton was ready to return to the big stage, and,
needless to say, there was no shortage of suitors. Newton may
well have seen the light out in Texas, but given the character
record he already established, he was all but foreordained to .
wind up at Auburn, where playing fast and loose with the rules
has long been a way of life on the football side of things.
The vast reaches of cyberspace are not nearly so vast as to
accommodate a detailed discussion of the abuses that have
characterized the Auburn footbatl program over the years*
Hence, reports that Cameron Newton's father, a preacher, by
the way, was shopping him around to the highest booster bid
der before he became a War Eagle are almost instantly and
intrinsically credible, even before you factor in the sudden,
heretofore unaffordable repairs to the Rev. Cecil Newton's
various church properties. Given that both the Universities
of Alabama and Georgia held out players then under an NCAA
eligibility cloud earlier this year, Auburn's defiant 'You're damn
tootin'/We're playing Newton' attitude since these allegations
arose speaks volumes about that institution's.regard for the
rules that are supposed to govern intercollegiate athletic com
petition, not to mention its disdain for its reputation among
its peers.
At this point, I realize many of you may be getting a whiff
of sour grapes, so let me say that Georgia couldnft beat Auburn
if the two teams played for 12 weeks in a row, and against
Georgia Cameron Newton demonstrated that he is clearly one
of the best athletes playing college football today. That said,
the willful suspension of disbelief registered by the screaming,
adoring home crowd this weekend, not to mention the Auburn
athletic director's steadfast insistence that Newton is "by all
accounts, a great kid" testifies to everything that is wrong
about high-octane collegiate sports these days. Had it been
needed, further testimony was also available in the conduct of
one Mr. Nick Fairley, a behemoth defensive lineman who takes
pride in knocking opposing quarterbacks out of the game.
When Fairley's trademark full body slam fails to get the job
done, he apparently resorts not only to gouging out the QB's
chin with his facemask but to "spearing" with his helmet as
he did twice against Georgia, hitting quarterback Aaron Murray
well after Murray had released the ball. Fairley's second shot
injured Murray's knee, and two of Fairley's teammates were
ejected for throwing punches in separate melees at the end
of Saturday's game, which featured Fairley strutting and
preening for his wildly cheering Auburn audience and
the gushing CBS broadcasters in
the booth.
Since that scene played out,
a torrent of revelations and
rumors has given I'affaire Cam
even uglier implications. The
FBI's involvement in this investi
gation was puzzling until reports
surfaced that the FEEBS had been
eavesdropping on the phone
calls of one Milton McGregor,
owner of Victoryland, a com
bination dog track and bingo
casino, i.e., "racino," near
Montgomery. McGregor is not only a
big Auburn booster but a former mem
ber of the board of directors of Colonial
Bank, the now-defunct fiefdom of a certain
Bobby Lowder, a 22-year trystee, whose notorious meddling
with Auburn's athletic and academic programs damn near cost
the school its accreditation a few years back. Throw in the fact
that when Camgate was supposedly going down, Lowder's col
leagues on the Auburn board of trustees included three other *-
members of his bank board. Just to add s li'.tie more spice to
the story, how about the additional presence on Lowder's board
of good ol' Pat Dye, a UGA grad whose low-down cheatin' ways
as Auburn's head football coach from 1981 to 1992 put it in
severe jeopardy of becoming only the second school in history
to receive the NCAA's 'death penalty" for its football program.
FBI involvement in this case may help to explain why the
Southeastern Conference has been as slow as molasses to act
on Camgate at all and timid as a church mouse when it did. On
the other hand, it's hard not to wonder whether this tardiness
and timidity is also related to the failure of the SEC office to
see the egregious cheap shots Mr. Fairley dished out against
Georgia as sufficient cause to hold him out for even a single
play of Auburn's upcoming encounter with Alabama. After all,
at this point, any Auburn loss could chip so.tne of the luster off
the following week's SEC championship game and reduce the
Conference's chances of being represented in the BCS national
championship game for a fifth consecutive year.
This whole thing may well turn out to be a lot less than
it seems, but even if a fraction of the suspicions raised here
are borne out, I can see a full-blown, totally self-righteous
Congressional investigation in the offing, an occasion that
should provide a bully pulpit for Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassteys
favorite sermon about the fraudulence of according 'charitable
deduction' status to the 'donations' required simply to pur
chase season tickets at most gridiron powerhcuses. Until this
thing plays out, however, about all I can say Is that if Auburn
is playing Iraq, HI be the guy in the fur
C. Cobb
latin
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HOUR!
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