The situation at Colorado, with allegations of sex, alcohol, and strippers
used in recruiting, let alone multiple rape allegations, has led a lot of people
to wonder what's going on in college sports. The short answer: same as always.
The old saying is that there's nothing new under the sun, and while the
degree to which a coaching staff may be directly involved in such activities may
have changed, this sort of thing has a long history. There's an old (we
guess from the '60s) ACC story about a coaching staff who got a kid and his
dad laid on the kid's official visit. The astonishing part was the account
of assistant coaches listening outside for bedsprings and then celebrating,
saying, "we got him!"
In the underrated basketball movie, One On One, Robbie Benson's character is
rather forcefully seduced by a secretary. In Spike Lee's movie about
college basketball, the main character, Jesus Shuttleworth, on an official
recruiting visit, ends up in bed with two coeds.
That college football recruits, particularly in power conferences, use young
women as hostesses is old news. Clemson may or may not do it anymore, but
they did for a long time. It's fairly easy to see how it could go from
being a way of suggesting to the recruits that there are hot girls on campus
with whom you might get lucky to a situation where you know the recruits
will have sex if they choose to. We're not referring to Clemson
specifically, other than to say they at least used to use hostesses.
To an extent it underscores a problem with sexuality and athletics, one
hinted at periodically, like when you hear of Magic Johnson's post-game hottub
ritual, or Mike Tyson lining up girls in a hotel room, or Kobe Bryant's pending
trial: there's a world where men just expect sex to be available because it
always is, and then get surprised when problems result. It's one reason
why, if our children were good enough to be drafted at 18, we'd fight it
tooth-and-nail.
Young men need to be taught more carefully how to deal with women and with
their own sexuality, and as much as we love sports, the culture of sports in
this country has, for decades at least and probably longer, failed young men in
this regard.
The competition for talent and to win has long since enlisted sex and
alcohol. For the NCAA, or anyone close to sports to claim to be shocked.
Shocked! to find sex going on is just ludicrous. It's nothing new.
The sheer level of allegations at Colorado is disturbing, and the misogyny one
could argue reaches new levels, but that's the only thing that's new.
Coaches who knowingly help pimp young women, or who turn a blind eye to cruel
and predatory behavior should
be summarily fired. Otherwise, though, things are as they have always
been - depressing though that thoought is.