Vol. 138: What’s wrong with this picture?

Coach Bill Belichick on campus

When Clark Kerr was chancellor of the University of California back in the ’50s, some cynic asked him what exactly a chancellor does.

“It’s very simple,” Kerr replied. “My job is to provide sex for the students, sports for the alumni, and parking for the faculty.”

Had Kerr been running an Ivy League university, I like to think he would have referred to sports for the students. Somewhere in the distant mists of time, like maybe the Pleistocene epoch if not the 20th Century, universities had a notion that the purpose of athletics was to serve students.

In my day, any Penn student could draw a helmet and a set of pads and practice with the varsity football team, even if that meant merely holding a blocking shield or a tackling dummy or otherwise serving as cannon fodder for the real varsity players. Regardless of a student’s size or ability or experience, no one was turned away, any more than Penn would have turned a paying student away from a classroom, or the Daily Pennsylvanian, or the band. The educational benefits of sports included learning to deal with adversity, to function as part of a group, to push oneself beyond one’s imagined limits, and to take criticism.

“You know, this is really great!” my Penn teammate Bob Harris, a defensive back, once remarked to me without a trace of sarcasm. “Every day we put on pads and spend 90 minutes running around a field and banging into each other. We get terrific exercise and fresh air, we work off all our aggressions— and when it’s done, we’re ready to hit the books!”

Besides, some of our Penn walk-ons evolved into genuine varsity stars. Jim Dunsmore, of the class of ’61, never played football in high school, but by his senior year at Penn he was a starting end; in 1960, against Dartmouth, he became the last varsity player in Penn history (at least so far) to play all 60 minutes of a game. Similarly, my classmate Fred Levin never played in high school, but at Penn he became a starting defensive back, intercepting eight passes— one of which he returned for a touchdown, and another which sealed Penn’s memorable 1963 upset victory over Harvard on the game’s final play. That same year, Don Challis, another walk-on classmate, threw the touchdown pass that earned Penn its only victory over Rutgers since 1934.

These guys epitomized the Ivy League ideal: They were “walk-on” students who seized the opportunity to try out for a team and made the most of it.

Sharing revenues

In the 21^st Century, of course, intercollegiate athletics at most major universities— even the Ivies— increasingly resemble the pros. The “name, image and likeness” rule, which took effect in 2021, allows student athletes to be compensated for appearances, autographs, and product endorsements— just like the pros. In its first year, this market was worth an estimated $917 million; today it’s worth roughly $2.3 billion. This past June, a federal court in California finalized a settlement allowing colleges for the first time to share a percentage of athletic revenue with their players— just like the pros. The “transfer portal” now encourages basketball and football players to move from one school to another if they can find a better deal— just like the you-know-who’s.

At the turn of this century, a niece of mine, who’d been a second-team all-city soccer player in Charlotte, N.C., went out for the Penn soccer team, only to be told that the team had already been recruited. Two respected Penn coaches were fired this year for no reason other than a couple of losing seasons.

Two kinds of athletes

But it doesn’t have to be this way, even now. My late friend Rocky Carzo spent 26 years as athletic director at Tufts, a major university that nevertheless has chosen the small-time Division III approach to athletics, i.e., no recruiting, no athletic scholarships, and no paid athletes. It never ceased to impress me how Rocky could devote all his attention to what’s good for the students when he didn’t have the alumni breathing down his back.

For instance, Rocky came up with the inspired idea of holding a daily 7 a.m. voluntary exercise class for the faculty that was also open to students. This activity provided more than physical fitness; it also gave students a new way to relate to their teachers outside the classroom. And the 7 a.m. time guaranteed that the program wasn’t oversubscribed.

“There are two kinds of athletes,” Rocky used to say. “Those who possess the God-given physical attributes, and those who lack the God-given attributes and really have to work at their chosen sport. Of the two groups, the second are much more interesting.” This is not the kind of talk you’re likely to hear from an athletic director at, say, Clemson or Ohio State.

Another big-time (in the best sense of the word) Division III school, Washington U. in St. Louis (my daughter’s alma mater), attracts athletes by providing superb facilities– playing fields, gymnasiums, swimming pools— and making them available to everyone. Its sports teams draw their prestige by competing in the University Athletic Association, a league of selective research institutions spread across seven states, all ranked in the U.S. News academic top 50 and colloquially known as the “Egghead Eight”: Washington U., Chicago, Brandeis, Carnegie Mellon, Case Western Reserve, Emory, NYU, and Rochester. (The league was known as the “nerdy nine” before Johns Hopkins dropped out.)

Can you picture Florida or Oklahoma aspiring to join such a group? Has anyone at Florida or Oklahoma even heard of these schools?

Out of a job

These ruminations were triggered by the news that the University of North Carolina, a relatively respectable state school (at least until now), last year fired its football coach in order to hire a pro coach to run its football program. And not just any pro coach: Surely you know that Bill Belichick coached the New England Patriots to an unprecedented six Super Bowl championships.

But that was then. In 2020, Belichick’s star quarterback, Tom Brady, left the Patriots to sign with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who promptly won the Super Bowl. The Patriots under Belichick, meanwhile, suffered losing records in three out of his next five seasons and failed to win a single playoff game. Observers couldn’t help but wonder who had been New England’s real genius: Belichick or Brady?

By 2024, Belichick was out of a job. He had received no offers from any National Football League team. He had never coached a college game. Did I mention that he’s 73 years old and has a 24-year-old girlfriend?

Belichick was called many things in his 32 years as a pro head coach: relentless, meticulous, stoic, decisive, ruthless, rigid, impersonal, “evil genius.” The word teacher rarely came up.

Who makes more?

No matter. The University of North Carolina is paying Belichick $50 million over five years, which is even more than I make for writing this column. For good measure, North Carolina also hired Belichick’s son Steve as defensive coordinator for $1.3 million a year. Oh, yes— don’t forget Belichick’s other son, Brian, whom Carolina is paying $500,000 to coach defense. Hey, it’s only money.

By way of comparison, the president of the University of North Carolina system is paid $600,000 a year. The average full professor in the UNC system is paid $112,000. The governor of North Carolina is paid $203,073. The president of the United States is paid $400,000.

Yes, I know— thanks to the Trump tariffs, $50 million doesn’t buy as much as it used to. But the niggling question remains: What does any of this have to do with educating college kids?

Bubba Cunningham, North Carolina’s athletic director, put it this way to a New Yorker writer: “We firmly believe that the investment that we’re making in football right now is more than going to pay for itself.” In fairness to Cunningham, that was before Belichick’s opening game a week ago, in which his team was blown out by Clemson, 48 to 14.

Next question for Bubba Cunningham: What’s your Plan B? Can you at least get a doctoral thesis out of this experience?

Enjoy Dan Rottenberg’s new memoir, The Education of a Journalist: My Seventy Years on the Frontiers of Free Speech. You can also visit his website at www.danrottenberg.com