Honors and Intercollegiate Athletics (Forum on "Honors and Athletics") (Essay‪)‬

Can there be anything more graceful and more athletically inspiring than a downhill slalom racer carving between the gates and proceeding at stunning speeds to vie for a medal? As a passionate skier, my personal favorites are downhill races and ski jumps, but whether it be ice dancing, figure skating competitions, triathlons, or even snowboarding, the recent Vancouver Olympics, in all of their international pomp and circumstance, reminds us of the place of athletic competitions in defining our humanness. it is exactly as the lead author, Sam Schuman, would have it in his well-written essay: the limits but also the glories of physical achievement, the role of hard work, and the importance of others in anything that we achieve, teamwork being essential to even individual events since there is always a support group behind even the single competitor. How regrettable, then, that Professor Schuman chose to organize his essay, despite his opening disclaimers, around the medium of intercollegiate sports in his paean to athleticism. While it is true that he also gives a passing nod to intramural competitions and personal athletic prowess, the images that he conjures, at least to this Texas denizen, run more to "Saturday Night Lights" than to "Downhill Racer." In taking the tack that he has, he has underlined, in my mind, one of the true catastrophes of American culture; in the process, the message of what athleticism can truly mean has been curiously obscured. The catastrophe is that we have become a society of observers, and this is perhaps nowhere more evident than in our relationship to intercollegiate athletics and its "grown-up" manifestation, professional sports. The fact, for example, that the recent Super Bowl activities registered the largest viewing audience in TV history, now surpassing the last television episode of M*A*S*H, is certainly worth noting (National Football League: Super Bowl XLIV website).