SPORTS: Priorities

When I grew up, university sports were very much an amateur, sideline affair. When I came to the US in 1937, the universities made a deeply favorable impression on me, as I explained in an article in The Fortnightly Review. My major caveat was the emphasis in universities of quasi professional football. The stadium looms large, both physically and academically. I do not follow football at Stanford, so I was surprised when the San Francisco Chronicle had a banner headline on its front page announcing that the football coach was leaving Stanford for Notre Dame, as though in were the most important event of the day. A major TV story was that he would be the first coach to earn more than $2 million a season. I wonder what the Pope, who denounces the evils of capitalism, thinks about this?

Another sports figure, the boxer Mike Tyson, is in trouble again, this time in Cuba where he was vacationing. He got into a fight literally with journalists, cursing them in vile language both in English ad in Spanish. I gather that this is not his first vacation in Cuba. Is he breaking the US law? Will he be punished? How will Castro handle the case? The expressions "the sporting spirit" and "be a good sport" have lost their meaning.

Ronald Hilton - 1/2/02