Ohhhh yeah. There's nothing like starting a Friday off with a bang. This was going to be the first topic of yet another "Spotes Notes" segment, but hey, change does occur....

Rutgers Athletic Director Bob Mulcahy called the following statements reported in a New York Times article blatantly racist:

"If you were giving the scholarship to an intellectually brilliant kid who happens to play a sport, that's fine. But they give it to a functional illiterate who can't read a cereal box, and then make him spend 50 hours a week on physical skills. That's not opportunity. If you want to give financial help to minorities, go find the ones who are at the library after school."

The statement was made by William C. Dowling, a tenured English professor at Rutgers. Dowling has written a book memoir of the decade-long campaign against high-stakes athletics at Rutgers, "Confessions of a Spoilsport," (Penn State University Press) chronicling his fight against Rutgers University's entry into high stakes athletics:

"I wanted this book to be a monument," Dr. Dowling, 62, said after class. "I wanted it to be a monument to the kids and the faculty who rallied around this issue. We tried to take on the monster of commercialized sports, even if it swallowed us up and passed us out the other end. Someone should know that we fought the good fight. And because I believe in literature as a form of symbolic action, I want readers to see the possibility of another way. Think about the impact of a book like 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' on slavery."

Now, to be fair, the Dowling said the "racist" comment was taken out of context:

Contacted Thursday, Dowling defended his statement, saying that Mulcahy and McCormick had taken it out of context, that he was directly answering a question related to minorities.

"If someone has a way to answer that question without mentioning race, I would like to hear it," said Dowling, who called the officials' accusation of racism the "cheapest rhetorical ploy I've ever heard."

Dowling, who said he was arrested in the South during the 1960s for work in the civil rights movement, said McCormick was racist for running an athletics program that exploited minorities.

"None of these kids would have been able to get into Rutgers if they hadn't been able to throw something or kick something or slam dunk something," Dowling said.

Yikes! Sound more like a condemnation of big-time collegiate athletics to me.

The root of Dowling's experience (Dowling is a graduate of Dartmouth) come from his time as an assistant professor at the University of New Mexico in the 1970s where he witnessed a legendary rogue basketball program's rise to prominence:

As an assistant professor at the University of New Mexico in the 1970s, he saw firsthand how top basketball players were recruited and enrolled based on forged transcripts. Just to underscore the public support for victory at all costs, Norm Ellenberger, the coach who admitted the scams under oath, was acquitted by a New Mexico jury of criminal charges....

Dartmouth also instilled in Dr. Dowling an appreciation for what he calls now "participatory sports" - sports without scholarships, separate dorms, team tutors, product endorsements, television contracts, reduced admissions standards, easy classes and so many other tropes of Division I-A sports.

Now of course not all jocks black or white who attend college on football or basketball scholarships are functional illiterates, but too many are close enough to that description to make a person wonder just what the hell is going on at some universities. Yes, many athletes in big-time sports programs take "easy" classes to get the grades necessary to stay on teams.

Too many professors are identified as pro-athletics and are known for "giving up the grade" to allow athletes to remain eligible to play their given sport. Then many athletes go to college to receive what they hope is an excellent education. These athletes take "normal" classes, study their rear ends off, and get good grades.

This is a difficult, multi-dimensional issue. On one hand, there is evidence that most big-time athletic programs are losing money by the barrel and they skim off the remainder of the university's budget to balance their books. The debt is a drain on academics and "lesser" non-revenue earning sports that jeopardizes the worth of the entire institution. There is evidence that athletes do have a roster of "easy" classes to choose from; that some grades are fudged to keep athletes eligible.

On the other hand, these athletes are given scholarships to participate in activities that have nothing at all to do with academics, making their scholarships amount to little more than slave work agreements. They are allowed by the NCAA to work at their craft 20 hours a week under the supervision of coaches. However, they often can be found alone or with a few other athletes in the gym, on the field, or in the weight or film room trying to enhance their athletic status and often to maintain their scholarship status. Twenty hours can easily turn into the 50 hours Dowling describes.

With hours beyond the normal work week already under their belts, these athletes must also attend classes full-time (under university standards) and somehow find time to study. The schedule is brutal. There is little time to lead the life of a young person more often than not away from home for the first time, little time to involve themselves in the extra-curricular goings-on of university life.

Then there are the ridiculously stringent NCAA rules that are petty enough to make it impossible for Ian Johnson, Boise State running back and his wife Chrissy Popadics receive wedding gifts. Here are the rules:

WEDDING GIFTS: Coaches can give gifts. BSU coaches are allowed to give Johnson a wedding gift, but only if they do the same for all of their players who invite them to weddings. The same rule applies to staff members. They must be able to document that under similar circumstances they have given gifts in the past.

BOOSTERS: Boosters should not give gifts. The general rule of thumb for gift-giving is to follow your standard practice. If you usually give a $50 gift to an acquaintance who gets married, then that's what you should do for the student-athlete in your life.

So, an athlete cannot put money into an NCAA-sanctioned account not to be tapped until he leaves the school, or until he has used his eligibility? No. Unlike other students who receive scholarships, athletes are in a state of servitude to their university. They generate millions of dollars in revenues and are not allowed to reap any of the monetary benefits of their work.

Dowling has touched a raw nerve at Rutgers. It is the same nerve exposed at every college or university participating in big-time collegiate athletics. And rather than listen to Dowling and other critiques of the NCAA system, whenever a critique is made public the NCAA simultaneously takes a defensive stance while simultaneously gearing into attack the critic mode, and claims system-wide perfection.

Like every element of American business, the NCAA has a side of its existence as an entity that borders on psychosis. It needs treatment - now.