![](\"http:\/\/cyber.law.harvard.edu\/blogs\/static\/dowbrigade\/nomaar.jpg\")
<\/p>\n\n Anyone who knows the Dowbrigade or is a regular reader
\n of this space is aware that he has been a life-long fan of sports, both as a
\n spectator and as a participant. We confess to an almost complete lack of athletic
\n ability. Nevertheless, a keen sense of competition. a desire to feel
\n in touch and comfortable with our body, and a love of being outdoors
\n have led to recreational and competitive participation in a wide variety
\n of physical activities including but not limited to tennis, skiing, sledding,
\n baseball, sharp shooting, biking, surfing, yoga, canoeing, camping and
\n curling. We spent 10 years coaching in Cambridge Youth Soccer, until
\n a recruiting scandal and rabid parents convinced us to hang it up.<\/p>\n
Actually, its a damn good thing we like all those actual physical
\n activities or otherwise it would be nigh on impossible to pry us away
\n from watching Football, Basketball, Baseball, Soccer, track and field,
\n tennis, volleyball, hockey, billiards, poker and the World’s Strongest
\n Men competition on the tube. As Norma Yvonne will testify, we would watch
\n a flower arranging competition if they could figure out a quantifiable scoring
\n system, as we can’t stand "sports" which depend on "style
\n points" like
\n figure skating.<\/p>\n
Furthermore, we believe in Sports as an abstract principle, as something
\n innately good, like Democracy or Diversity. Despite, or perhaps because
\n of Sports origins in mock warfare and combat training, we believe in
\n its power to bring people together, to bridge cultural gaps and to foster
\n the growth of all that is good in the human spirit. The Olympics
\n represent the highest ideals of using Sports to bring peoples together
\n on the playing field rather than the battlefield.<\/p>\n
So it pains us mightily to admit and aver that Sports is today a sick and
\n twisted endeavor in America, and a glaring symptom
\n of what has gone horribly wrong in this great country of ours. Even
\n worse, it has become a subtle and seductive mechanism by which an entire
\n segment of our society is being held in economic and developmental bondage.<\/p>\n
We are not referring to the current scandal involving rampant use of
\n illegal performance-enhancing drugs in professional sports, although
\n that belongs in a separate screed on the perversion of modern medicine
\n and traditional drug addiction by these pernicious substances. We
\n are not writing about the mercenary attitudes, pampered lifestyles and
\n absolute lack of moral fibre evinced by players, managers and owners
\n alike. No, what we are talking about is nothing less than a cruel and
\n cynical shell game designed to disenfranchise and divorce from power
\n an entire generation of young minority Americans.<\/p>\n
Today, as we write and you read, all over America there are millions
\n of kids shooting free throws, practicing penalty kicks, downing nutritional
\n supplements and spending endless hours in weight rooms, chasing the impossible
\n dream of joining the enchanted elite of our society – professional athletes.<\/p>\n
The numbers are depressingly sobering, but hey, most teenagers care
\n less about statistics than about reality in general, unless they have
\n to do with on-base or shooting percentages. Of the over three million
\n high school student-athletes, depressingly few will ever even go on to
\n play competitively in college.<\/p>\n
According to the NCAA<\/a>, Yet the adulation and media attention given to these lucky few lottery The secret shame and sin of this system is that it is not affecting Needless to say, the odds of getting into a good college and graduate Some argue that the chance for a college athletic scholarship represents He mentions several major basketball programs with African-American This is criminal, and is quickly killing any enthusiasm we can still Anyone who knows the Dowbrigade or is a regular reader of this space is aware that he has been a life-long fan of sports, both as a spectator and as a participant. We confess to an almost complete lack of … Continue reading
\n less than one in 35, or approximately 2.9 percent, of high school senior
\n boys playing interscholastic basketball will go on to play men’s basketball
\n at a NCAA member institution. Considering that approximately 1.3 percent,
\n of NCAA male senior basketball players will get drafted by a National
\n Basketball Association (NBA) team, that means that approximately 0.03
\n percent of high school senior boys playing interscholastic basketball
\n will eventually
\n be drafted by
\nan NBA team. The numbers are similar for football, baseball and hockey.<\/p>\n
\n winners has skewed the values and aspirations of an entire generation
\n of impressionable youths, who represent our hopes and chances for a healthy
\n America in the future, squandering their talents and energies in a ridiculous
\n dead-ended quest.<\/p>\n
\n all strata of our society equally. It is largely MINORITY kids who are
\n out there on the blacktop for hundreds of hours a week. While kids
\n from sensible suburban schools and families with a history of higher
\n education bust the books and prepare for the SAT exams, minority kids,
\n barrio kids, broken-home kids are dreaming of signing bonuses and bling-bling
\n contracts. <\/p>\n
\n school are a LOT better than the odds of making the NBA, even for a poor
\n black kid. To dangle and glorify such a precarious and unattainable goal
\n before a generation of impressionable kids without viable alternatives
\n is a mockery of equal opportunity and a moral if not a legal crime.<\/p>\n
\n a possible path out of the ghetto for a lot of these kids, but the reality
\n shows this to be a lie. Even the elite few who make it to scholarship
\n colleges are used, abused and discarded, in most cases without even the
\n utility of a fake university degree. As Derrick
\n Z. Jackson of the Boston Globe<\/a> repeatedly points out, major college athletic programs graduate
\n far less than 50% of their players, and graduation rates for minority
\n players lag far behind those for all athletes or all students.<\/p>\n
\n graduation rates of zero. Most of the teams competing for national titles
\n are graduating 35-50% of their players, and lower percentages for minority
\n athletes.<\/p>\n
\n muster for major college sports, having long ago lost faith in the integrity of the pro variety. It makes us ashamed to call ourself a Sports Fan. We need to seriously rethink the whole
\n role and rule of sports in our society, in our schools, and in our lives.
\n We have some ideas for ways the moral morass can be cleaned up, but will
\n save them for a future post<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"