College sports: Smitten with Division III

Sat., Nov. 12, 2011

From guest columnist The Oregonian. Link to posted column here.

By Barry Glassner
President
Lewis & Clark College


Our football team is having its best season since 1963.

Don't feel bad if this is the first you've heard of the team's astounding turnaround. An unexpected 7-0 start would get notice in Sports Illustrated or ESPN if it happened at any of the previous schools where I've worked. But those places -- Syracuse University, the University of Connecticut and the University of Southern California -- are Division I, and now I'm president of Lewis & Clark College, a Division III school.

I sometimes wish our teams and their inspiring seasons got big play in the sports press. And I confess that I miss the spectacle, resources and athleticism of Division I sports. But I'm happy to trade them, and the costs that accompany them, for the satisfactions of D-III.

Now, instead of worrying about a player's father being absent from the upcoming game because he's meeting with a sports agent, I worry about the health of the father with cancer who has never missed his son's game -- and who thanks me, every time I greet him at the stadium, as if I'm the one who's done something herculean.

Instead of reeling from news about an alumnus of my school going through the public embarrassment of giving back his Heisman Trophy, I revel in updates from an athlete who graduated a few years ago and is now a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford. And instead of hearing professors complain about athletes who view classes as rest stops en route to the NFL or NBA, I get messages like the one a humanities professor sent a few days ago:

"Saturday's game was a delight in so many ways, and oddly, least of all because it was a win," the professor wrote. "It was just a delight to see our students play spirited football and to do so with real pleasure, to talk to an alum who treasures his football-playing experience now, nearly six decades gone by, and to meet the parents of one of our offensive linemen who was my student last year, and his brother, who plays on the other team."

You couldn't have found a prouder, happier family, that professor wrote, than the family he witnessed on the field after the game. "Win, lose or draw," the professor said, "mom and dad were tickled that their sons played in a game across from each other -- and are both getting a great education (although we know who is getting the better one)."

To be sure, there are equally proud parents, and for much the same reasons, at D-I schools. In my view, the NCAA and Division I schools have received more criticism lately than they deserve -- although the recent scandal involving Penn State's fabled football program is deeply disturbing, to put it mildly. Still, Division I might benefit from some of the Division III philosophy, which calls on member colleges to pursue their intercollegiate sports programs in a manner that places the highest priority "on the overall quality of the education experience and the successful completion of all students' academic programs."

Division III schools emphasize the experience of the athletes, not the sports-consuming public. The NCAA specifically calls on us to "place special importance on the impact of athletics on the participants rather than on the spectators ... and the general public and its entertainment needs."

Played far from network television cameras and the 100,000-seat stadiums you'll find on the nation's most famous football campuses, our games take place in more idyllic settings. At the site of our team's home games, towering evergreens line one side of the field, opposite the atmospheric wooden grandstand, and as you follow the arc of a high punt or pass, you catch a glimpse of distant foothills between the trees. To be sure, Griswold Stadium at Lewis & Clark is not the L.A. Coliseum or Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor. But it has a charm of its own -- faculty and staff kids playing on the track at one end of the field, a small pep band (complete with the octogenarian alumnus on bass drum) plugging away in the thick of the crowd -- a charm that speaks to a more innocent iteration of intercollegiate athletics.

On D-III playing fields, student-athletes really are student-athletes. At this level, no one gets athletic scholarships. Students compete not for fame and big crowds, not for a shot at a pro career, but purely for the fun, excitement and educational benefits they derive.

Sure, some of the disappointments and the worries are the same as you'll find at high-profile football universities. Players get injured in Division III just as they do in Division I; a torn ACL or a concussion is no less painful or troubling for them and the coaches, parents and professors who care about them. Even here, it pains me to say, you'll find student-athletes who are not paying as much attention to their studies as they should.

This Saturday, I'll be living and dying with every play as my college takes on Linfield for the football championship of the Northwest Conference.

At the same time that we're playing, before a crowd maybe 20 times larger, the team representing my former employer will be battling the high-flying squad of another major university. I wish them the best. I'll try to catch the highlights on ESPN, if I can.