Ban College Football

• Volume 61, Presented On: May 02, 2012
• Visit Full Debate Page

From the Panel

• For: Buzz Bissinger
  
  

  Open Secrets
  Buzz Bissinger, Daily Beast, November 13, 2011 It isn’t just Penn State. College Sports are a mess. It’s time to sideline them.
• Good Riddance, Joe Paterno
  Buzz Bissinger, Daily Beast, November 10, 2011 The entire Penn State coaching staff, too much under the influence of Paterno, should go. And so, frankly, should major college football and basketball as it exists now, rotten beyond repair, as has been pointed out a thousand times.
• NFL Kicks Off New Season With New Safety Rules
  Alan Schwartz and. Buzz Bissinger with Neal Conan, Talk of the Nation September 8, 2011 A growing body of evidence showing that concussions and head injuries can lead to brain damage and early onset of dementia has led to NFL rules changes meant to reduce risk. Schwartz argues that they will help to reduce those injuries, while Bissinger argues that they change the nature of the game.
• Time to Kill Miami Football
  Buzz Bissinger, Daily Beast, August 18, 2011 Allegations that University of Miami athletes were provided cash and hookers should trigger the death penalty at a school that’s become a national disgrace.
• NFL Playoffs: Why Football Needs Violence
  Buzz Bissinger, Daily Beast, January 17, 2011 Violence is not only embedded in football; it is the very celebration of it. It is why we like it. Take it away, continue efforts to curtail the savagery, and the game will be nothing, regardless of age or skill.
• The Daily Beast
  Buzz Bissinger Read Bissinger’s column on the Daily Beast.

---

• For: Malcolm Gladwell

• Head Games
  Malcolm Gladwell interview with Katy Waldman, Slate, May 1, 2012 Why Malcolm Gladwell will argue that college football should be banned at the Slate/Intelligence Squared live debate on May 8 in New York City.
• Offensive Play
  Malcolm Gladwell, New Yorker, October 19, 2009 At the core of the research on chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a progressive neurological disorder found in people who have suffered some kind of brain trauma, is a critical question: is the kind of injury being uncovered incidental to the game of football or inherent in it?
• Ask the Author Live
  Malcolm Gladwell, New Yorker, October 14, 2009 Gladwell answers readers’ questions about his article, “Offensive Play,” in a live chat.
• Gladwell-Simmons III
  Malcolm Gladwell and Bill Simmons, ESPN.com, December 18, 2009 An email exchange between Gladwell and Simmons.

• Against: Tim Green

• Dancing with the Devil
  Tim Green, Chicago Tribune, September 9, 2011 A football player is like a good dog. He will run until it kills him. Inside this world of football that others frivolously call a game, this comes as no surprise.
• The Big Time
  Tim Green, HarperKids, August 10, 2010 Author and former NFL player Tim Green talks about his book, The Big Time.
• In the Huddle with Tim
  Tim Green, HarperCollins Children’s, August 18, 2011 Green talks about sports and writing—5 video links—Sports and Action, Drawing on Personal Experiences, Exploring the Negative Side of Sports, Writing for Young Readers, and Similarities Between Writing and Sports.

---

• Against: Jason Whitlock

• Admit Amateurism Is a Sham
  Jason Whitlock, Room for Debate, New York Times, March 13, 2012 At this point, with the N.C.A.A. addicted to its multibillion-dollar television contracts, reemphasizing the “collegiate” part of the N.C.A.A. Tournament is the equivalent of Hugh Hefner reemphasizing virginity.
• Ending Bounties Won’t End Violence
  Jason Whitlock, FOXSports.com, March 23, 2012 As long as football allows tackling and blocking, you’re never going to stop the best football players from tapping into their darkest real or imagined memories. You can stop the bounties, you can unfairly criminalize a good kid for unveiling his rage two minutes early, but you can’t stop the barbaric violence. The game dies without it.
• Good Samaritans Save Football Program
  Jason Whitlock, FOXSports.com, February 29, 2012 A community college football program that services 70-80 kids a year on a $110,000 annual budget had been marked for death. The efforts of a Silicon Valley executive helped to save it.
• Can’t Be Shocked by Miami Mess
  Jason Whitlock, FOXSports.com, August 17, 2011 The people who believe there’s a kernel of integrity in NCAA-mandated shamateurism, the people reluctant to accept what television and its money and fame have done to college athletics, need programs like The U.
• Penn St. Scandal Should Force Paterno Out
  Jason Whitlock, FOXSports.com, November 8, 2011 There should be no surprise that protecting Joe Paterno, Penn State, Happy Valley and Linebacker U — profit-generating institutions at the core of big-time college athletics’ amateur myth — appears to have taken precedence over the protection of children.
• Tressel Product of Flawed System
  Jason Whitlock, FOXSports.com, May 31, 2011 It should come as no surprise that in 2011, even with big-time college athletics grotesquely sick with corruption incubated by the lie of amateurism, no major media outlet will mount a serious, consistent call for an overhaul of NCAA rules. We owe our existence to the exploitation of shamateur football and basketball players. We must support the lie.
• Fox Sports
  Jason Whitlock, August 18, 2011 Read more from Jason Whitlock on FOXSports.com.

Articles For & Against

• For The Motion

• The Shame of College Sports
  Taylor Branch, Atlantic, October 2011 The real scandal is the very structure of college sports, wherein student-athletes generate billions of dollars for universities and private companies while earning nothing for themselves. Here, a leading civil-rights historian makes the case for paying college athletes—and reveals how a spate of lawsuits working their way through the courts could destroy the NCAA.
• Confessions of an Agent
  George Dohrmann, Sports Illustrated, October 18, 2010 This story includes the names of 30 former college football players who are alleged to have taken money or some other extra benefit in violation of NCAA rules. The primary source of these allegations is Josh Luchs, who has been a certified NFL agent for 20 years. 

• Against The Motion

• Malcolm Gladwell, Ted Johnson, and Why Football Isn’t Like Dogfighting
  Mike Gleason, Bleacher Report, October 23, 2009 Personal responsibility has been under attack in our society for quite some time. Banning or forcibly reforming football, would represent an unwarranted infringement on the public's right to self-determination.
• Do Sports Build Character or Damage It?
  Mark Edmundson, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 15, 2012 Do sports build character? For those of us who claim to be educators, it's important to know. Physical-education teachers, coaches, boosters, most trustees, and the balance of alumni seem sure that they do.
• Ten Reasons to Embrace College Football After a Year of Scandal
  Stewart Mandel and Andy Staples, SI.com August 9, 2011 While the issues plaguing the sport aren't going away, it's worth reminding ourselves that nearly all the recent scandals -- the tattoos, the agents, the bowl junkets and the cover-ups -- were indictments of the system, not the sport. Strip away the commercialism and the corruption and nearly all the same components that made fans fall in love with this crazy game to begin with remain.

Related Articles

• Paying Student Athletes

• Let’s Start Paying College Athletes
  Joe Nocera, New York Times, December 30, 2011 In consultation with sports economists, antitrust lawyers and reformers, Nocera puts together the outlines of a plan to pay those who play football and men’s basketball in college.
• Fixing College Sports: Why Paying Student Athletes Won’t Work
  Jonathan Chait, New York Magazine, November 29, 2011 While college athletics does need reform, paying players bears no relationship to the purported goal of helping protect college athletes. The abuses in college athletics – and they are real – stem from the growing imposition of market forces. Institutionalizing that ethos would almost certainly make all those abuses worse.

---

• Revenues & Expenses

• Salaries for College Football Coaches Back on Rise
  Erik Brady, Jodi Upton and Steve Berkowitz, USA Today November 17, 2011 The average compensation in 2011 was $1.47 million, a jump of nearly 55% in six seasons. In the six conferences with automatic Bowl Championship Series bids, the average salary rose from $1.4 million in 2006 to $2.125 million in 2011.
• College Football’s $1.1 Billion Profit
  Chris Isidore, CNNMoney, December 29, 2010 The richest college football programs got richer in 2010, pocketing more than $1 billion in profits for the first time.
• The Most Profitable College Football Teams
  Leah Finnegan and Danielle Wiener-Bronner, May 25, 2011 (Updated) The richest college football programs got richer in 2010, pocketing more than $1 billion in profits for the first time.
• Revenues & Expenses 2004-2010 NCAA Division I Intercollegiate Athletics Programs Report
  Daniel L. Fulks, NCAA, August 2011 The richest college football programs got richer in 2010, pocketing more than $1 billion in profits for the first timeThis report provides summary information concerning revenues and expenses of NCAA Division I athletics programs for the fiscal years 2004 through 2010.
• Rutgers Athletics Grow at Expense of Academics Unlike at Texas 
  Curtis Eichelberger and Oliver Staley, Bloomberg, August 16, 2011 After funding cuts by the deficit-strapped Legislature, Rutgers froze professors’ salaries, cut the use of photocopies for exams and jacked up student tuition, housing and other fees. It also increased funding for sports, spending more money on athletics than any other public institution in the six biggest football conferences during the 2009-2010 fiscal year.

---

• NY Times’ Alan Schwarz on Head Injury

• Expert Ties Ex-Player’s Suicide to Brain Damage
  Alan Schwarz, New York Times, January 18, 2007 Since the former National Football League player Andre Waters killed himself in November, an explanation for his suicide has remained a mystery. But after examining remains of Mr. Waters’s brain, a neuropathologist in Pittsburgh is claiming that Mr. Waters had sustained brain damage from playing football and he says that led to his depression and ultimate death.
• N.F.L. Data Reinforces Dementia Links
  Alan Schwarz, New York Times, October 23, 2009 When a survey commissioned by the National Football League recently indicated that dementia or similar memory-related diseases had been diagnosed in its retired players vastly more often than in the national population, the league claimed the study was unreliable.
• As Injuries Rise, Scant Oversight of Helmet Safety
  Alan Schwarz, New York Times, October 20, 2010 Helmets both new and used are not — and have never been — formally tested against the forces believed to cause concussions.
• Two Teams Show Divide in Debate on Safety
  Alan Schwarz, New York Times, February 3, 2011 A professional player telling another to put his long-term health ahead of the team — a once and, to some, still-heretical idea — thrilled those who are trying to temper the sport’s win-now, regret-later ideology.
• Duerson’s Brain Trauma Diagnosed
  Alan Schwarz, New York Times, May 2, 2011 The suicide of the former Chicago Bears star Dave Duerson became more alarming Monday, when Boston University researchers announced that his brain had developed the same trauma-induced disease recently found in more than 20 deceased players.
• Researchers Employ New Test to Estimate Concussion Risk for Helmets
  Alan Schwarz, New York Times, May 10, 2011 Football equipment managers nationwide will receive yet another reason to reassess their helmet inventory on Tuesday, when a Virginia Tech research report reveals that two models popular among teenagers might be allowing high rates of concussions.
• Head Injuries in Football
  New York Times, August 18, 2011 More head injury coverage from Alan Schwarz, who has been covering the topic since 2007, and others from the New York Times.

• Are Colleges Better Off Without It?

• How Big-Time Sports Ate College Life
  Laura Pappano, New York Times, January 20, 2012 For good or ill, big-time sports has become the public face of the university, the brand that admissions offices sell, a public-relations machine thanks to ESPN exposure.
• Football Is Corrupting America’s Universities: It Needs to Go
  Steven Salzberg, Forbes, November 26, 2011 If athletes want to train for the NFL, let the NFL pay for a minor league, the way baseball does. Universities can have a team if they must, but make it independent, and let’s stop the farce of having university presidents try to manage large, commercial sports programs. Let them get back to focusing on research and education, topics on which they actually have some expertise.
• Get Football Out of Our Universities
  Steven Salzberg, Forbes, February 15, 2011 The culture of football in American universities is completely out of control. It is undermining our education system and hurting our competitiveness in technology, science, and engineering.
• Would Colleges Be Better Off Without Football?
  Jordan Weissmann, Atlantic, December 30, 2011 Everything we think we know about college football's impact on students' grades, graduation rates, rankings, and school finances adds up to this: Football might be bad for some colleges.
• Where Football and Higher Education Mix
  Barry Bearak, New York Times, September 16, 2011 The University of Chicago, well known for Saul Bellow, Milton Friedman and its links to 85 Nobel Prizes, was once famous sea to shining sea for football. It boasted a legendary coach, a Heisman Trophy winner and a national championship. Then, in 1939, it did something extraordinary. It gave up the game to save its soul.

---

• More on Head Injury

• Game Brain
  Jeanne Marie Laskas, GQ, October 2009 Pathologist Bennet Omalu’s discovery of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) in the autopsied brains of Hall of Famer Mike Webster and other pro football players, and the pushback from the NFL.
• Does Football Have a Future?
  Ben McGrath, New Yorker January 31, 2011 The violence of football has always been a matter of concern and the sport has seen periodic attempts at safety and reform. But recent neurological findings have uncovered risks that are more insidious.
• Video: Hard Hits, Hard Numbers
  Stone Phillips Reports
  Stone Phillips interviews Virginia Tech professor Stefan Duma, whose research on head impacts in youth football found that many of their impacts to be equal in force to some of the bigger hits he sees at the college level.
• A Promising Brain Test for Football and Other Sports
  Toni Monkovic, New York Times NFL Blog, April 25, 2012 Preliminary findings in a study of boxers show that an MRI could help identify a degenerative brain disorder before a patient reports cognitive problems.

---




• Criticize the System

• Why Not Let 18-Year-Olds Head Straight for the Pros?
  Gerry Dinardo, New York Times, August 27, 2011 Why is it unthinkable to consider an NFL player not going to college first? Why is there no minor league for college-age players who want to train for the NFL but have no desire to pursue an academic career?

---

• Poll

• Football is America's Favorite Sport as Lead Over Baseball Continues to Grow
  Harris Interactive, January 25, 2012 For two months every year, sports fans have to make a decision - watch football or baseball on Sundays? Based on the numbers of Americans who say it's their favorite sport, one would have to assume that football wins hands down.