9708300139
DETROIT FREE PRESS
970831
Sunday, August 31, 1997
METRO FINAL
1E
MITCH ALBOM
Copyright (c) 1997, Detroit Free Press
BEATEN BY SYSTEM, AD DECIDED TO QUIT
College is supposed to be a place that builds dreams, not a place that crushes
them. You wouldn't know it by Joe Roberson. The lanky, bespectacled athletic
director is leaving his job in a month or two. Retiring. Going to Florida.
This is not some 30-years-and-out guy, heading off with a gold watch and a
party cake. This is a man who came to the University of Michigan with a noble
yet naive idea.
His idea was that college sports could be as much about academics as they were
about athletics.
Which explains why he's leaving.
"People have written that it's stress, but it's not," Roberson says with a
sigh. "It's disillusionment. I've become disillusioned with the direction
college sports is going. It's this constant push for more games, more
championships, more playoffs. Are we in the education business or the
entertainment business? The answer seems to be entertainment.
"I watched Ohio State play football on a Thursday night this week. A Thursday?
They're only doing that for television. We send our kids to play basketball in
Iowa in the middle of the week. Why? We only do that for television.
"When I first took over this job, we started football season on Labor Day
weekend. The freshmen on that team hadn't been to a single class yet, but
they'd been practicing for three weeks. Then they go running out into our
stadium with 100,000 people screaming for them. The next week, we were playing
Notre Dame, everyone in the country was talking about the game . . .
"And in between, on Wednesday, we started classes. Now, let me ask you this.
When that freshman calls home, do you think he's talking to his parents about
his English Lit lecture?"
There, in a nutshell, is college sports.
Can you blame the guy for leaving?
A difficult tenure
I first met Roberson when we sat on a committee to select a U-M scholarship
winner. I expected the athletic director to be more gruff, have a whistle
around his neck, say things like "Yeah, sure, but what about the sports?"
Instead, I was struck by Roberson's eloquence, candor and interest in
education. Although he and I disagreed on many things, I left feeling that
Michigan athletics were at least in the hands of someone who cared.
Time passed. Roberson, 61, presided over the most tumultuous four years in U-M
sports, including lawsuits, dismissals, the ousting of Gary Moeller, the
football coach, after a drunken incident at a restaurant, and the current
investigation of Steve Fisher's basketball program for possible NCAA
violations.
It'd be one thing if Roberson encouraged these incidents. It's another when
they're everything he is against.
"This basketball situation -- what's frustrating is not being able to get to
the whole truth of it. We're in the position of having to disprove
allegations. And I believe when the final report comes out, there won't be
anything proven."
Still, when I ask Roberson whether he believes players never took money from
outsiders, he cannot say yes. There may be no smoking gun, no solid connection
to the university. But Roberson is too smart about today's society. He sees
how athletes are coddled from the eighth grade. How they are befriended,
adored, ducked under standards -- all because they can run fast and jump high.
By the time they get to college, many are cynical, dollar-hungry entertainers.
Which means they fit right in.
A wise ol' guy
I ask Roberson if he had a day to be king of college sports, what he would do.
He jumps into two suggestions:
"First, I would make freshmen ineligible. Give them a chance to adapt, to
realize the primary purpose of college is education.
"Secondly, I would take away all this TV influence. Because that's what's
driving everything. TV wants its product, and we do what it tells us."
Great ideas. And he has a better chance of seeing God than seeing them
enacted.
Now, as I say, I haven't always agreed with Roberson. But there is something
seriously wrong when a guy who believes that college athletes should be
educated is viewed at as some amusing rustic. For much of his tenure, that's
how other coaches and Big Ten officials saw Roberson. He was an academic Don
Quixote, tilting at windmills, destined to fall on his sword.
"When I would suggest we cut back on TV, give back money to get more control
of our programs, others would say, 'Oh there goes Joe again.' "
So now, there goes Joe for good.
Our loss, not his.
Mitch Albom will sign copies of "Tuesdays With Morrie" Friday, 7-8 p.m, Little
Professor, Ann Arbor, and Saturday, noon-1 p.m., Borders, Birmingham, and 2-3
p.m., Barnes & Noble, Rochester Hills.
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