Is it time to re-think how — or even if — college football continues in the form we recognize today?

For a reasonable person not captivated by the heroics, fanfare and tradition surrounding the sport, the answer is an easy “yes.” But for the millions of fans (including me), and the coaches, administrators and companies making millions from the sport, the answer will be more difficult.

But consider the most recent news from the college football world.

Baylor (the nation’s largest Baptist university) is firing its head football coach and demoting its president in the wake of a sexual assault scandal involving numerous football players.

“A report from Pepper Hamilton, an outside law firm hired by Baylor last fall, found the school ‘failed to take appropriate action to respond to reports of sexual assault and dating violence reportedly committed by football players. The choices made by football staff and athletics leadership, in some instances, posed a risk to campus safety and the integrity of the University,’” USA Today reported.

“The report also found Baylor administrators actively discouraged some complainants from reporting or participating in student conduct processes and in one case constituted retaliation against a complainant for reporting sexual assault,” the newspaper reported.

It appears Baylor was more concerned about winning football games than protecting its students. No one with a shred of decency would agree that winning a football game is more important than investigating the rape of a student. But when millions of dollars are riding on those wins, coaches and administrators can lose any decency they once possessed.

Money talks, and it often talks over the cries of sexual abuse victims.

Baylor is not alone. Football teams are not alone. Sexual assault is a problem on college campuses everywhere. According to an Association of American Universities survey of 150,000 students at 27 universities, since enrolling in college 13.5 percent of senior undergraduate women and 2.9 percent of senior undergraduate men had experienced “non consensual penetration involving physical force or incapacitation.”

Those numbers should shock and scare us. We send our daughters and sons off to college with the expectation that they will be protected, not raped. We trust the school to educate them in a nurturing and safe environment. But schools have largely failed to do that.

Colleges and universities have become so addicted to the money and recognition that a successful football program brings, they have ignored their purpose. Colleges were not created to house football teams. They were created to educate students. But that changed somewhere along the way, and it’s students who will never set foot on a field who are suffering.

For some perspective, the Texas Longhorns are worth $152 million, according to Forbes. The Longhorns generated $121 in revenue, with $92 million in profit in 2015. That’s an astounding 76 percent profit margin. As a business, some college football teams are successful beyond any CEO’s wildest dreams.

Of course, athletic teams don’t pay their employees, so there’s little overhead. The very people who create a successful college sports “company” — the athletes themselves — aren’t compensated, except for a scholarship. That’s beans compared to the value they bring to the school.

Does it make more sense then to separate football from the school entirely and establish some sort of NFL minor league instead? The schools would of course miss the revenue, but they could focus on educating students, instead of focusing on winning football games. Schools could investigate crimes without the fear of hurting the team’s chances of winning on Saturday. That grotesque conflict of interest would be gone.

And all the positive attributes of college football — the camaraderie, the opportunities provided to athletes, the tradition — would remain, just with a for-profit team and not at a school. If those athletes also wanted to attend college, then they would have the financial means to do so. The schools could even lease out their multi-million dollar stadiums for the minor league teams to use.

Removing football won’t automatically reduce the number of rapes on college campuses, but it might result in more rape investigations. That would lead to more arrests, which in turn could potentially deter future criminals and create a safer environment for all students. It might also help change the culture of sexual violence on college campuses.

I realize it’s not just football teams that struggle with these problems, but other sports don’t bring in the kind of financial incentives to turn a blind eye — at least not at the same scale. Of course, nothing will change about college football anytime soon. There’s simply too much money involved.

 

Luke Horton is the publisher of The Daily Leader.