If you are a sports fan, you know the faces or have heard the names of Tim Tebow, Colt McCoy and Sam Bradford. They are the reigning kings of college football. Their notoriety has seeped outside of sports and into the mass media.
Reporters cling to every meaningless sports clichè they utter. Boosters are clamoring and downright expecting their impact on the NFL. Yet, these sports giants are only in college and aren't even (supposedly) paid.
Why are college athletes being given the same celebrity treatment as LeBron James and O.J. Simpson? This overexposure is harmful to these athletes not only in their current endeavors, but also in their future careers.
This phenomenon began a couple of years ago with the obsession over Matt Leinart and Reggie Bush. Who started declaring these athletes gods of the gridiron? Obviously, it was the alpha and the omega of sports, ESPN.
ESPN captured the world's obsession with sports and turned it into an addiction. No other media outlet comes close to the intricate and in-depth sports coverage ESPN provides. Nonetheless, the responsibility for this overindulgence lies mostly on ESPN's 45 networks, which latched onto these two athletes and irresponsibly declared them two of the best players of all time. The fans devoured it like a drunken student attacks a late-night Hunam's order.
In ESPN's defense, these players are very polarizing. Personally, I think Tebow is unimaginably arrogant and self-serving. My contempt for him rivals only that of online homework due Saturday at 11:55 p.m.
Comparatively, I've been harboring a man crush on McCoy ever since he grew a burnt-orange mustache. These personalities make for dynamic television. Still, we might be doing these players and college football more harm than good.
The main problem with this overexposure is the precarious position it puts these athletes in. Sure, the players must adore the adulation, but the expectations are highly unrealistic. Fan bases and the nation are expecting Herculean performances. Anything less and something must be seriously wrong with the players.
Apart from college success, their NFL success is compromised as well. As the pressure and attention builds, these players' draft stock inflates, leading to lackluster professional careers. Bush and Leinart were victims of this treatment. Both Leinart and Bush were expected to have an immediate effect. Both have had lackluster NFL careers.
Another evil this trend perpetuates is that the importance of the team and the game vanishes. When every sports outlet's attention is focused on the message a player writes on his eye black, the importance of college football seems to be lost. The things it offers — the band, the student section — are forgotten. This leads to an even greater problem with college football — the gradual trend toward becoming strictly corporate.
ESPN is hardly the lone culprit in this sad situation. In August, ESPN agreed to pay the Southeastern Conference $2.25 billion for the rights to broadcast football and basketball games.
Admittedly, with this much money floating around, it's hard for both parties involved not to justify the overexposure. For example, look at K-State. If our athletic department had a tiny fraction of that sum, they might be able to pay off the carnage wrecked by Krauss and Wefald.
Maybe I'm just the naïve romantic lamenting the inevitable end of a pristine era. Maybe the not-so-innocent college football has been becoming the corporate NFL for a long time now. Even so, I dread the day when college players are truly more important than the sports they play.
Let's hope this is just a fad. Sadly, that's highly doubtful.
-Mitchell J. Widener is a sophomore in English. Please send comments to opinion@spub.ksu.edu.
You will let Beth Mendenhall bash the dairy industry with a poorly written article lacking credible facts but you deny Jessica Hensley by not posting a true opinion article because it calls out the Collegian! Is the Kettle calling the pot black? In case you have forgotten the article is below:
The Column the Collegian Editor Doesn't Want You To ReadShare
Yesterday at 4:04pm
This Thursday you will not be reading my column in the Collegian, as the Editor-In-Chief has refused to print it. Don't worry though, you can still read it. Enjoy.
All too often, I find myself irritated after reading the Collegian. Not in a productive, “I'm going to go out and change the world for the better because I've just read an informative article about a social injustice” way either. I find myself irritated because of the widespread lack of research put into the articles. From metro to sports to the Edge, there is a shortage of well researched articles and an abundance of poorly written ones. I'm annoyed. And via an informal poll (asking the people unlucky enough to sit near me in the library), I know that most of you are too.In Tuesday's paper there was an article in the Edge titled “College students often fail to dress to impress” which was written by Elena Buckner. The writing was good, the content was not. My first question upon coming across this article was, “who are you to tell me what not to wear?” Without establishing some sort of authority on which to base this list of “don'ts”, the article is nothing but a fashion opinion piece. One that fails to consider the demographic toward whom it is directed. Ms. Buckner writes that “While we are an agriculturally based school, it is not necessary to constantly dress like you’re about to wrangle some cattle...” Unless, of course, you're an Ag student that spends most of your day at the Cattle Unit. Fashion sometimes follows function in a work environment, and referring to this style of dress as a “don't” because you are a Secondary Education major is insulting to those that get dirty for a living.This trend of questionable reporting is not new to the Collegian either. On Monday, April 21, 2008, it was reported that the Kansas State Equestrian Team finished sixth at the Varsity Equestrian National Championships, ultimately falling to the Georgia Bulldogs. In reality, the Wildcats finished fifth and never faced Georgia. A correction was run in the Collegian the following day, outlining a list of seven major errors in the original article. This was almost two years ago, and the fact checking at the Collegian hasn't gotten much better. If you, as a writer, are assigned an article on an obscure sport, it is your responsibility to become familiar with said sport. It is insulting to the athletes who work hard for their achievements to have them diminished by reporters who don't take the time to educate themselves. Day after day, I pick up a copy of the Collegian only to be disappointed. It isn't enough that one article in ten is informative and well researched. They all need to be. We are lucky enough to attend one of the best public universities in the nation and we should strive for excellence in all areas, including our school newspaper. Articles need to be more in depth, and better researched. Reporters need to take the time to understand what they are writing about, because even if it isn't important to them, it is important to somebody. And we need more interesting coverage than football, condoms, and fashion. Then maybe, people would start reading the Collegian for the articles instead of for the Fourum. This is a true opinion article that should have been published but you can bash others but not yourself!