I have ruminated over topics to write about this week. The pro football pre-season is ending this weekend. Baseball races for pennants and the Wild Card are in high gear. The US Open in tennis begins soon. The Little League World Series is coming to its conclusion. The WNBA is in the midst of its season. All worthy items. Which I will discuss a bit later on.
I begin with colleges and college football. There have been a number of articles citing the plight of smaller liberal arts colleges trying to survive in this new era of technology. A liberal arts education was once a sought after commodity. Certainly it was an attraction for me when I attended Franklin and Marshall College in the late 1960’s.
But that was nearly 60 years ago and the generational shift in philosophy and the high costs of education at that level have hurt schools tremendously. I am aware that F&M is making significant cuts to its administration and faculty, as the budgets of the past are no longer sustainable.
A fellow institution of F&M in the Centennial Conference has even greater issues. Washington College, located in Chestertown, Maryland, is in dire straits. It does not have the endowment like many of its brethren, and its enrollment has been shrinking.
Chestertown is a quiet hamlet near the Chesapeake Bay, isolated from the bigger metropolises in the Northeast. Seemingly that is no longer an attraction for this new wave of students. Which makes its academic attractiveness worth only so much in this highly competitive market.
As much as F&M has to tighten its fiscal belt, Washington College must do more to survive. And that is the looming question—will Washington College be around on the next 5 to 10 years? For that matter, what will happen with liberal arts colleges if the costs remain absurdly high and the diploma does not seem as shiny as it once was—plus the costs of graduate schools has risen dramatically; the economy may simply make these schools unaffordable.
To be competitive in athletics requires big budgets. Even at the Division III level. I saw that Centennial behemoth Johns Hopkins University has a very large athletic budget. It can afford to, given that the school has traditionally run a very successful Division I lacrosse program which is a funding source for most of its teams.
This translates into success on the field combined with a great academic reputation. Student-athletes will flock to a school like Hopkins and the cycle of winning will perpetuate itself.
Meanwhile, schools with lesser reputations—like Washington College—will be hard-pressed to attract students, let alone field highly-competitive athletic teams. Will they be forced to eliminate sports (The Shoremen already do not field a football team) in order to remain sustainable? Will this happen to other members of the conference as well?
These are the overarching issues facing the private sectors schools. Add in the political changes regarding international students, LGBTQ and student loans and that will make navigating the short and long-term that much more difficult.
I certainly do not have an answer for this predicament. Perhaps the schools were at fault by not planning for the future and bloating its budgets to untenable levels. And with it will go the ability to compete in sports for kids wanting one more chance to play after high school.
Meanwhile, shifting to Division I, there has been a legitimate question raised by Urban Meyer, a former Florida and Ohio State football head coach, concerning the 10 year show cause levied by the NCAA against former Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh. Harbaugh’s teams were accused of cheating, which the NCAA found to be true. Harbaugh has denied any knowledge of what was happening under his watch.
Meyer cites the case of Jim Tressel, the former head coach at Ohio State, who had a penalty issued against his program. The penalties included keeping him from coaching at the collegiate level.
Tressel began working in pro football as an advisor. The NFL took note and applied the suspension to him in its league. A member of the College Football Hall of Fame, Tressel found subsequent work as the president of Youngstown State University. Now the Republican is the 67th Lieutenant Governor of the State of Ohio. Moreover, he has considered running for Governor in 2026.
Meyer certainly isn’t unbiased. Ohio State and Michigan have seemingly been enemies forever. Meyer and Harbaugh were foes for a period, which went in the Wolverines favor more than not.
So when Meyer argues that Harbaugh should be refrained from employment in the NFL (a league where Meyer bombed as a head coach in Jacksonville) like Tressel, his motives seem to be unclean. Besides, would the NFL really take action of that magnitude against Harbaugh, currently the Head Coach of the Los Angeles Chargers—a job Harbaugh took in all likelihood to escape the NCAA sanctions leveled at his Michigan program and by extension, at him?
Prohibiting him from coaching in the NFL would lead to serious legal action. The results of a court’s decision could further undermine the enforcement of any bans by the NCAA, a group which the major college football powers would like to render even more powerless.
As for Harbaugh, whatever your thoughts are about his Michigan program and his quick exit from his alma mater before the penalties were announced, he will be fine even if the NFL enforced NCAA sanctions like it did regarding Tressel. He has oodles of money and maybe he can return Michigan as an administrator. There seems to be a path there.
I have seen snippets of games and highlights from the Little League World Series. I saw that Aruba knocked off Venezuela in what might be considered an upset. The Arubans get to face another giant in Japan in the International Championship.
I saw Nevada play early on. They looked to be potent. The Mountain West team was knocked off by Connecticut. Nevada prevailed against South Carolina in an elimination game to have a rematch against the Nutmeg State squad in the American final.
There is a prohibition against gambling on Little League games the United States. For good reason. The kids have enough pressure on them.
However, there is no bar about betting on the games outside the US. Which is getting very heavy action—more than MLB baseball, the WNBA and anything else going on. Combined. What does that say?
The New York Mets downed Seattle in the annual MLB game held in Williamsport. The good feeling lasted for a very short time, as the Mets went down to Washington where the Nationals took two out of three games. NYM now stands at 67-60 for the season, seven games behind NL East leader and precariously clinging to the last Wild Card slot, 0.5 games ahead of Cincinnati. A far cry from what was expected from this team.
Seattle traveled to Baltimore, where the Orioles extended the Mariners’ losing streak to five, leaving them just ahead of hard-charging Kansas City for the last AL Wild Card spot.
The New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox face off in the Bronx for four important games, as the venerable foes try to catch Toronto for first place in the AL East while cementing each team’s Wild Card chances. Boston won the first game on national TV, helped by New York fielding blunders and bad relief pitching. This ended a five game winning streak for NYY. Boston is now 8-1 this season versus NYY.
Out West, the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres go head-to-head again. Last weekend, LAD swept the Padres in LA. Then the Dodgers lost two of three to lowly Colorado. San Diego gained ground and is 1.0 games behind its rival as a three game series starts in San Diego.
For the record, the Chicago Cubs and Milwaukee Brewers split four games at Wrigley Field. The Brewers maintain a 7.0 game lead with 34 game left to play.
Paige Bueckers, the former UConn phenom, tied a WNBA rookie record for points in a game this week. Her 44 points were in a losing cause.
Sabrina Ionescu channeled her inner Steph Curry when she nailed a long three pointer to secure a win for the New York Liberty. Night-night, Minnesota. (I saw an article proposing that Golden State’s Curry is the best NBA point guard ever. That is very interesting.)
With super nova Caitlin Clark still out, is anybody watching?
I saw all-time tennis great Novak Djokovic throw out the first pitch for last night’s Boston-Yankees game. This could be his last go-around in Flushing Meadows.
A newly formatted mixed doubles competition, which had lots of money involved and drew the stars from with the women’s and men’s draw, kicked off the US Open festivities. Plus women’s legend Serena Williams announced that she is taking a weight loss drug—one that her husband is a big investor in. Nothing like the circus that is New York and the US Open.
On Friday night, the New York Jets host the Philadelphia Eagles in the teams’ final pre-season game. I’m eating my tickets like a lot of other NYJ season ticket holders.
A friend of mine was crowing about his New York Giants thrashing New England and going undefeated. It doesn’t count. Undefeated in the pre-season means nothing. You want your team to suffer no significant injuries.
For me, I hope I don’t have to eat more tickets this season as it unfolds. I wonder if Chargers’ fans are thinking that, too, should Harbaugh have to go?
Finally, it came out that Kansas City Chiefs’ Head Coach Andy Reid was shot at while in his office in April, 2024. Fortunately, one shot missed him by a mere 15 feet. The unknown shooter presumptively must have been a Buffalo Bills fan; the bullet landed wide right.
Colleges. College football. Baseball. Tennis. The WNBA and a reference to the NBA. Pro football. What—no hockey?
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