UCLA basketball outshines the arts

INDIANAPOLIS “”mdash; What UCLA did to the University of Memphis
Tigers on Saturday is sure to attract the attention of PETA.

Almost every analyst had picked the Bruins to lose. In the
drunken euphoria after the game, I overheard one fan say that the
sight of Dick Vitale’s hyperventilated retractions on ESPN
would absolve the fan’s need to order a porn flick in his
room.

The long and short of that is: UCLA basketball is better than
sex.

Or how about this: UCLA basketball contributes more to the
general campus experience than any of our arts and humanities
departments.

The ultimate challenge of any university is to prepare its
students for the real world and all of its challenges. Relevant
academic courses do this by providing knowledge and ideas that are
either abstractly or potentially useful.

A competitive, popular sports program ““ presenting the
lessons of life in compact, dramatic, exciting form ““ adds a
healthy balance to the atmosphere and the fulfillment of purpose
through hard work within the boundary of immutable rules.

The demands of reality and the glorious triumph that are only
possible with bitter failure are displayed for all to see and feel
in the here and now.

Our own university’s major rise in academic prominence
since the 1970s was by no coincidence simultaneous with its
athletic success. Former Chancellor Charles E. Young, who
administered UCLA’s dynamic separation from the pack of
public schools, was a hard-core sports fan who intensely managed
the athletic department.

That doesn’t mean sports is always correlated with the
academic quality of a school, but it can be, and it’s
certainly not an impediment.

Imposing a false dichotomy between the mental and the physical
illustrates a lack of understanding of an art form that has
classically been revered by the same culture as tragedy and
philosophy.

In an ideal world it would be silly to compare sports with the
humanities. Despite their similarities, one incites an immediate
passion and one a depth of understanding ““ each irreplaceable
by the other.

But this isn’t an ideal world. It’s a postmodern
world; it’s a world in which a narrow ideology of
deconstruction has replaced depth, understanding and aesthetic
value in the way humanities are taught. Dull and dim, they are now
in every way inferior to the offerings of a competent sports
program.

Sorry, but the uniquely spirited buzz we’re all feeling
here in Indianapolis just can’t be reaped from discovering
the post-racial patriarchal tendencies in early Faulkner. Nor from
taking a seminar on whether “Angels in America”
playwright Tony Kushner has earned his wings.

When it comes down to it, many of those who are anti-sport
resent its absolutism. But the prime purpose of academe is the
pursuit of truth, premised on exactly the kind of possible
certainty that sports symbolize.

As for the argument that student athletes are treated with
favoritism, I don’t think it qualifies as currying favor to
point out that the average art history student’s course load
does not quite match the burden of carrying the hopes of millions
of fans, which rest on the student athlete’s every move.
Anyway, I’m not the type to curry favor.

By the time you read this the Bruins may or may not have
defeated Florida to win the big fajita. Either way, this group of
lovable overachievers will have made not only a considerable
athletic accomplishment, but an academic contribution as well.

E-mail Mouhibian at [email protected]. Send general
comments to [email protected].