Today on NPR, commentator Frank Deford talked about the flak he got from listeners for a story he did a few weeks ago about Princeton Athletic Director, Gary Walters, belief that sports should be viewed with the same prestige as the arts.

What was interesting to me was that in his original piece a few weeks ago, Deford spoke of college sports in terms like “…dismissed as something lesser — even something rather more vulgar…”, “Its corruption in college diminishes it so and makes it all seem so grubby.” The title of the piece online even compares sports to Rodney Dangerfield.

He puts forth Walters’ argument that “Is it time, for the educational-athletic experience on our playing fields be accorded the same … academic respect as the arts?” and “Athletic competition nourishes our collective souls and contributes to the holistic education of the total person in the same manner as the arts.”

He wonders if there isn’t a double standard in that “a young musician major in music, a young actor major in drama, but a young football player can’t major in football?”

However, in his piece today, sports don’t seem to have it so bad in colleges and universities. “I’m afraid the game is over. In our American academia, the arts must be satisfied with the leftovers,” Deford says. He goes on to quote John V. Lombardi, the president of the Louisiana State University System: ”

“Mega college athletics … prospers because for the most part we (our faculty, our staff, our alumni, our trustees) want it. We could easily change it, if most of us wanted to change it. All protestations to the contrary, we … do not want to change it.”

What sums the situation up for me is Deford’s line that “sports in our schools and colleges are not only ascendant, but greedier and more invulnerable than ever.” While it is true that his first piece is about academic prestige and the second is more about which programs get better funding and a comparison of the two is apples and oranges. It seems to me that athletics have prestige and funding and seeing that they lack only recognition as a worthy academic pursuit are greedy to acquire that as well.

I have never been terribly put out by the inequities in sports and arts funding in schools. I make grumbling noises about funding decisions that favor sports over arts and the hardwood flooring and office suites athletics officials have at my school. But after a few moments, I move on and don’t dwell upon it.

I am a bit concerned though that people would be thinking that an activity that has always been adjunct to the academic experience should be an academic experience. There are already too many exceptions made for athletes academically as it is. When a dance or theatre major is failing history or missing classes because they were in rehearsal the night before, their academic career is in jeopardy. Not so with the college athlete.

Now people want to give them academic credit for playing sports? In the context of all the scandals that have emerged, how can a degree based on sports credits be viewed as credible? How can a big sports university that grants the degree maintain its credibility even? If anything, I would agree with the argument that often comes up that schools should drop the pretext that the students aren’t there primarily to perform athletically rather than academically. Better to emulate the G.I. Bill and guarantee them an education at the end of 4 years of service.

I will admit that art and sport are joined in so many discussions that in some respects their existence seems intertwined like two planetary bodies orbiting each other. In terms of aspects of each that qualify as academic pursuits, they are quite different. While there are some like Tony Kushner who believe that undergraduate art majors should be abolished, there are elements to arts training which are more dependent upon instruction in other subjects than athletics are. An artist’s understanding of their craft is enhanced far more by studying literature, history, physics, language, material sciences than for an athlete. That is, in fact, what Kushner suggests an artist study as an undergrad rather than majoring in the arts. At no time does he feel the arts are not worthy of academic study.

Which is not to say that arts majors are taking advantage of these opportunities to the extent they should any more than the athletes are. It would be great if artists were feted and recruited in the manner athletes are, but that isn’t the world we live in. Perhaps athletes should be renumerated in accordance with the financial benefit their performance has for their school, but those activities should not be equated with academic achievement.