Athletics

MONDAY, JUNE 14, 2010

Of all the sub-cultures in public schools, the most resistant to change is athletics. Ironically, athletic directors are the most difficult employees in the school system to coach. Everyone in the system knows this culture exists, but fears "tackling" the coaches. First, a description of the culture then some proposed fixes.

First, defense. Coaching is an incredibly time intensive activity, at least in Texas. During the season, whatever the season is, coaches spend hours and hours at the gym, in their offices, in the dressing rooms, in the weight rooms, etc. Typically, coaches receive a stipend for their extra work, sometimes they receive pay for extra days worked, but the bottom line for most coaches is that they are teachers first and coaches second in terms of payroll, and coaches first and teachers second in actual practice and time commitment. Drive by your high school any Saturday or Sunday and you will see coaches vehicles, typically trucks, parked outside.

Athletics is a very positive experience for many kids. Ask former high school athletes about their most memorable high school events and they will talk sports. Being in a sport helps kids learn many valuable lessons, and for some kids it is the only reason they come to school. Many communities revolve around the athletic program, and Friday nights in a small town is great time for home invasions as almost everyone is at the game. Coaches spend more time with student athletes than the parents do, and can have an incredibly positive lasting impact on kids.

Now, offense. It is not all rosy. A large part of the culture is the time spent by coaches in the office just chewing the fat and talking coach-speak. In this setting, every one's first name is "Coach." "Hey, Coach, did you catch that game on TV?" "Yeah, Coach, I did. They did some real butt-kicking in the second half." "Yeah, Coach, did you see the way that little runt half-back could run? Wow, he has got some jets!" While they sit in the office reviewing and dissecting and talking coach-speak, they are bonding and advancing the culture. Not all coaching cultures are the same, but most include really positive feelings about hunting, fishing, playing poker, drinking, chasing women, trucks, country western music, etc., and really negative feelings about classroom teachers who fail their athletes, administrators who threaten their budgets or actually talk about reducing the number of coaches, and wives who complain all the time. They will spend a great deal of time talking about how to get the most out of players and how to give motivational speeches to the students, while making durn sure they do not in fact actually serve as real role models themselves. I love hearing coaches talking about work ethic, admonishing kids not to drink or smoke and promoting academic achievement, while they plan their next poker game in a smoke filled room with plenty of beer and whiskey. Few coaches would survive the first few days of football practice after being a coach for five years. I think we keep the heart defibrillators around for them more than the kids. It's even worse in multi-high school districts where campus athletic directors report to a central office athletic director, leaving them unsurpervised by the principal and subject to the decision making of another coach, albeit a grandiose one.

Notice that I have not mentioned female coaches and female athletics. Despite Title IX, women's sports remain the step child. In Texas, football is king, followed by boys basketball, then baseball. Women's sports like volleyball, basketball and softball remain second fiddle in terms of money and staffing. Female coaches sit around and try to act like male coaches, but just can't quite pull it off. Their culture is similar as it is imperative that they practice coach-speak and act aggressive as well, but the rules are a little different. Rather than complaining about spousal complaints, they complain about male coaches. In many schools, the top coaches of female sports are in fact male, and that really gets the women going. That happens, typically, because the athletic director wants another football coach (who, by the way must absolutely be a male) so the additional assistant football coach is assigned to girls' track, girls' powerlifting, girls' anything just to increase the number of male coaches who can stand on the side-line at football games. If we staffed anything else like we staff football, we would have no more than about 10 kids per teacher. In fact, if we staffed band programs like we staff athletics, we would have an assistant for brass, another for woodwinds, we would have a percussion coordinator, an assistant head band director for marching and another one for concerts.

We have rules governing coaching and they include the requirement that coaches be contractual employees of the school district, hence, hired as teachers and function as coaches. The actual expense of athletics is deeply hidden, not by any secret conspiracy, but by generations of tradition. What most lay people do not understand is that in a coach's day, they will have a duty-free lunch, an athletic period or two, a conference period, then maybe teach a couple of classes. So, for example, in a typical 7 period high school day, six athletic periods for six coaches equals one full time regular teacher who could be teaching six classes of math. So if you have 10 coaches who each have two athletic periods that costs the district the same as hiring 3+ additional teachers, or roughly $150,000. The light bill on a football stadium runs about $75 an hour, but is charged to maintenance and operations, not athletics. Air conditioning a gymnasium is about the same. Maintenance employees who mow and edge and fertilize and stripe the grounds are charged to maintenance as well, not to athletics. It is pretty easy to see the direct costs of athletics in a budget when one adds the equipment, the stipends, the bus mileage, the meals, etc. That is typically about half the real cost. The real problem with athletics in Texas is the cost and time commitment.

Public school athletics is out of control. I support athletics for all the good things the program can do for kids, but I am not an athletic supporter, if you catch my drift. A school district can earn a low academic performance rating and no one shows up at the Board meeting demanding improvement. Let the football team fail to advance to the playoffs, and plans begin in the town to oust the AD. (Every school district in the state could be "exemplary" and other than change the state test, nothing would happen. But every Friday night, 50% of the football teams lose.) Or, let a superintendent fire a popular AD and the Board room will be packed. (You can fire a kindergarten teacher and not hear a peep, unless she is the wife of a Board Member.)

How did all this get so out of balance? Money and dreams. In the early days of pro sports players made 5 digit salaries, and gifted athletes made it to the pros because they loved the game. TV changed all that. Now, pro athletes make millions, and college teams have more money than Hector has fleas. The head coach at the University of Texas makes considerably more money than the University Chancellor. And to that I again say, Poppycock and Balderdash. That's not right.

Parents see all that money at the collegiate and pro levels and begin to dream of what their lives could be like if junior became a pro athlete. Those same parents invest heavily in all sorts of camps and private league coaching so their kids can make it. They dream of full scholarships to Division 1 schools and early pro drafts after that. Sadly, those are just dreams and the number of kids who actually make it even to collegiate level play, much less the pros, is an infinitely smaller percentage than the number of kids who get academic scholarships, or even band scholarships.

So, how do we get things back in balance? First, we urge Congress to pass a law that requires all TV contract money that usually flows to pro and college teams be re-directed to public education. Simply put, pros and college teams would have to survive on gate receipts and the sale of paraphernalia. Pro salaries would drop to reasonable levels and college teams would have an appropriate number of scholarships, coaches and coach salaries.

If that happened, parents would stop dreaming about the possibility of their kids playing sports for a living and earning a whopping $40,000. Heck, they might as well teach.

Once the parent pressure dropped, athletic periods during the day would end, and practice would happen after school. School Districts would save a ton of money in staffing, and would be richer via the re-directed TV revenue.

Best of all, kids would get it and communities would get it that what really matters in public schools is an education. Learning returns to the forefront and sports assume their rightful place as a wonderful activity for some, but not more wonderful than math, reading, science or social studies.

Guess I'm confused, but I deeply believe school is for kids to learn.

POSTED BY EILEEN GOOD AT 4:52 PM

LABELS: PUBLIC SCHOOLS

2 COMMENTS:



Anonymous said...

Eileen -

I think you should run for a seat in Congress! Public schools need someone like you to represent them among those yahoos who think they know what is best for public schools but don't know squat!

JULY 6, 2010 9:41 PM



Eileen Good said...

You are so kind! I am clearly running from Congress, not for it. Besides, I'm not electable - I'm too poor and too blunt. The thought is intriguing though.......

JULY 7, 2010 6:47 PM