Players Who Study Aren’t Popular Here

NEWS ITEM: “More than 2 , 000 high school football players signed letters of intent to the nation’s colleges and universities, pledging themselves to play for the varsities there in years to come. The letters are the collegiate equivalent of signed contracts . In some cases, they end months or years of wooing of blue-chip players by energetic college coaching staffs.”

We take you now to the plush football offices of Coach Bull Smither on the campus of Lower Caledonia University, where the legendary builder of character and leader of the LC Mongols is interviewing a potential enrollee, Hunk Hargrove, the cream of the all-state running backs in the preps last year. Despite the 20-inch neck, broken nose and missing teeth, Hunk is wearing horn-rimmed glasses and carrying books.

Coach: Now, son, how can we make your stay with us more enjoyable? We want to show you what a career at Lower Caledonia can mean. Just tell us what we can do to make your stay here happier. New stereo, broads, car, a video game on the invasion of the frogs, your own beer bar? Name it. The entire cultural facilities of a great university are open to you. We want to show you what it can mean to be a Mongol!

Hunk: Can you talk about the traditions of this school? Some of the great achievements, famous alumni?

Coach: Can I! Twenty-one straight bowl games! Won 18 of ‘em. Beat the spread in all 21! Alumni? Forty-eight of ‘em went directly to the NFL last year! Twenty-five Heismans! Eight hundred and seventy-nine All-Americans. It’s been estimated that ex-Mongol football players are responsible for 20% of all the limps in this country. Match that around the Big Ten!

Hunk: No, I was thinking more of distinguished alumni in non-related fields. Any secretaries of state? Supreme Court justices? Any Nobel prize winners? Mayors? Governors? Judges? Authors?

Coach: Governors? Judges? Authors? What do you think this is, Harvard? We’re suppliers for the courts, all right. Defendants. The only book we have is the playbook. Hemingway, it ain’t.

Hunk: What about the university facilities?

Coach: Ah, that! One hundred and twenty-five Nautilus machines, 14 1/2 weight rooms, 2 swimming pools, a horizontal bar, training track, our own dormitory, whirlpools, 19 heat therapy machines and 4 orthopedic surgeons on standby. And wait’ll you see the nurses!

Hunk: No, no. I meant, like, libraries. Computer science decks. Laboratories. Laser research.

Coach: Libraries?

He snatches the phone.

Coach: Get me our trainer, Snakeoil Simmons. Snakeoil? We got a library on this campus? Where is it? What is it?

Hunk: Also, what about language courses? You got a good French department?

Coach: You need French to say “hut-hut?” What is this, a joke? Are you a football player or a spy from the NCAA?

Hunk: I’m just trying to figure out what I’m going to need for the rest of my life. After I graduate.

Coach: Graduate? How you gonna do that?

Hunk: By going to the right classes, taking the right courses.

Coach: Classes? Courses? What are you, some kinda Bolshevik intellectual? We don’t have time for classes. We don’t have time to study the Punic wars here. We have to study the Alabama wishbone. Besides, the courses are all supplied by a storefront boiler shop in Albuquerque. A diploma mill. We got assistant coaches to take the courses for you. Also exams. Anyway, you don’t graduate. We take courses just enough to keep you in school but not to count towards a degree. We can’t have your mind cluttered up with logarithms on the Stanford five-yard line.

Hunk: How about the faculty?

Coach: I never met any of ‘em. Oh, unless you count the president of the university. He’s first-rate. Sits on the bench at all the games, runs through the wind sprints with us. Carries pompons to the budget meetings. Listen, this campus has everything you could want.”

Hunk: I want an education.

Coach: Look, I’ve had enough of you, wise guy, and your kind! Now, I’ve had guys who liked to bite the heads off chickens. I’ve had guys who told dirty jokes at church banquets. I’ve had guys who held up 7-Eleven stores the night before the Bluebonnet Bowl, and I’ve had guys who failed eye tests because they didn’t know the alphabet. But I’ve never had a guy who wanted an education before. What do you want, a million dollars or just to be the best one in your neighborhood in Trivial Pursuit? It’s guys like you who are making this country what it is. Now get outta here and send me someone who knows the real value of life today--which is beating USC.