Debate increases
on the ethical dilemma of televising high school football games. Though not a recent occurrence, local,
regional, and national coverage has increased significantly in the past 10
years. For example, since 2005, ESPN and
its family of networks (ESPN2, ESPNU, ESPN3) have provided national coverage
for nationally ranked high school football programs. In 2013, the ESPN and its family
of networks are scheduled to televise
26
teams from 15 states. Similarly, FOX
Sport South and Sport South have both increased their coverage of high school
football.
Clearly, high
school football is a product, and there is a demand for this product. The sponsorship by corporations like Gieco and
Under Armour provides evidence of the commercial viability of high school
football. There are advantages and
disadvantages in this venture, which I will highlight a few of both.
First, televising
high school football nationally provides some compensation to schools and
school districts where funding for interscholastic sports have been dwindling
with the cut in state funding.
Additionally, televising high school football games provides national
exposure for schools, teams, key players, and coaches. Athletes are able to display their talents and
abilities before a national audience. It
also provides opportunities for athletes who are “under the radar” of college
recruiters the chance to get display their abilities under the pressure of the
national limelight.
One disadvantage
is that, when teams have to travel from 500 – 2500 miles to compete for a
national televised audience, it removes the event from the communities that
bare the cost of supporting the schools and school districts. Needless to say that interscholastic sports
is a unifying factor for communities. It
also assists in instilling school and civic pride. Furthermore, local vendors, who use these
events as a means of livelihood, also lose out when these games are displaced. But, all of this is lost to the team traveling
thousands of miles to compete for a national audience. A final disadvantage associated with the
travel distance is that it creates a disruption in the academic life of
athletes. For the long distant trips,
Fridays are lost to travel. Therefore, whatever classes and academic work
required on Fridays will have to take a back-seat to the team’s travel
schedule.
As it relates to
the academic life, the increased commercialization of high school football, as
a result of televised games, lends itself to further fueling the
anti-intellectualism that is pervasive in the athletic culture. This is the result of the increased athletic
demand that is required for athletes to perform at optimal levels for a
national audience. This demand is
socializing a group of students to focus more on athletics than academics. Couple this with how we tend to encourage athletes
to think that education is something to “fall back on,” we are informing young
athletes to prioritize athletics over education; or that education is simply
secondary and athletics is their primary ticket to a better life. This is a grave mis-education of the “student”
athlete.
Whether
interscholastic sports will go the way of intercollegiate sports is yet to be
seen. Clearly interscholastic football
and boys’ basketball are evolving as highly commercialized entertainment
sports. Reaching a healthy balance,
where youth athletes are grounded in their academic experience and “value”
academic excellence as the primary means of obtaining social mobility and being
productive citizens, is imperative for this marriage between corporate America
and public school districts and private school associations.
Therefore, beyond
stressing the value of education for young athletes, establishing criteria to
reduce the travel distance of teams for these televised games is important. Also, academic criteria (team GPA’s,
graduation rates, etc.) should be a part of the selection process for
televising these games. Ultimately and
most importantly, reassessing the mission of interscholastic sports in the
context of a challenging public educational system is vitally important.