By Elliott Brack, editor and publisher | Take any given Saturday in the fall. It demonstrates how instilled college football is in our country. Many people plan their entire fall Saturdays on the basis of where their favorite college football team is playing.
Though years ago many thought the arrival of televised football would hurt actual attendance at stadiums, just the opposite is true. Stadiums remain full, while television has greatly expanded interest in football.
There appears to be plenty of students and young graduates to demand tickets for the limited seats, plus plenty of graduates paying their alumni dues in hopes of moving up each year to better seats. The best seats are still held to the key (meaning good contributors) alumni, a way to swell the ever-growing football purse.
While others lament the impact of football on the overall university campus, still, football and other sports flourish on campuses all across the country. There has even been realization in recent years that football can improve campus life at smaller colleges, and that alumni will pay most of that cost. Note the revival of football at Mercer, LaGrange, Shorter and Reinhardt in Georgia, and at many other smaller schools throughout the nation.
This week we saw another incidence of the power of football, in a way that perplexed many. It showed what could happen when a weakness on many college campuses is combined with football and social media. In unrest in the Mid-West, the president and the chancellor of the University of Missouri resigned in the face of a growing racial threat to the University. Problems on that campus were not new; the unrest had been simmering for weeks this fall and before.
That it took place in Missouri most probably is because a major racial problem has been exposed in that state this year after the shooting of a black person by a white policeman. Recriminations continue from that incident, which may be the weakness of that’s state’s efforts to foster good relations between the races. Pent-up frustrations lead to wider incidents, as we have already learned time and time again.
There may be a positive side to the Missouri football incident. What seemed to spring the situation forward was a threatened boycott of the black players on the Mizzou’s football team and other students of this weekend’s game with Brigham Young University. Even the football coach was on board with this strategy.
The upside is that the resignation of these two top University of Missouri officials, which the black football players and other students called for, came in a non-violent manner. At least there was no major outbreak of violence, as it was in Ferguson, Mo. Yet the causes of the uprising still must be addressed, and may take years to calm the situation.
On a local note, the voices of social media are also taking on a football icon here in Georgia, as more and more people are asking questions about the football program at the University of Georgia, and its coach Mark Richt. It started several years back when UGA football players continued to make negative headlines in criminal behavior. It now seems to be focused not on the overall Georgia football winning record, but more on Richt’s inability to win games against key opponents and deliver a higher ranking for the team.
It is really ironic to think that as big as college football is, some of its programs can be significantly changed by student unrest and uprisings, coupled with social media, and all done non-violently. Perhaps we can look at this as a blessing of the modern world.
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