Essay Review: Matt Hinton, "Billionaire Ball," from The Baffler #20 (Part 1)

Over on the Twitter, Will Leitch stated that Jonathan Chait's blog post for New York was the "definite take" on the Big Ten's expansion "madness." I can't really agree with this, as the definitive take on the economics of college athletics had already appeared in June, in an essay by Matt Hinton in The Baffler #20. A quick consultation of Google indicates that the intersection of sports bloggers and people who read left-wing cultural agitprop is me and Mr. Hinton, the difference between us being that he gets paid for it. To summarize:

Thus, it falls to me to inform the survivors of the Maryland/Rutgers apocalypse that Hinton thoroughly described the pernicious influence of money on college athletics over the offseason and predicted the music was nowhere near finished in the conferences' game of musical chairs. In Part 2 of this tl;dr post, I'll discuss what I think the landscape will be like when the revenues are maximized and the new equilibrium is reached. Here in Part 1, I'll discuss Hinton's dissection of the history and future of college athletics, which The Baffler's section editor helpfully labeled as "Studies in Total Depravity."

"The Big House" book review

So on Thursday I used a power failure to finish up reading The Big House: Fielding Yost and the Building of Michigan Stadium. I thought I would share a couple of thoughts about the book.

Let me begin by saying that I do think that if you have any interest in the history of the Michigan football program, this book is a definite must read. The prose lacks a certain lyrical flow, but it is more than made up for in the exceptional level of research done. Drawing from Yost's letters as coach, AD, and his personal correspondence, along with extensive excerpts from The Michigan Daily, Dr. Soderstrom gives the reader an exceptional view of what it was like to be a Michigan football fan in the 1920s.

Which leads me to one of my favorite things I drew from the book: In 85 years, Michigan football fans (and college football in general) has changed immensely and at the same time, very little. There were academic wailings about the quality of student that was brought in to be a part of the football team, concerns about a stadium "arms race" among colleges, the concerns over professionalism and its impact upon the sport, concerns about student rowdiness at games and on road trips, the concerns about students using football games as an excuse to get drunk, and my personal favorite, the Daily repeatedly calling out the Ferry Field crowd for its lack of vocal and enthusiastic support for what were some great Michigan teams. So much of college football handwringing today is really nothing more than variations on a theme.

I also enjoyed the insight into Fielding Yost. We need never question where the popularity of the phrase "Michigan man" came from. It's clearly a Yostism. In dozens of letters and speeches, his focus was on the "Michigan man" (and woman, Yost's willingness to embrace a co-educational university and equality in physical education for women is a recurrent theme in the book.) I was also impressed with Yost's tirelessness, particularly in his advocacy for building Michigan Stadium, and the obstacles he was compelled to overcome to build it. Indeed, even the reminder that before it was Yost Ice Arena, it was Yost Field House is worth the time devoted to it, the first Field House in the country.

All in all, I enjoyed the book because I have an interest in the subject area, and the level of research more than made up for any other failings of the book.

Have a good weekend.

IS THIS SO WRONG?