How Did This Happen?

Usually, when I write this blog, I try to be non-confrontational and avoid taking a position one way or another on any issue. I am deviating from that tradition today. It dawns on me that this is my blog, and I should pretty much say what’s on my mind, so here I go, not sure of where the keys on the laptop will take me.  We live in a college town so intercollegiate athletics surround us, and we can’t help but be affected or have opinions on what is happening today to our young people. I speak specifically of three issues—the transfer portal, NIL (name, image, likeness), and gambling.  

To me, the transfer portal, whereby an athlete can jump from one school to another simply because he or she can get a better “deal” has been disastrous. The previous competitive model was clearly not working, but there must be a better way. Some of these young men and women jump from school to school once, twice, or even three times in their career. It makes college recruiting a nightmare. It’s one of the reasons legendary Alabama football coach Nick Saban gave to retire from coaching. The most competitive universities are now hiring “managers” to handle some of this workload as it is simply too daunting for the coaching staff to address without some assistance.

Somewhere in all this, the education component has gone missing. I don’t pretend to think that every athlete will stay all four years at a single school or even stay until graduation, but it was fun when Christian Laettner and Bobby Hurley were Duke Blue Devils, Michael Jordan was a Carolina Tar Heel, and Larry Bird an Indiana State Sycamore. Fans followed our favorite players and teams, and it was fun to watch them grow and mature in front of us. Now, you don’t know from year-to-year who will be on a team and there is apparently little, if any, institutional loyalty. I didn’t say this was any easy problem to solve, and it is further exacerbated by the whole NIL phenomenon which is part of this dysfunctional equation.  Heck, coaches seldom recruit high school seniors anymore. Why not wait to see who’s out there in the portal and then build a program that way. Of course, that results in the rich getting richer as coaches or the managers simply wait to see what they can attract from the portal and build their program with a new group of players every year. This transpires from top to bottom with well-funded programs being able to poach from anyone and in the end, it goes from the premier programs all the way down to lesser programs and puts schools like Western and our counterparts at a severe disadvantage.

NIL makes all this worse. Yes, players should somehow be compensated for their efforts as there is no reason the colleges and universities should be the only ones to profit but again, let’s think this out and find the best option moving forward which NIL clearly is not. The best players at the most noted programs can literally rake in millions like former star Caitlin Clark did at Iowa.  Now I like her as much as everyone else but what happens to her teammates in this pay-to-play scenario?  I wonder what would happen to a “name” quarterback if his offensive line got together and said to one another, “Let’s see how Mr. NIL does if we let the defensive line through for a play or two.”  More and more the collegiate game has simply become a minor league for the NFL, NBA, WBA, and beyond. 

I was visiting the other day with good friend Mark Ortmayer who made this obvious and profound observation, “Gordy, the genie is out of the bottle and not going back in.” Unfortunately, he is correct, and a real financial monster has been created. How will NIL compensate lesser-known players or those not playing the most visible positions moving forward?  This much is clear.  No one knows and possibly we are worse off now than we were before all this madness started.

On to the third leg of my stool–gambling. A few short years ago the commissioners of all the major sports appeared before the U.S. Congress to state unequivocally that gambling had no place in athletics, i.e. college scandals in the 50s or Pete Rose, or even NBA officials a few years ago.  How the landscape has changed. The commercials are everywhere with offers about how much fun gambling is. You can bet on the next pitch or on whether the next shot will be made–anything. I am not denigrating the yearly office Superbowl or March Madness Tournament pool, but it is clear that gambling has gotten out of hand and in the small print you will see references to where you can get help for gambling addictions. Really, good old gambling turning into an addiction? Say it ain’t so, but it is. I speak from personal experience.

As I’ve written elsewhere, I was raised in a family with addiction. Our choice was alcohol that affected everyone but me. I was the lucky one. I’m told addiction takes many forms. You name it and it can become an addiction. Shopping, drugs, gambling, alcohol, and goodness gracious, even sex.  This is dicey here, but even Gordy Taylor had a bout with addiction. Ten or so years ago, I was prescribed a drug for my severe case and decades of long affliction with Restless Legs Syndrome. I took it religiously–never missed a dose. Gradually, I found myself with an affinity, increased enjoyment, and finally addiction to gaming salons.  The prescription was a dopamine agonist which can result in impulse control behaviors through a process called augmentation. Diane understands how this works, but the details are lost on me.  

It took a while for me to know something was wrong and even then, I wouldn’t admit it. My golf buddies Frank, Berg, and Bob were in town one weekend, and I felt the need to show them some neat places which, of course, were the very locations where I sneaking out to do my addictive vice.  What was I thinking? But, in retrospect, I was sneaking around Macomb like a convict from parlor to parlor. Finally, Diane figured it out, tracked me down, and caught me in the act.  It was awful and poor Diane had been caught up in my horrible web.

Diane scooped me up and drove me to my neurologist where we discovered that this drug could cause addictions to almost anything. I stopped taking the dopamine agonist immediately and the urge to gamble mercifully went away. We don’t point fingers at anyone but obviously wish none of this would have happened, but it did. Now there is more information about RLS, and my meds were changed to a dopamine med. We were fortunate to meet with doctors at the Mayo Clinic concerning RLS, and they informed us that research revealed impulse behavior addictions from dopamine agonists.  I was one of the lucky ones. My addiction went away once I got free from what I was taking. Cause and effect–stopped taking and urge gone.

But this is not unfortunately how things usually work out. Addicts hide their problem from everyone; I was no different. We all know what happens when people get hooked on opioids–they won’t let go and the same is true with gambling. It escalates and escalates until finances and families are ruined, sometimes forever. Fortunately, neither of these outcomes befell the Taylors.  Again, and I don’t want to sound redundant, my problem had a specific cause, and once it was removed the issue went away. Most people are not so fortunate.

There you have it. We are building a house of cards built on recruitment gone awry, compensation for athletes being mismanaged, and all sports susceptible to the curse of unregulated gambling.  Let’s see where we go from here.