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The college football mess

Posted: December 5, 2023 by chrisharper in Uncategorized
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By Christopher Harper

As college football fans look forward to bowl season, it’s time to realize that the sport has become an absolute mess.

I’ll put aside the flap over Florida State being excluded from the playoffs because I can see both sides of the argument. I also never liked FSU, so I admit my bias against the Seminoles. I also don’t understand why FSU has eluded the PC police for its mascot and name. 

But I digress. 

The collegiate model is changing, and revenue streams might need to be improved to fill the growing money pit. It should be noted that the average operating deficit among the 100 major programs stood at $18.8 million in 2019.

“Almost nobody is in good shape, and the few schools in decent shape are experiencing a world that’s much more unstable and uncertain,” Andrew Zimbalist, a sports economist professor at Smith College, told 247Sports. “Even if they’re in decent shape now, they still have to worry about it.

For example, the Big 10 started as a Midwestern conference that has grown into 18 universities spanning the country from east to west. That’s primarily because the league has the most lucrative TV contracts worth more than $1 billion annually. As the realignment of various leagues started, the Pac-12 took the biggest hit, falling to a mere two schools—Oregon State and Washington State—as Oregon, UCLA, USC, and Washington moved to the Big 10. Arizona, Arizona State, Utah, and Colorado joined the Big 12. Two West Coast teams, UC Berkeley and Stanford, are joining the Atlantic Coast Conference. The Big 12 lost Oklahoma and Texas to the Southeast Conference.

The impetus for conference realignment is rooted in money. That’s why Oklahoma and Texas secretly pursued the SEC in the summer of 2021 and opted to surrender $100 million to leave the Big 12 one year earlier than expected in 2024. UCLA and USC bolted the Pac-12 for the Big 10 in the summer of 2022 and will begin competing in the wealthiest conference in college athletics in 2024.

The salaries for coaches are out of control. According to an ESPN analysis, well-known programs spent more than $533 million in dead money owed to coaches who were fired without cause with time left on their contracts from 2010 to 2021. Now add the buyout of $76 million to Jimbo Fisher of Texas A&M!

The Wall Street Journal’s Jason Gay reminisced recently about the time Alabama coach Bear Bryant stipulated in his contract that he had to make a dollar less than the university’s president.

Two other changes—the transfer portal and the Name, Image, and Likeness plan—have created even more havoc in college football. According to Higher-ed Ethics Watch, the transfer portal has created “a lack of loyalty to the schools from which they transfer, a lack of loyalty to their teammates, many of whom cannot take advantage of the transfer portal because of their anonymity as a student-athlete, commercialization of college athletics, which once was a fully amateur sport, and outsiders buying the allegiance of student-athletes through promises of being able to financially benefit from their NIL after they transfer.” 

Moreover, the NIL program has benefited only a few players and makes little sense when one looks at the top earners. For example, Shedeur Sanders and Travis Hunter of Colorado earned $4.1 million and $1.8 million, respectively, even though they played on a team that won only four games this year. Arch Manning has an excellent pedigree but has yet to start a game for Texas. Still, he’s estimated to earn nearly $3 million this year. 

Simply put, college football is about making more and more money, but only a few colleges and players benefit from the current system. 

 

The bumpy road ahead in Israel

Posted: November 28, 2023 by chrisharper in Uncategorized
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By Christopher Harper

After reporting on the Middle East for many years, I realize how difficult it is to find any lasting solutions. Also, predictions about the region are about as accurate and useful as those of the talking heads paraded on national television.

But here are some background and thoughts about the road ahead.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which control Gaza, are vicious organizations. The Palestinian Authority, which rules part of the West Bank, is corrupt. The government of Benjamin Netanyahu is inept.

The leadership of all three governments must go.

Hamas came to the forefront in 2006 when it split from the Palestinian Authority, which was formed in the 1990s to rule over parts of the West Bank and Gaza. Many Palestinians voted against the leadership of the PA, which was controlled by the Fatah branch of the Palestine Liberation Organization, because of widespread corruption. Yasser Arafat, the leader of both the PLO and Fatah, had died two years earlier, and no one could manage the Palestinian factions. Since 2006, no elections have happened as the rift between the West Bank and Gaza widened.

How to get rid of Hamas and Islamic Jihad? The Israeli armed forces have pushed through northern Gaza, and most of the Palestinian leadership has fled to southern Gaza on the border with Egypt. As part of the hostage and prisoner exchange, Israel must insist that the Palestinian leaders leave Gaza for other Arab countries. That happened, for example, in 1982 after Israel forced the PLO leaders to leave Lebanon for Tunisia. After that, the people of Gaza must have an internationally supervised election to choose a new government.

How to get rid of the current leadership of the PA? Again, internationally supervised elections may be the answer. Although Arafat had many detractors, he was able to keep the diverse Palestinian groups going in roughly the same direction for more than 30 years. Part of the problem with the PA was that much of the power rested with those Palestinians who lived outside of Israel and returned in the 1990s while those inside Israel’s boundaries held little influence.

Unfortunately, democracy isn’t a mainstay of Palestinian philosophy. But the current leaders have failed to improve the lot of the average Palestinian and should be held accountable.

Then there’s Netanyahu, who has been prime minister three times for 16 years, bringing a hardline attitude toward Palestinians, ignoring most of the agreements made in the Oslo Accords in the 1990s, and increasing tensions within Israel itself. Moreover, his government’s failure to anticipate the Hamas attacks on October 7 should make all Israelis doubt his leadership.

Unfortunately, Israel’s electoral system favors small groups of voters who hold extreme views on both the right and left. Citizens vote for their preferred party and not for any individual candidates. The 120 seats in the Knesset are then assigned proportionally to each party, provided that the party vote count meets the 3.25% electoral threshold. As a result of the low threshold, a typical Knesset has 10 or more factions represented. With so many parties, it is nearly impossible for one party or faction to govern alone, let alone win a majority. In the government before the war, Netanyahu had to woo the conservative religious factions, for example, to create a coalition.

With the ongoing war, the government has the support of nearly all parties. But that support will quickly dissolve when Israeli citizens and politicians look more closely at the once-vaunted intelligence agencies that missed the Hamas strategy. Fortunately, Netanyahu will likely be sent packing.

Neither Hamas nor the Israeli government will be seen as victors in the current war. That’s usually an opportunity for some serious peace negotiations, as happened after the 1973 and 1982 wars, but all sides will need new leaders and fresh ideas to create significant changes.

A Mideast Thanksgiving

Posted: November 21, 2023 by chrisharper in Uncategorized
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Thanksgiving Day, 1984

By Christopher Harper

Only some people in the Middle East really understand Thanksgiving Day. More often than not, that might be because there is little to be thankful for.

In 1984, I brought together a group of Lebanese, Syrians, and a bunch of Europeans in the middle of one of the most dangerous parts of the world. Many of us worked in some way for ABC News in Beirut and Damascus.

It was difficult to travel between the two cities as foreigners, so I decided we should meet near Baalbeck, an ancient city about six miles east of Beirut and just about the same distance west of Damascus.

The Romans built an exquisite city there, which had become a training center for terrorists. Ironically, it was about the only place that we could get people from Syria and Lebanon to meet, where most of them could be safe. Americans—actually, I was the only one—weren’t so safe. But I had spent a lot of time in Baalbeck, and I was young and rather foolish back then.

The infamous Commodore Hotel in Beirut found a turkey and some sweet potatoes—no small feat—and added some traditional Arabic dishes. I still remember how the chefs put everything on platters.

The group of about 20 people included:

  • Two British and French videographers who didn’t get along too well.
  • Two Syrian and Lebanese businessmen who didn’t like one another.
  • Two Shia and Druze men who didn’t trust one another.
  • Others who didn’t think much of me.

The sun shone brightly over the Bekaa Valley, a beautiful but troubled part of the world. No one talked about football games or family feuds. We didn’t talk about failed peace negotiations or the deaths of more than 200 U.S. soldiers sent to Lebanon as peacekeepers and killed by Islamic terrorists. We didn’t talk about the bombing of Lebanon by U.S. ships. We spent a wonderful afternoon talking about the present and the future, our families, and our dreams. We talked about everyday and important things in life. We drank a bit too much wine and araq, a potent Middle Eastern liqueur.

We left with a better sense of what we knew about one another and what we did not know about one another. More importantly, we talked about what we had in common as human beings.

Pope Francis divides the Catholic Church

Posted: November 14, 2023 by chrisharper in Uncategorized
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By Christopher Harper

From endorsing a policy that transgender people can participate in church sacraments to a worldwide meeting that may allow gay and women priests, Pope Francis has divided the Catholic Church so much that it is unlikely to recover for decades.

After three decades of leadership by popes who generally affirmed American conservative priorities, “Francis has been a complete shock to the system,” said John McGreevy, a historian at the University of Notre Dame. “It just has been tough for a big chunk of the American church, who thought these questions were settled and now seem unsettled.”

Others think the pope is out of touch with U.S. Catholics, who make up 20 percent of American adults. “The pope has only spent six days in the U.S. in the last 10 years, so it’s difficult to understand how he really understands Catholics in the U.S.,” said C. Preston Noell III, a spokesman for the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property. This Catholic organization describes itself as “on the front lines of the culture war.”

In a statement released last week, the Vatican outlined a policy that transgender people can be baptized, serve as godparents, and be witnesses at church weddings. 

Last spring, the American bishops’ conference issued its own doctrinal document stating that chemical and surgical interventions for gender transitions were “not morally justified” and instructed Catholic hospitals not to perform them. The conference has commented on the policy change.

Also, the pope has asked a Texas bishop to resign his post because of his opposition. Joseph Strickland of Tyler, Texas, has accused the pope of undermining the Catholic faith and that other Vatican officials have veered so far from church teaching that they are no longer Catholic. He has warned that a landmark global gathering that concluded recently at the Vatican could threaten “basic truths” of Catholic doctrine.

“I cannot resign as Bishop of Tyler because that would be me abandoning the flock that I was given charge of by Pope Benedict XVI,” he wrote in an open letter to Catholics in his diocese in September.

That meeting last month considered a variety of issues opposed by many in the church:

  • The end of priestly celibacy
  • The inclusion of married men in the priesthood
  • The blessing of gay couples
  • The extension of sacraments to the divorced and remarried
  • The ordination of female deacons

It is unclear what the group will recommend to the pope and what he will do.

Whatever the case, the divisions within the church are likely to outlive Pope Francis. During his decade as the leader of the Catholic Church, he has worked to cement his legacy by replenishing the College of Cardinals, who will choose the next pope, with men who share his priorities.

The Catholic Church and I have had our ups and downs over the years, but this pope has been the worst in my lifetime. Fortunately, my local parish remains a friendly and valuable enclave for my faith.

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