UM President Schlissel: "Athletics Isn't Part of Our Mission Statement"
OK, I'll acknowledge that I might be putting too much emphasis on the turn of a phrase. Perhaps "seems to be" is the typical way a research-oriented academic describes something that he hasn't experienced himself—"if I don't have first-hand, quantifiable knowledge of something, then I can't really make definitive statements about it."
Here's the broader context:
"Athletics seems to be part of the culture here at the university in a historical sense. Generations of students, and now alums, say part of their link to the university was the shared excitement of attending sporting events, and sharing in the joys and disappointments, and the spectacle of intercollegiate athletics," he said.
"I think the alums I've spoken to, as well as the students I've spoken to, uniformly speak fondly and it's part of what they remember and part of what they value as part of the university experience. It's a great part of the culture."
Re-reading that statement, it still appears to me as though he really doesn't get the love for college athletics. He's trying to understand, but it's not there yet.
Fine. I disagree - I think you're half right. I think he's being careful not to pretend to know in detail a century long relationship he hasn't been a part of. He says he can't wait for his first game. He says it's important. In every interview he's given, he points out how athletics connects generations of UM alums.
I think he "GETS IT." Just because he himself hasn't experienced "IT" doesn't mean he doesn't understand "IT" and he seems very excited to get to experience "IT."
What more can you ask for from someone who isn't a UM alum?
I actually think you are right on the money, Don.
To me, it was a bit of a Rich Rodriguez "Michigan Man" type of slip up, where you seem out of touch with the organization you are about to lead . . . an organization that one would assume you would have researched the hell out of to know what makes it tick.
Even my grandmother knows that athletics are part of the culture at Michigan. There is no "seems".
He is either discovering it for the first time (yikes, how out of touch could you be? I don't know much about Green Bay, but I know that football is a big deal to them), or he is using really clumsy wording that comes off like an ambassador to a foreign country inadvertently insulting the Prime Minister at a dinner party. You would not expect that from someone as supposedly sophisticated as a University President.
If I was going to become the President of say, Dartmouth, an institution I don't know much about, I would make damn sure I learned about its culture before a single word left my mouth.
Why deliberately make yourself look out of touch with the institution you are about to lead?
I'm an academic and I love college football. I just had a dinner with 8 other academics, men and women, where the main topic of conversation was college football. My advisors at Michigan had season tickets.
Plenty of academics love college football. But most of us think that it is AN important, rather than THE MOST important, part of university life (George Lynn Cross being a famous exception, of course, at least in his rhetoric).
As long as they understand that they care, even if they don't understand why they care, things will turn out OK.
When you come to a place like Michigan, athletics are part of the very DNA that makes up the institution. If that freaks you out, stay at Brown.
By the way there are also sports besides Michigan football that are representing the university exceedingly well ; )
Despite the worst 7 year stretch of football in memory, inflation adjusted donations have never been higher to UM than during the past few years. It may change the paltry dollars we sports fans contribute, but the big dollar players have, and will continue to contribute.
Al Glick loves this football team, and will do so through tough times, as all loyal alums do. I don't know Stephen Ross but the last 7 years didn't seem to quell his financial contributions.
What is probably true is that the big dollar donors that are also very passionate about football have Brandon's ear, and some offer "advice". I doubt they are contributing less because they are not satisfied with Hoke's performance.
The big money usually comes from older folks who have perspective, not like many sports bloggers, who live and die vacariously with M football.
Michigan needs to stay in the national spotlight. The University President can't afford to deemphasize athletics to the point where they become irrelevant to the University's mission. Even if he would personally like to see that happen. They are too much of a catalyst for the things he really does care about.
Many of his partners are also B school graduates. Interesting fact is that Ross's uncle, Max Fischer is the benefactor whose name adorns OSU's Business School.
If someone had a good academic experience that helped them become very, very successful, it's only natural that when they get older they want to leave a legacy where they spent some of the happiest years of their lives. Michigan and other top institutions are masterful at culling these relationships. These relationship advisors make good dough doing this - and some aren't even alums.
I don't think the RichRod years, and maybe the Hoke years, will jeopardize this process at a great institution such as UM. I would be more worried if our Bus school, Med school, law school, Engin school, etc dropped THEIR performaces and stopped producing the real leaders and best.
He looks forward to attending Michigan games with 110,000 of his closest friends. I think one can only interpret that as his being something of a college football fan.
Zing!
but it bears repeating, I love the shit out of this blog where never a chance to say or find something negative is ever missed.
Apparently the new Prez didn't research UM colors when he selected his tie. Geez.
Next thing you know, he's going to give the #1 parking spot to a TA.
http://www.freep.com/article/20140718/NEWS06/307180095/mark-schlissel-fireworks-michigan-stadium ironically this Freep article seems more balanced.
Those who are offended by the Administration's views on the DB/ football team, should turn your attention to the Regents who voted against the fireworks. Bernstein and other's made some pretty biting comments.
I am encouraged by this quote:
Crabby chicken says FU to it all...Geez, i don't follow UM all the way from STL to discuss poly-sci or whatever. Glad he won't trade graduation for a Rose Bowl or whatev. The two are NOT mutually exclusive as sports can teach us great life lessons...anyone believe Bo's boys didn't learn that???? Please save this speach for the Ess Eee See people and get off my Big Ten lawn.
Nearly none of the faculty believe that Michigan must be in the football business. This is what Brian misses in the union discussion. Most academics couldn't care less about football or sports in general. Very few like it, some more tolerate it, and most dislike its connection to academic instutions.
College football exists because of the connection between alumni and current students that it creates. If football players become treated like employees, and thus separated from the student body, you'll start to see teams get shut down because there would be no justification for their existence (this is true even for schools where that connection is simply fiction in reality today, once the veil is torn those schools would have a difficult time justifying the playing of football.).
Nearly all of these universities were created long before college football existed. The large majority of those in charge of the academic wings of these universities would have no problem if the universities at which they administrate and teach no longer played sports. If Michigan dropped its athletic department tomorrow the academic wing would be negligibly affected (and if it would be, we're doing something very wrong).
They don't like football, but they like the things football brings . . . Alumni donations. They can't have it both ways. Michigan is blessed to have successful sports programs and the enthusiastic Alumni base that results from that.
Michigan is not Brown. It's not a little private boutique college that can survive off the large donations of a handful of rich people. If that is the world you want to live in, don't come to Michigan.
Is it really the case that robust football and basketball programs increase non-athletic alumni donations? Looking at a list of universities with the largest alumni donation sums, it's clear that prominent athletic departments aren't a prerequisite. (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-12/college-donations-rise-to-reco…) But is there some evidence to suggest that sports play a big role once you control for alumni wealth?
I'm genuinely agnostic on this and would welcome persuasive evidence either way.
I can only answer for a sample of one: Me.
I give money to Michigan academics, but not athletics. I do it in large part because Michigan is top of mind because I follow Michigan sports teams. It keeps the University relevant to me on a day to day basis, long after I've moved away from Ann Arbor and forgot what classes I took.
I feel bad about it, but I don't give money to my undergrad, a small private D3 school with no prominent sports teams and no national presence. It's just not top of mind to me.
My wife went to Duke and Emory. But she only gives money to Duke. For the same kind of reasoning. Fair or not, I'm sure this is pretty common.
I live in the DC area. I rememeber reading in the Washigton Post that George Mason University built more than ten new buildings because of the increase in donations and public interest when they made the Final Four. It's not just theory, nationally prominent sports teams have a tangible benifit to the academic side of a University.
I'm curious—is there an actual "mission statement" for U-M? I can't find any mention of such a thing on U-M's website.
The mission of the University of Michigan is to serve the people of Michigan and the world through preeminence in creating, communicating, preserving and applying knowledge, art, and academic values, and in developing leaders and citizens who will challenge the present and enrich the future.
None of that precludes athletics.
...developing leaders."
The only President of the United States that attended Michigan was captain of the FOOTBALL team.
Hopefully one of Schlissel's first questions to Brandon in their first meeting will be, "Fireworks after TDs in Michigan Stadium?? What the fuck could possibly have led you to think that was an appropriate idea??," and then if Brandon doesn't have a good answer, he'll fire him.
that Schlissel does not really sound like a big sports “fan”, since he is coming from an Ivy League school. When I first joined the faculty of another such school—Harvard—I was already a fanatic follower of UM sports. But I learned that many did not share my enthusiasm for sports teams. My boss was showing me around the periphery of the Longwood Medical Area, not too far from Fenway Park. So I naturally asked him if he was a Red Sox fan. He said a somewhat uppity tone: “I am not a fan of baseball. I did play baseball, though, for Harvard.”
I sensed that being a sports fan was not an accepted outlet for competitive instincts in my new environment. But I learned what was. As we walked through the heart of the medical school area, I noticed a dozen or so parking spaces for faculty members. I asked him how to get one. He said “you need a gun”. At Harvard, “a gun” meant very powerful connections. And the “playing field” for competitors was not a baseball diamond or a football field but a parking lot.
Schlissel too may see power struggles in academia taking priority over those in sports, as was the case at his former school, Brown. During the decade I spent there, I never really cared about Brown athletic teams either. But I still cared deeply about UM athletics. Why? That question is hard to answer until you have attended games at the Big House, gone to homecoming rallies, or experienced the week in Ann Arbor prior to the Ohio game. Once Schlissel does that, don’t be surprised if his attitude changes.
Until then, just be happy that he doesn't act like former Ohio president, Gee, who suggested that the football coach was his boss.
As the old saying goes, in academia the politics are so nasty because the stakes are so low. A parking spot; ass't chair in charge of being mean to grad students; the corner office. etc. I admire you for sticking it out and winding up in a good place.
I was shocked when my doctoral chair told me he was crazy about UM football. It took me a while to comprehend that, I had a lot of respect for him. Obviously I eventually did get it, or I wouldn't be on this site.
Brown has an athletic department which, proportionate to the student body, is larger than Michigan's. Brown certainly has more varsity athletic teams, by about 30%.
I was writing about the fact that Brown athletics are not the source of huge fan interest, as they are at UM. FB and BB are in no way the same kind of revenue sports and do not attract a huge audience.
In my previous, lengthy post, I did have to leave out an important point you raise. In fact, Brown has put a lot of money into athletics. But, unlike places such as Ohio, where luxurious residences have been constructed for the big money varsity athletes, Brown's emphasis seems to have been on the athletic facilities for students (eg for physical fitness classes, recreation, a huge aquatics facility for swimming as well as facilities for a large number of club sports). During Schlissel's tenure at Brown, a lot of money was raised in donations for these facilties. Maybe that is one reason why UM hired him.
I think that athletics and academics are both equally important. Neither are more important than the other. I'm not sure why we have to try to destroy one to prop up the other.
Granted, we're on a Michigan sports blog. But these are shockingly misplaced priorities.
As an earlier poster noted, the University's mission statement doesn't preclude a strong role for athletics, but it certainly doesn't necessitate one, either. The reason universities exist is to train young people and to advance scholarship. End of story.
All I'm saying is that both can coexist here and be dominant. Look at Stanford. We don't have to become the Harvard academically or Alabama athletically. We can be both.
Why do you think it's a bad thing to have sports and academics equally important to Michigan? While they're not directly beneficial to society, studies have shown that schools with strong football or basketball teams have students that do better on average than schools that don't. Also Michigan has had strong athletics for about 150 years now and strong academics even longer. If your school can lead the country in both those aspects then what's the problem? As long as we don't become UNC or PSU with their messes, then what's the harm in being renowned for both.
I make no arguments about what effects the athletic department at Michigan has on the University as a whole, nor vice versa. These have nothing to do with the claim of ultimate importance -- you can argue that a healthy AD is good for the rest of the University, but this does not at all rebut the claim that the rest of the University is what really matters.
That last bit is all I'm claiming: that the University of Michigan is an educational institution. What matters in the end is its performance as such.
I.e. academics are more important than athletics.
Let me be clear... if not for football, I wouldn't have gone to Michigan. It was a struggle, I turned down other situations that may have worked better financially (I also started off at the Dearborn campus, which was a step down from some of the other schools I'd been accepted to). I wanted to go to Michigan because I'd spent 18 years bleeding maize and blue, adorning my walls with posters and pennants and crying when we lost on Saturdays. I was happy to pay more to attend a branch campus, to work harder than I probably had to in order to transfer to the main campus, to do whatever it took to get to Michigan, all because I'd been raised to care about the football team.
And yet I am willing to sit here and tell you flat out: Academics > athletics. I would rather be Chicago than Boise State, Georgetown than UNLV. I'm more proud of Raoul Wallenberg than Desmond Howard, I'd take Samuel C.C. Ting over Jalen Rose. The things that have been accomplished by Michigan students, alumni and faculty dwarf Final Fours and Rose Bowls in their import.
Congrats to you and good luck in your future. Your Michigan experience socially and academically will hopefully prepare you well!
By the way I am very proud of Charles Woodson,Juwan Howard, and countless other athletes for the work they do with Mott's Childrens Hospital.
Too many see only in the short term and only think in terms of money. Yes the football players provide revenue and good exposure to the university and yes they act as bridges between alums and the current students, hell at times they can also be fun to watch.
However the students like myself who go here are the inheritors of tomorrow and is there truly anything near so important as bright future for our world and the possibilities that are still dreams to us to make.
We should be seen just as important if not more so as should many of the professor as any football players, head coaches, or douchy athletic directors. Thankfully, finally someone gets that.
I generally agree with you, but "...the football players provide revenue..." has to be taken in context. The AD budget is in the vicinity of $140M, a lot of which is associated with football, true. And some alumni do give because of the success, or prestige, of the program, that's true too. Private gifts to the U are generally in the same neighborhood as the AD budget.
But net student tuition, paid by you and your peers, is just short of $1 billion, with a very large "B". You're pretty darn important in terms of providing revenue. Just about as large an amount as government-sponsored programs. Dwarfing state aid, private donations, investment distributions, etc.
if guys like Ross, Wilpon, etc don't like UM's President for ANY reason and don't contribute big dollars, then that President is in trouble. Not sure that is the case yet, but from what I have heard Schlissel may need to tone down the perceived Ivy League snobbery to keep people happy. He is a very smart and I'm sure has figured, or will figure, it out. Doesn't mean he or the Regents will be a lap dog to DB.
To suggest that success in UM's football program, compared to academia, is essential to the University's future sucess is nonsense. I'd be surprised to hear if anyone who has graduated from any of UM's grad schools, where UM makes its national reputation, would place winning football championships on such a pedestal.
If one believed this really were the case, Brandon and Hoke should be fired immediately and $aban should be hired.
But I think a lot of donors and a lot of development people (i.e., fundraisers) were very happy to hear Schlissel say so clearly to Brandon who was actually in charge.