Imagine that Dartmouth's athletic teams stopped playing. Say, for instance, it turned out like this:
Football players have decided they are not getting enough out of the deal the team has with Muscle Milk. Instead of one tailgate event a week at a single Greek house, they want multiple events throughout the week. And they heard about Stanford University's athlete-friendly course list and want their own (I mean, who wouldn't, really).
Field hockey has decided it hates where it plays and wants to be put in a central location on campus football has played long enough on Memorial Field, let it be moved. Its players recognize this after a certain D writer incorrectly reports the name of the field where they're playing, and on Homecoming no less uh, it was the editor's fault, trust me.
Men's soccer, fresh off a friendly match with the Haitian national team, demands that College President Jim Yong Kim similarly involves himself with humanitarian efforts in Japan. After all, FIFA says it has the 13th-ranked team in the world.
Swimming was going to stop jumping in the pool, but then its members realized the College does not actually provide its funding. In fact, Dartmouth tried to jettison the team a couple years ago to no avail, because the swim team supports itself with an endowment.
The College, on the other hand, says to players that they need to cut back a little. Athletic Director Harry Sheehy announces that the athletic department isn't making enough money.
He tells the hockey teams to take a walk. "Sorry," he says, "Even though you are one of Dartmouth's most popular teams, we have locked EBAs into a five-year contract worth untold amounts of late-night pizza even if you don't play." That's not even counting the sponsorship contract Dartmouth has signed with Keystone Light. (Secretly, Keystone could not care less. No sports means no dry season. No dry season, well, you get the point)
Greek houses suffer from a loss of identity. How do the crew guys know what house to join? They stopped rowing after their demand for even more apparel to wear around campus was shot down.
The students in pinnies who have what they call flow they belong to that lacrosse house no longer have an excuse to join. It is now just guys who are too lazy to find a real shirt and a hair cut.
Some houses, of course, survive. Red hats aren't bought through the athletic department.
And the fans, who if you read The Dartmouth seem to be increasing in number (see: "Any Given Monday"), lose out entirely. There is now no excuse to get up early on a Saturday, go to a Greek house, grill and play pong.
The art of throwing a tennis ball long after the last one has been thrown, hitting an unsuspecting Princeton University goalie, is long lost. The agony.
The hundreds of thousands maybe millions of Hanover children who now do not get to attend the basketball games or see the track and field team which boycotted when its members realized their sport was simply just every other sports' punishment surely lose out.
At least the administration doesn't have to worry anymore about heckling at squash matches. The squash team stopped playing on principle after the athletic department weakly contested an attempt by the NCAA to handicap Chris Hanson '13 with weights attached to his feet.
It is this kind of bickering from both sides administration and the athletes that really makes you wonder what has happened to athletics today. Where has the love of the game gone? I wish that Big Green athletes were more like players in the NFL or NBA. They would never do anything like this, right?
Wait, never mind, I got this one confused. It's the NFL who is in the middle of a lockout and the NBA that is going in the same direction.
Our athletes, on the other hand, play in the cold and rainy weather of Hanover because they love the sport they play. I still don't even understand why some of them like the sports they do. They do not get paid, for the most part do not get national media attention and don't play on a Southeastern Conference campus. Let's put it this way they get some congratulations for winning their games, but 100,000 people do not show up to spring football at Dartmouth.
Kim is there to support our teams and the rest of the world, and Sheehy's athletic department works extremely hard to ensure Big Green sports remain competitive and successful for the athletes.
Guess the "professionals" need to take a lesson from Dartmouth, right?
