Scoreboard, Baby: A Story of College Football, Crime, and Complicity [Paperback]

Armstrong, Ken and Nick Perry. Scoreboard, Baby: A Story of College Football, Crime, and Complicity. Cloth: alk.paper: 372 pages. University of Nebraska Press (2010) ISBN -978-0-8032-2810-8. Includes bibliographic references and index.

Reviewed by Dick Stull

The title, "Scoreboard, Baby" was former Colorado Buffaloes football coach Rick Neuheisel's retort to comments made by the losing coach who accused Neuheisel's players of illegal tactics on the field. A few years later Neuheisel was paid $1,000,000 to revive the Washington Huskies football program. He delivered a "mystical, magical dream season" in the year 2000, culminating in a dramatic Rose Bowl victory. Armstrong and Perry's thorough and compelling investigation reveals the facts behind a different scoreboard. Four of every five players failed to meet minimum University of Washington admission standards. One out of three players graduated. Twenty-four players on Washington's 2000 football team were arrested or charged with some crime during their years at the university. The authors write:
"Some players do serious damage. Some get used up. A city looks away and the game goes on. Variations of this story-more about culture than sports, more about a community than a team - can be found in colleges across the country. Florida State, Ohio State, Texas A&M. Washington isn't an aberration, it is an example."
Through extensive review of public records and interviews, the authors detail the complicity of Seattle community members, law enforcement officials, coaches, players, members of the legal profession, local media, and the university in this tale of "twisted values."
A sorority student is raped, allegedly by another player. Circumstantial and DNA evidence appears to be conclusive - but not so in the eyes of the prosecutors. The student, a highly personable and outstanding academic achiever, has her life irrevocably changed. Her mother reports her eyes are simply "empty." Police records in this case and in others are "sealed," community service or time served is designated "after football season," "domestic abuse" is not reported, an armed robbery and shooting investigation is stalled. There is the sad Greek tragedy of a fearless, much-admired player who is paralyzed while making a vicious hit. He becomes a martyred symbol for his team and the community but his violent past presents a difficult moral conflict for reporters "in the know" who would like the greater narrative to be about redemption for the player and the team's season.
Armstrong and Perry's skillful setting up of some of the key players' back-stories often reveal the athletes' Jekyll-and-Hyde personalities. Many are well-spoken and are thought of highly by their teammates, their coaches, and members of the media -- but many also show extreme entitlement and ugly, violent behavior. The authors' recounting of the personal hardships encountered by many of them during their early years gives the reader enough context to understand but not excuse their actions. The "demands" of football and their own unrealistic expectations of future stardom make it hard to imagine that all but the most capable, motivated, and highly disciplined of them can get a meaningful academic experience - there simply aren't enough hours in the day. The authors point out the insular world of football, a culture unto itself within the greater university. These things are not new to anyone familiar with division 1 sports, but
it's the dogged reporting of the day-by-day devils in the details that makes Scoreboard, Baby so compelling. You simply can't rationalize away so many facts into simplistic moralistic story-lines.
There are of course courageous and honorable individuals. An academically unexceptional athlete is encouraged by one of his coaches and a committed, caring college advisor to go abroad. He becomes the University of Washington's first athlete to win the Mary Gate's scholarship (established by Microsoft founder Bill Gates) in recognition of undergraduate research or leadership potential. He travels to South Africa and goes through a transformative experience at a small rural school and gets an advanced degree. There are also hardworking people in the system that do their best to do the right thing. Some police investigators go beyond the call of duty. One, a female officer, shows uncommon tenacity and compassion for the rape victim in trying to obtain justice. Another officer refuses to let up on an investigation of a robbery and shooting case involving a star player though he knows it is a highly sensitive community issue.
A further plus of the book is the authors' descriptions of some of the season's games themselves, and, in particular, the Rose Bowl thriller against Purdue. The gripping stories behind the scenes ratchet up the drama and ironies. You are momentarily transported - "The game's the thing!" Alas, this silver lining doesn't convince the reader that the dark clouds of greed won't eventually rain on any parade, however. You already know too much.
The authors' epilogue in Scoreboard, Baby makes it hard to imagine that any fundamental systemic changes can alter the all-too-human temptation towards riches, power and fame - greed is still "good." People will find a way to get around regulations whether it's the SEC and Wall Street, the Minerals Management Service and oil drilling, or the NCAA and college football. Like the revolving door where lobbyists switch hats with regulators on Capitol Hill, coaches and administrators are recycled, reforms come quickly after scandal, but human nature regresses to the mean reality of Mammon.
Past is Prologue? If there was ever a "bread and circuses" break from reality, college football is as good as it gets. The authors set us up in the first chapter. And they're right, as any college football fan can attest. There's nothing quite like the pageantry, the color, the marching bands, the drama, the passion - the thrill of the game. Decades ago in my teens, my dad and I attended a Stanford-USC football game that had Rose Bowl and national championship implications written all over it. Biting into our hot dogs amidst the din just before the opening kickoff, my dad turned to me and said laughingly, "When I was your age my father took me to a meat-packing plant. After seeing what goes into one of these, I couldn't eat a hot dog for 20 years!" Then came the kickoff, and God, what a game it was! Scoreboard, Baby is a much harder truth to digest.

Dick Stull

Arcata, CA

As a Husky fan for almost 50 years, and a Husky season ticket holder for over 25 years, 'SCOREBOARD, BABY' is maddening and frustrating, and while it looks at the UW 2000 team in sharp focus, the atmosphere portrayed at the U-Dub isn't just in Montlake. Star players ALWAYS get preferential treatment. From elementary school to high school, who among us hasn't been frustrated by seeing a jock(or a coach) get away with murder, or at least skipping classes, or getting cush gigs?
The 1969 Washington State boys basketball champs had a number of players busted at a kegger, but were allowed to serve their suspensions after the State Tournament. In the Hugh McIlhenny years of the early 1950's, boosters such as "Torchy" Torrance got players jobs where they were paid while not having to work. In the 1970's, a squad of co-eds was formed at the UW called "Husky Honeys", attractive women that it was hoped would distract visiting players. A friend of mine, a starting linebacker at USC under John McKay was offered a Camaro if he had chosen to play at Nebraska. A restaurant owner I met in Nebraska was the 'designated driver' for coach Bob Devaney when Devaney would get too drunk, which happened almost nightly. In a small town I lived in near Seattle, some coaches opened a drive-in near the high school, and star players only worked the front counter and not on the grill(if they worked at all).
The reviewer who only gave 'SCOREBOARD, BABY' one star calls this book "Poorly cited, inaccurately depicted...", but if you take the time to search for the articles cited, they are on the Web for the reading.
I regularly post on UW fan boards, and on the Seattle Times UW boards, and when I read about this book, I was incensed that anyone could slag The U & my Dawgs like this....but that was before I read the book. I'm still incensed, but I'm not going to cancel my tickets. Whether it's on or off the field, when it comes to Husky Football, I'll just hope for the best.
I loved Jerramy Stevens when he played at the U. I drove to California for the Stanford game where Curtis Williams was injured. I loved seeing Jeremiah Pharms level people, but outside of Stevens, I was unaware of these players' off-field antics. I saw all the UW home games in 2000, plus the Colorado and Stanford games, and loved this team.
By the way, I never trusted coach Rick Neuheisel: from 1996 to 2000, I went to Colorado each fall, and met lots of Buff fans. Their reaction when the UW hired him away from CU was overwhelmingly "Better Seattle than Boulder".
GO DAWGS!!

Ken Armstrong's and Nick Perry's SCOREBOARD, BABY like Paul Gallico's classic, FAREWELL TO SPORT, is replete with disturbing facts and allegations. The authors tell an equally disturbing story of college football, crime and complicity -- exposing a community's collective convoluted values -- while back in 1937 Gallico said "Colleges have managed to get themselves involved in a dirty and subversive business." The tale of this business is one of several dimensions and has been told in these and the other revelatory books listed below.

Over the years, revelatory books, reports, essays, and sporadic news stories have had little if any impact on the powers that be in Washington who give every indication of being asleep at the switch. Members of Congress and presidential administrations overlook the fact that there are all too many communities and universities throughout the nation where deep investigative reporting would unearth similar problems and societal passion for professionalized and highly commercialized intercollegiate sports competition. Since there is much in our colleges and universities that is already amiss, the depth of these sports related problems and the intensity of this passion could very well be predictive of the decline and eventual fall of higher education in America from its position of world leadership.

The SCOREBOARD, BABY narrative could serve as a fitting metaphor for the crime, complicity, and convoluted values associated with professionalized college sports in America with a one-to-one mapping of the book's cast of local characters, organizations, and citizens onto corresponding entities on the national scene. Why so?

Looking the other way and declining to act on abundant evidence of widespread wrongdoing is commonly seen to be the best way to keep your job as an elected official, as a government or a college administrator, or as a news media reporter. Likewise, appalling silence and indifference can be expected from non-sports-addicted university faculty, students, and parents, as well as from 'good-citizen' taxpayers across America.

For more, see Serena Golden's August 20, 2010, story based on a Q & A with the authors, ['Scoreboard, Baby' at the insidehighered website], "Scoreboard, Baby Notwithstanding, Things Do Not Bode Well for College Sports Reform in Washington," [Splitt Essays at thedrakegroup org website], Rick Telander's September 3, 2010, Chicago Sun-Times story about the Big Ten's spiel that it's expansion isn't about money," [Derisible by '10' at chicagosuntimes website], and Michael Barone's September 6, 2010, commentary on America's
overstressed system of higher education, [The Higher Education Bubble: Ready to Burst? at the rasmussenreports website].

Book List: James Michner's SPORTS IN AMERICA, Walt Byers' UNSPORTSMANLIKE CONDUCT, Allen Sack's and Ellen Staurowsky's COLLEGE ATHLETES FOR HIRE, Murray Sperber's SHAKE DOWN THE THUNDER, ONWARD TO VICTORY and BEER AND CIRCUS, Rick Telander's THE HUNDRED YARD LIE, John Thelin's GAMES COLLEGES PLAY, Andy Zimbalist's, UNPAID PROFESSIONALS, Jim Duderstadt's INTERCOLLEGIATE ATHLETICS AND THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY, Don Yaeger's and Doug Looney's UNDER THE TARNISHED DOME, Allen Sack's COUNTERFEIT AMATEURS, John Gerdy's SPORTS: THE ALL AMERICAN ADDICTION and AIRBALL, William Dowling's CONFESSIONS OF A SPOILSPORT, Mike Oriard's BOWLED OVER, and Mark Yost's VARSITY GREEN.

Frank G. Splitt, Member
The Drake Group
Former McCormick Faculty Fellow
Northwestern University

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