Jay, here.
Yesterday, I posted “What If…? Wrestling Reinstated At The University Of Oregon”, regarding the elimination of wrestling at the University of Oregon. Basically, I posed a simple question: if wrestling was reinstated, how would wrestling supporters reconcile their differences with the University of Oregon?
Since then, I’ve had every Ricky and Bobby in the states of Oregon and Iowa coming at me like a spider monkey! And it’s made for a pretty good thread of discussion.
But this response deserved its own post. Earlier today, I emailed Michael Copperman, the writer of the essay I used as a jumping point for my entry, to see if he was interested in posting a response. And he was.
In addition to being a Eugene resident, former Stanford wrestler, and instructor at the University of Oregon, MIke is also a very good writer. You can see for yourself.
However, as good as a writer as Mike is, there are a few things I’d like to clear up before his response. Nothing big. Just a little bit of clarification.
- I intentionally framed the debate on this website to examine the communication coming from wrestling supporters. The best device I could think of was a version of an old debating parlor trick: “Let’s assume that this is true, then…”
- I was not a college athlete. College debater, yes. But not an athlete. Six knee operations had something to do with that. Oh, and maybe a lack of athletic ability. I had some, but not enough. Although, I don’t think that fact should disqualify my opinion on the discussion surrounding the elimination of wrestling. I don’t have a problem with wrestling as a sport. This isn’t even about wrestling as an event. This is all about an examination of the discourse between wrestling supporters and detractors. That’s what interests me. And that is something I am qualified to scrutinize.
- I characterized those assertions in my post as “facts” because I believe most proponents of wrestlings believe them to be facts (even though I know they are opinions).
- On some things Mike has written, I don’t disagree with him at all. And there are some things here I strongly disagree with him on. So, Duck fans, please don’t view the publication of his response as a condonation of his opinion. Because there are some things here that I have no basis to comment on. But just as this entire thing started, I’m going to take him at his word.
Mike, thanks for taking the time to write this.
Here’s Michael Copperman…
Strange that I didn’t know this issue was being discussed here until just now. And it’s interesting, to be put in a position where you have to defend love of school, and your personal merit or lack thereof. In reading comments on this forum, I see a lot of people who never were college athletes weighing in about what atheletics is about. It’s different when you’re one who’s offering up your body and your effort. There’s a difference between spectacle and competition. Bleacher jockeys and blowhards bellow the loudest, but they don’t know much about what it takes to get out there on the field and offer your best, and quite honestly, I can’t take their criticism to mean much.
Yet I feel the need to respond all the same, because I’ve never backed down from a fight, and because I’m a better writer than I ever was a wrestler. With these words, I can say anything– and what I choose to say, I mean.
In the last four years I’ve spent teaching at the UO and living in Eugene I’ve been disappointed in what I saw. On the one hand, there’s been a movement toward valuing only what’s flashy and popular and will bring the university publicity, both within the athletic department and in the University as a whole. That has occurred in large part because of the situation that the University is in– we don’t make higher education a priority in the nation and the state. As an educator, I find that problematic. As a kid who grew up an Oregon fan, and as a former Pac-10 wrestler, I also found the situation troubling even before the decision to cut wrestling. Something about that billboard with the volume bar, about the Autzen with that huge O like two linked swooshes is distasteful, and gets away from what I loved about Oregon football growing up, back in the Rich Brooks era. None of it seems to be about competition, not competition first, not what I called in my article the ‘unequivocal striving for excellence’. My questions about what sport at the UO has become were reinforced over time, especially as I interacted with athletes, who tended to look to me as one of their own, who sought me out on a campus where people often assume that athletes are idiots.
One spring, I helped a scholarshiped football player write a paper using the NCAA mission statement and the UO mission statement. He was a fifth year senior who’d transferred here two years before with a serious wrist injury– he’d broken it twice. The coaches insisted he work spring drills when it wasn’t sufficiently strengthened despite what his surgeon said, and he promptly re-fractured it. The surgeon who put it back together again told him he shouldn’t play with it again, that he risked losing use of his hand. The kid wanted to be a chiropractor. When he expressed his concerns about trying to play late that Fall, when he started having pain in the wrist, the Coaches told him ‘fine’– but they were pulling his scholarship. He could get his education somewhere he’d ‘contributed something’. If he had a problem, well, he could meet with Belotti and Moos and the NCAA rep, but that ‘wasn’t likely to go well for him’. He was terrified, was a yes-sir, no-sir, thank-you-sir kid from rural California.
He told me he was scared to talk to them; that his position coach had told him he better not make trouble, or he’d make it impossible for him. The kid said he just wanted his degree. I helped him write a paper about what collegiate sport at the UO was supposed to be about: scholarship, integrity, moulding young men. He worked hard on it– it was something he understood, what Oregon football meant to him, what he’d put into it and sacrificed for it and why he didn’t have anything left to give if he was going to have the career he wanted.
He went to the meeting where the three men sat at the edge of huge oak table. He’d brought three copies of his paper, and he handed a copy to each of them and told them that everything he had to say was there. Eyes widened as the men read; Belotti rubbed the bridge of his nose nervously, and didn’t meet the kid’s eyes. Finally, Moos asked him to leave, and they closed the door. He could hear them speaking in low voices before they called him back in, Moos’s voice rising: “How could you think this was ok?” he said he heard through the door. Moos came outside in a moment. “I don’t think we’ll have any problem letting you finish out here,” Moos said, and shook his hand.
For once, someone at the UO remembered what was important.
Well, off Moos went, too concerned with what was right and too slow to respond to the demands of the donor, a casaulty of Mr. Knight’s vested interest. In came Kilkenny with two million dollars to buy his job, and away went Wrestling for baseball and cheerleading. Perhaps I have been unfair to Mr. Kilkenny; as my mother, a die-hard Oregon football fan said to me, “I don’t think he’s likely to have you over for dinner.” As if I’d have clothes fine enough for a dinner chez K; as if Mr. Kilkenny were likely to have me over before I spoke out. That said, I’m not inclined to say anything in a public forum unless I see a real problem that directly concerns the world I live in. I am a fiction writer working on a novel, not a journalist. Yet as a former wrestler, as a teacher at the UO who has a graduate degree from this school, and as a former and current Oregon athletics fan, I couldn’t help saying something.
I don’t mean any of what I’ve said as a personal attack on Mr. Kilkenny, who honestly isn’t touched by my characterization of him (do you honestly think he reads the Eugene Weekly?). I’ve let his actions and words speak for themselves: yes, he’s Oregon atheletics second biggest donor. Yes, he does cater to Mr. Knight’s interests, and those of other wealthy athletic donors like himself. Yes, his justification for cutting wrestling is disingenuous and misleading, and the addition of cheerleading really can’t be characterized as suggesting that women’s competition matters. That the direction of the modern University is troubling is my opinion, only, given my point of view. That I express that opinion in explicit, even uncompromising terms is a function of my personality. I’m stubborn. I’m outspoken when I see injustice.
I noticed that when my article was reprinted, and when you, Jay, summarize what you see as my view, that you said I asserted that “Wrestling is too good for the UO.” I didn’t say that; I said that Wrestling is too decent, by which I mean it is too pure, only about the essence of competition and sacrifice, and consequently, is disconnected from private or corporate ties. I also hold that it’s not tawdry, not like the decision of a couple older gentlemen to create a funded ‘cheer squad’, especially when that ‘team’ is brought back despite no other popular support. Why in the world does the UO need to become about find the ‘finest” cheerleaders to stand in pleated skirts shaking their pom-poms and kicking thoroughbred legs in the air?
That being said, speaking clearly about a problem doesn’t mean you hate the place where the problem is occurring. I find myself wanting to say something lefty and inappropriately high-minded, like ‘dissent is patriotic.’ Instead, let me just say that as an Oregon alum, as a long-time Oregon fan who grew up in Eugene, as a former Pac-10 Wrestler, and as current faculty who teaches UO students every day, I have a deep investment in the University of Oregon, both in its academics and athletics. I care about this university, and I believe that the direction it’s going, which has resulted in the decision to cut wrestling and the poor way it’s been handled, is wrong.
Jay, I get the sense that in your ten point ‘facts’ spread (and I should point out that almost none of those are ‘facts’. They are assertions, not facts, though some may be true), and what you say after, that you’re seeking to suggest is that what Wrestler’s have said about the University of Oregon makes it impossible for the UO to reinstate the sport. Why, some of the statements are downright Anti-Duck– those wrestlers must hate Oregon athletics. They probably hate Oregon, too, and my god, did you see that rally they had in tye-dye? The UO, love it or leave it!
Well, Wrestling has already been shown the door. If it’s not reinstated, it won’t be because of the vitriol or vigor of those of us fighting to bring it back. It will instead be evidence that the modern University has the wrong priorities, caters to the wrong interests, and has lost a sense of itself.
I would love to hear that the UO wants wrestling back. That would be the end of my writing pieces about the injustice of the decision to cut wrestling, and I would indeed feel the University was a friendlier place. Yet I think this debate is a false one, Jay. I don’t think that Wrestling advocates such as myself have been ‘unfair’ to the University. I love the University and am a part of it. The University has been unfair to Wrestling, and I don’t believe I’ve identified the wrong reasons its happened. If– and it’s an awful unlikely if– the University reinstates the sport, I will celebrate.
In the meantime, I reserve the right to love the University as it is, and to speak of how I believe it should be. I’m an idealist. That doesn’t mean I don’t love the UO.
Pittsburgh Steelers: Max Unger, OT, Oregon 
St. Louis Rams: Patrick Chung, SS, Oregon 
For all of you gamblin’ types (dare I say, degenerate gamblers) out there,