Student safety needs to become more important on college campuses than money and championships

I love college sports. I'm a much bigger fan of college football and basketball than of the NFL and NBA. It's also not just the major sports. I can often be found watching gymnastics, wrestling, tennis, etc. I'm watching a college softball game as I write this.

It's easy for me to separate my love for these games with the fact that there's a lot wrong with the system. Yesterday was a bad day for college football. It was a worse day if you're a caring member of the human race.

What happened at Baylor University should embarrass, shock and sicken everyone. Sadly it doesn't. We've seen this before. Athletes and athletic programs are out of control. Instead of taking responsibility and making changes, victims are taunted and blamed.

There is nothing new about sexual assaults on college campuses. Athletes abusing female students is nothing new. Universities trying to sweep this under the rug is also nothing new. We just hear more about it now because there are more outlets to report it.

Recently we've heard about abuse at the University of Tennessee that goes back to the Peyton Manning era. A few days ago, a University of Illinois basketball player was dismissed from the team because of a domestic violence guilty plea.

As I said, this is nothing new. In 2004, the University of Colorado tried to get high school athletes to commit to the school by supplying them with sex and alcohol during recruiting visits. That same year, one of the players, female placekicker Katie Hnida, alleged that she was raped by a teammate. Head Coach Gary Barnett's reaction, "She was a horrible kicker."

A year later, Barnett resigned under pressure and his reward was a $3 million buyout of his contract.

In 1989, three University of Oklahoma football players gang raped a woman in an OU dormitory. This, along with some other issues, led to the resignation of head coach Barry Switzer. More than twenty-five years later, Switzer is still considered a legend in Norman, Oklahoma. Winning three national championships makes people forget a lot of sins. The man who replaced him and cleaned up the mess, Gary Gibbs, is an afterthought. A clean program is great but winning is greater.

In an ideal world, a University's main charge would be educating their students. It would help them grow up and get them ready for their future in the adult world. Athletics would be a part of that world but it would be a part of pure competition and the athletes themselves would be integrated and part of the regular student population. Yeah right, no one is that naive.

Let's face it, college sports are all about prestige and money. Football not only pays for all of the school's sports teams, it brings in ton of money for the school. If it didn't, Baylor coach Art Briles wouldn't have been making $8 million a year. The money is so big that schools will overlook most transgressions as long as the winning continues and the money train keeps rolling in. It's why Baylor ignored the rape allegations for the last five years. It's also what made the actions Baylor took yesterday in firing their coach and reassigning other school personnel so refreshing. It came way too late and the cynical view is it only happened because they were caught, but at least it's a start.

So how do we make this better? How can we make our campuses safer for the students?

Universities need to make a commitment that safety comes before making money. It's more important that students feel secure on campus than a team winning a championship. Sadly, I'm sure we'll be hearing about the next Baylor before that happens.

Here's a nice college sports story about a coach leading his team while battling Parkinson's Disease. 

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