Zemek Blog: The Sport Without Thieves

Cutthroat though it may be, the business of college football can't hold a candle to professional sports when it comes to social injustice. For all the issues facing NCAA football, the sport is still a welcome and comparatively wholesome enterprise when placed alongside the realm of professional athletics. For proof, just go to the campus of UCLA and the city of San Francisco.

There's frustration in this world, and then there's frustration. Some events make you lament the fickle finger of fate, but other happenings make you curse a blue streak into the darkness. Such is life in collegiate and professional sports, respectively. As wayward as college football is from an institutional standpoint, the costs to society are so much greater when things go wrong in professional sports.

Consider the past week's events in Southern California and the San Francisco Bay Area. At UCLA, new coach Rick Neuheisel has to be in agony over the injuries suffered by his two main quarterbacks, Patrick Cowan and Ben Olson. Hopes of a vigorous challenge to crosstown rival USC just took a huge hit (wordplay not intended). But the simple truth of the matter is that, as frustrating as the events may be for UCLA partisans, Mr. Cowan and Mr. Olson--who have done nothing wrong--are still young enough that their lives can acquire a meaningful trajectory. One would surely like to think that these two young men--a couple of battlers who have had to endure significant pain and boredom (the boredom of rehab and standing on a sideline, helpless, during a game) during their UCLA careers--will only meet with encouragement, not disappointment, from their classmates and fans.

Hundreds of miles north of Westwood, in the city by the bay, a very different story is playing out in the world of Major League Baseball. Barry Zito, newly given a ridiculously fat (and lengthy) contract, unsurprisingly shut down his internal mechanisms and deeper drives. The $126 million man, who was relegated to the bullpen last week, is stealing a very large paycheck. What is happening to Zito--and, for that matter, the entire San Francisco Giants franchise, in what sure seems like karmic payback for all the stains of the Barry Bonds era--represents a collection of social and moral evils that leave a truly bitter feeling in the hearts and souls of fans.

UCLA football is currently the scene of misfortune. San Francisco Giants baseball, on the other hand, offers a scene of outrageous waste on a grand scale. One can hope that Mr. Zito will engage in some serious philanthropy--with rising rice prices, the lefty (cough, cough!) "reliever" can surely donate to a Bay Area charity (or seven, one for each of the years on his contract) involved in meeting the demands produced by the global food crisis. But unless or until Zito makes such a charitable decision, it's UCLA's athletes who are in a better position to benefit the world and leave a positive mark on society.

No one has ever said or implied that college football is an oasis of perfect peace and justice for all. With that said, the wrongs of this sport cannot begin to compare to the kinds of evils unleashed by professional sports. This is why college football--warts and all--still towers above any professional sports experience around. That's worth remembering in the midst of this long, lonely offseason.