Gregg Marshall getting paid to go away reminds us college sports keeps getting worse

Gregg Marshall, the men’s basketball coach at Wichita State, is resigning his position while the university investigates allegations he physically and verbally abused some of his players.

He’s getting $7.75 million over the next six years, as part of a “contract settlement,” to walk away.

I’m neither qualified nor inclined to delve into the complexities of contract law here, but what’s clear is that Marshall felt there was compelling enough evidence against him to leave and yet still extracted a large sum of money from the school on his way out.

Late in 2020 — in the midst of a global pandemic and in the wake of a gripping presidential election that followed a monumental push for racial and social justice — this all feels utterly disgusting.

There’s more to be said about Marshall and what happened at Wichita State — which pretty clearly traded its institutional integrity to continue to employ a guy who won on the court while acting like a monster off of it. But that happens all the time in college sports. So let’s step back.

USA TODAY dropped a harrowing piece of investigative journalism on Monday showing a disturbing penchant by the people who oversee LSU football, the defending national champion, for ignoring allegations of rape and other sexual misconduct by its players.

That comes with the backdrop of college football’s major conferences pushing through to play a season in the middle of the pandemic, which is now spiking — just as many experts predicted it would. So college football players — but not athletes in other sports — are expected to be on campus and working in proximity to each other while much of their campus remains closed or severely restricted for the safety of general students.

At the same time all of that is happening the NCAA has aggressively moved in to try to neuter the widespread and bipartisan efforts made earlier this year to give “student-athletes” the rights to their own name, image and likeness.

Meanwhile, many schools, such as Clemson, which pays its head football coach over $8 million per year and spends another $7.5 million on assistants, are using the pandemic to justify cutting sports like men’s track and field and cross country — which at Clemson will supposedly lead to a savings of $2 million per year (for a department that had a pre-Covid budget of more than $120 million.)

What a system! When tough decisions about saving money need to be made, it always seems like the sports that don’t generate revenue are hit hardest. But if you dare point out that the kids generating so much of the revenue might deserve more of it, you’re told that it’s impossible because that money is needed for other sports. It’s almost as if the decision-makers are naturally inclined to protect their money first and foremost.

It’s all a sham and any serious person who has paid even the slightest bit of attention knows as much. I began to the question the system 20 years ago, as a freshman in college, when I read two books:  Beer and Circus, published earlier that year by an Indiana University professor named Murray Sperber, and The Hundred Yard Lie, by former Northwestern defensive back and then-Sports Illustrated writer Rick Telander. The latter book had been published in 1989; Sperber’s book, influenced by his proximity to a toxic basketball coach named Bobby Knight, built on his work in College Sports Inc., published a decade earlier.

Which is to say: none of these observations are new. But it should be getting harder to ignore them.

This is probably the part where I need to shame college football fans for indulging in the charade. But I get it. I went on to cover Indiana football for a four-year period that saw rising hope fostered by an enthusiastic coach named Terry Hoeppner dashed when “Hep,” as he was known, died of brain cancer. And now the Hoosiers are *actually* good, ranked in the Top 10 and getting ready to face Ohio State. And I’m thrilled for the friends I made in Bloomington, some of whom kept the faith for decades. On Saturday mornings I can’t help but think about what it would feel like to walk through the tailgating fields, where previously the scent of near-certain defeat commingled with that of brats sizzling on the grill. Having hope turn into reality after years of frustration … that’s got to be part of the reason we bother to care about sports, right?

Still. It’s not worth it. What the system extracts from athletes is too much compared to what it gives back. The push for more wins and better facilities and larger TV contracts encourages schools to consistently contradict the morals that should be their foundation.

Our collective response — or, in some cases, lack thereof — to the pandemic has laid bare so many of the issues we face as a society. It’s also changed the rhythms of our sports seasons and knocked us from the routines we generally sink into. And maybe that allows us to finally be too sick of it to go on, to say that Gregg Marshall punching a kid and getting nearly $8 million is too much to bear, or that the thought of LSU opting to ignore women to protect star players goes too far.

It’s time for that. It’s long, long, long past time for that.