Notes on a Scandal

Everything is bigger in Texas, including the non-stories.

Naturally, the headline “Report: Arthur’s Grades Altered” on KUSports.com gave many Jayhawk fans mild arrhythmia.

The story is this: a Dallas TV station, in performing its solemn duty as a watchdog, talked to a local algebra teacher, Winford Ashmore, who claimed Darrell Arthur had his grades altered by the principal and basketball coach to ensure his eligibility. This is nothing new for Oak Cliff high school, as it has forfeited games in the past few years due to academic irregularities.

The Dallas station, WFAA, clearly had a well-documented, polished news package. But it lacked a news peg.

So it got a little creative, played loose with the facts and raised all-in. The video montage evolves from shots of Arthur playing at Oak Cliff to Arthur soaring for alley-oops in a Jayhawk uniform and hoisting the national championship trophy. WFAA closed the broadcast with a statement dripping with suggestion: “the NCAA rules state that if a player is ineligible, a penalty can be forfeiture of any and all games.”

Bravo.

I nearly had to change my pants.

Until, that is, I regained my senses. The one answer that seemingly devastates the story is that the NCAA declared Arthur eligible to play for KU. It is not the responsibility of any collegiate coach to perform his own investigation to double-check the NCAA. As long as there are no fingerprints on this story from the KU athletic department, it will eventually waft into the ether.

But it does bring up an interesting topic: Is it really that bad that Arthur had a little help on the way to achieving his dream?

Now before you saddle up the high horse, I’m not advocating special treatment for anyone. I certainly don’t feel that all athletes should be given a free ride due to their ability outside of the classroom.

But we’re talking about a one-in-a-million type of talent in this situation. Would you have denied Mozart a spot in music class because he was borderline in home ec? Face it, you don’t want Mozart serving you crème brulee any more than you want Darrell Arthur working a shuttle launch at Cape Canaveral.

So what would have happened if Arthur’s principal and coach had not intervened? Winford Ashmore would have gotten his jollies by making Arthur hate algebra more than anything on earth. Arthur would have lost the one thing that mattered, the one thing at which he was unparalleled. He may have persevered and developed into a well rounded student athlete. Or he may have become frustrated, withdrawn, and yet another depressing story about wasted talent.

But we’re starting to get off-track.

What’s surprising about this grade-changing scandal is that it’s actually called a scandal in Dallas. Dallas, Texas. Home of the 40,000 seat stadiums that are virtual shrines to pubescent athletics.

There is something fundamentally troubling about sports culture today. 8th graders are now declaring their allegiances to colleges. O.J. Mayo appears to have more or less struck an agreement with an agent before half-heartedly skipping off to USC for a year. The game has gotten so big, the paychecks so large, that “the next best thing” seems to be getting younger and younger each year. There’s too much money involved for there not to be corruption.

Arthur’s story isn’t nearly as dispiriting as Mayo’s. With Mayo, it was about money, and it was about 40-year old men stalking teenage boys in gymnasiums for 15% of their future income.

It looks now like Arthur had some people in his corner, in that his coach and his principal—either for him or for the school—wanted to see him succeed in that at which he excelled. They got two state championships in the process, but part of me is naïve enough to believe that they also wanted to see doors remain open for him at the next level.

Whatever the case may be it is unfortunate that the story comes out now. Winford Ashmore should have said something about Arthur’s eligibility issues before he left Oak Cliff. Instead, he decides to wait until Arthur declares for the NBA? Very odd.

Until you consider that it’s Sweeps Week.

Then it begins to make a little more sense. WFAA was hurting for a story, and finally had some semblance of a news peg with KU winning the championship. Ashmore (putting on my psychologist cap here) may have been bitter about devoting his life to the quadratic equation, as Arthur, who can put a ball in a basket, will become a multi-millionaire in a couple weeks. Who knows?

Everything is bigger in Texas, especially the non-stories. This non-story came during baseball season, which was enough to make me lose half a morning tilting at windmills.

-Nathan Rodriguez