There is nothing like hosting the happy madness of ESPN’s “College GameDay,” as Vanderbilt University did Oct. 25, to make a college president reflect on the meaning of college athletics.
I have loved sports since I was a boy in Germany and watched our national soccer team defeat the Netherlands 2-1 in the 1974 World Cup, but American sports like football and baseball were unknown to me.
When I came to the University of Southern California in 1988, I was puzzled by common phrases derived from sports like “Monday-morning quarterback” and “knocking it out of the park.” The helpful tutors at the international student center suggested I watch American sports. And so I did.
I saw USC quarterback Rodney Peete pass for one touchdown and ran for another to beat Troy Aikman’s UCLA Bruins right after being hospitalized with the measles, cinching the Trojans’ 10th straight win and a Rose Bowl berth – and sending our whole university community into a frenzy.
It was clear to me then that the impact of sports went deeper than the box scores.
Watching a big game today is that rarest of events in the age of fragmented media and polarized politics: a common experience in real time.
We admire a jaw-dropping play no matter who pulls it off. Nowhere is this truer than in college competitions, where young people who are not long out of high school do extraordinary things.
Because they are members of our community, we feel closer to their struggles and successes. We remember that they are students, learning life’s lessons on the biggest stage.
College sports undoubtedly unify a community, but they also do more: They reveal and forge character.
The ancient Greeks knew that. In Book 23 of “The Iliad,” Homer’s epic of the Trojan War, the narrative is interrupted by a detailed description of funeral games, athletic contests to honor the fallen hero Patroclus. As the epic’s heroes compete, their conduct reveals their character no less than when they are battling their foes.
These insights point to a profound lesson. We love sports because athletics are life simplified.
Triumphs and tragedies, grand aspirations and failures, magnanimity and selfishness all play out on the turf, dirt and hardwood, easy to understand and on full display.
It takes a lot of expertise to appreciate a Nobel Prize in physics or what makes a brain surgeon great. Yet everyone can appreciate the beauty of a triple play or a completed 30-yard pass after a desperate scramble by the quarterback on 4th-and-8.
At Vanderbilt, we are discovering these lessons anew with this year’s football season. Our long-suffering fans and our delirious campus community alike are experiencing the team’s best start in 88 years and our highest ranking since 1937.
Our success on the gridiron is a big change, perhaps even a little disorienting. This transformation began five years ago, when we committed to being competitive in the Southeastern Conference, the toughest league in the country.
There were many doubters – not unreasonably, given our history. Years of losing had lowered our aspirations.
To be sure, we had taken pride in our VandyBoys baseball team winning two national championships. We’d cheered our women bowlers when they won three. And we reveled in “Memorial Magic” when our basketball teams triumphed in the one-of-a-kind confines of Memorial Gym.
But a winning football program seemed beyond our reach.
Many pointed to our small student body, our rigorous academic standards and our commitment to fully integrating athletes into student life. We take pride in the fact that student-athletes live in the same residential colleges as their peers, where a roommate could be a concert pianist or a double major in economics and chemical engineering (albeit one who can clear a 33-yard field goal).
While those doubts were valid, they were holding us back. We dedicated ourselves to doing what it takes to win while holding fast to our values.
We are committed to attracting the most talented people who fit our culture and putting them in an environment where they can succeed.
We invested in people and facilities. We demanded more of ourselves and measured our progress against the tough standards of the SEC.
To start each team meeting, football coach Clark Lea asks the same question: “What is the mission?” The answer from the players and coaches, in unison: “Winning.”
No excuses. No explanations of anticipated failure.
That kind of confidence is infectious. Across our university, we are, in the words of our motto, daring to grow – launching our first new college since 1981 with our College of Connected Computing, building new campuses across the country, establishing our Vanderbilt Institute of National Security and developing an entire neighborhood designed to facilitate innovation.
Vanderbilt has always been proud of its commitment to success on and off the field, but the joy and craziness of College GameDay was an especially wonderful, unifying moment for our university community. A win at the end of a grinding game made it all the sweeter.
I hope anyone who tuned in was reminded of all there is to love about college sports – and about colleges, too. Whether on the fields outside Troy or in Vanderbilt’s FirstBank Stadium, the lessons of sports are lasting.
These lessons are easy to forget in these tempestuous times, but on any given Saturday, it’s all out there on the field.
Daniel Diermeier is chancellor of Vanderbilt University.
