Fantastic Four No. 2 “The Fantastic Four Meet the Skrulls from Outer Space” Published: September 1961 Story: Stan Lee and Jack Kirby Pencils: Kirby Script: Lee Inks: George Klein (uncredited) Cover: Kirby and Klein
Synopsis:
One by one, members of the Fantastic Four are shown engaged in acts of vandalism and theft: The Thing demolishes an off-shore oil rig, the Invisible Girl steals a diamond, the Human Torch melts a statue and Mr. Fantastic stretches into a power plant to switch off New York’s electricity. The four are revealed to be Skrulls, shape-shifting aliens who are framing the Fantastic Four as a prelude to their invasion of Earth. The real Fantastic Four are taken prisoner by the US Army, but the FF quickly escape the cells specially designed to hold them.
Now free, the FF devise a plan for the Human Torch to attack a rocket in order to flush out the Skrulls. The plan works, and once Johnny reaches the aliens’ headquarters, he sends a flare to attract the rest of the team who quickly subdue the Skrulls. The team then uses the Skrulls’ space craft (disguised as one of New York’s ubiquitous water towers) to fly to the orbiting mother ship, where, while masquerading as the four invading Skrulls, they present the Skrull commander evidence of the terrible monsters ready to defend Earth (in reality, images clipped from Marvel comics). Terrified, the Skrulls flee, and the FF return to Earth where they clear their name and pacify the remaining Skrulls by hypnotizing them into believing they’re cows.
Meet the Skrulls!
What’s going on here?
The introduction of the Skrulls is the most significant development in the Fantastic Four’s second issue. While a lot of Marvel’s Silver Age villains appeared once or twice, only to vanish in obscurity, the Skrulls go on to become a major part of the Marvel universe. The basics are all laid out here: they’re a war-like race bent on conquering Earth, and will use their shape-shifting powers to infiltrate human society. Over the years the Skrulls become one of the three major alien empires, with the Kree and Shi’ar, that feature across the Marvel line. Some Skrulls receive individual identities, including various members of the Skrull royal family. At one point it’s revealed that Johnny Storm is married not to Alicia Masters but to Lyja, a Skrull in disguise, and Hulkling, a young hero, is the product of a Skrull-Kree romance. A Skrull incursion became a major cross over event in 2008 (called Secret Invasion, naturally enough), and Skrulls played a major part in 2019s Captain Marvel movie.
The Skrulls of Secret Invasion
The Skrulls are classic Silver Age villains—literally little green men from space—and products of Cold War paranoia, with the menace Communist infiltration is a recurrent theme throughout science fiction. Their shape shifting makes them potent characters and it’s not hard to see what Lee and other writers would return to them again and again.
Anything else of note?
Stan and Jack are still figuring out what the Fantastic Four are. While their individual identities are clearly established, a lot of the team’s familiar trappings—their uniforms, their gadgets, their headquarters—won’t appear until next issue. Instead, they’re dressed as civilians, they’re hanging out in an “isolated hunting lodge,” of all places, and a text block refers to them meeting at “one of the Fantastic Four’s many secret apartment hideouts.” I’m not sure those hideouts every reappear. At this early stage, it’s not quite clear if Lee and Kirby want these characters to be superheroes, or perhaps a band of super spies, like 007.
Ye olde FF hunting lodge
Despite this being just their second issue, the Fantastic Four are apparently quite famous, and the various imposters are identified by their code names by the public.
The torment of the Thing
Ben Grimm’s anguish at being a monster is again on display, as it will be almost every issue for the next 60 years.
This issue also has him briefly changing back to human form as the FF again passes through “the radiation belt” (not cosmic rays), as they return to Earth from the Skrull ship in orbit. Over the years the FF go to space a lot, but I’m not aware of this happening regularly.
They’re fighting again
Another ongoing feature is Ben fighting with his teammates:
The sexist sixties
Sue is again portrayed as a helpless bystander:
Trapped!
This is the first time the FF are caged in cells designed to neutralize their powers (and which they eventually outwit) but it won’t be the last. This device appears frequently over the years.
Let’s talk about us
Reed’s use of Marvel comics (specifically “Strange tales” and “Journey into Mystery”) to fool the Skrulls is the beginning of a long tradition of Stan and Jack bending the fourth wall by inserting Marvel and its creators into their stories. The in-universe explanation, later retconned, of why this works is that the war-like Skrulls have no tradition of representational art and couldn’t perceive that the images were illustrations.
Dig that Kirby Krackle
Jack delivers some great art in this issue. Here’s a great panel of the army advancing to arrest the FF:
Bashful Benjamin Grimm gets his own pin-up at the end of the comic, the first in what becomes an ongoing feature. Note the careful qualification “the strongest man-like creature on the face of the earth.”
About those cows
In a clever bit of story telling, and nice use of the Fantastic Four’s history, John Byrne took the throwaway line at the end, about the Skrulls being hypnotized into cows, and built a great horror story around it in 1983’s Fantastic Four Annual 17. The story essentially asks, what happens when an entire town spends years drinking Skrull milk? It’s also a useful reminder that despite Reed’s brilliance, not all of his ideas are thought through to their conclusion.
Welcome to the inaugural installment of what I’m hoping is a multi-year project to blog the entire run of the Fantastic Four, from its 1961 debut up until the present (assuming it’s still being published however many years in the future that will be).
Why the Fantastic Four? The easy answer is that it’s my favorite comic, but also because it’s steeped in history. The Fantastic Four launched the Silver Age at Marvel, and ushered in the Marvel universe as we know it, the overlapping and self-referencing world of superheroes and characters that, nearly six decades later, now spans tens of thousands of comics. The Marvel comics universe, of course, also gave birth to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, a potent pop-cultural force that has introduced many more millions (billions even) to these characters.
I don’t recall my first exposure to the Fantastic Four—it might have been the either the 1967 or 1978 cartoons—but I clearly remember the first FF comic I bought: issue 260, off of a spinner rack at the Amenia Variety store, near my parent’s house in Dutchess County, New York, in late August of 1983. I had spent the previous months at summer camp, and a fellow camper was Eddie Galton, son of then-Marvel president James Galton. I wasn’t particularly friendly with Eddie (now Edward, and a TV producer) but he had hundreds of comics, and they washed around our bunks. I had read comics before, mostly things like Archie and Richie Rich, but that was my first taste of modern Marvel superheroes and I was hooked (I can’t recall much of what I read that summer, although The Official Handbook to the Marvel Universe No. 11 one was definitely among them. When I got back from camp, I eagerly sought out more, and FF 260 was the first I bought.
In retrospect, you would be hard pressed to find a better single-issue introduction to Marvel comics from that era than FF 260. Written and illustrated by comics maesto John Byrne at the peak of his powers, it featured the FF tussling with their best bad guy, Dr. Doom, and guest appearances from some of prominent supporting characters like the Silver Surfer and Sub-Mariner (more about that issue when we get to it in few years). More importantly, the individual personalities of the team’s members were clearly defined, as was their relationships to each other. This was more than a team, it was a family, and it was clear from the first issue I read.
Ultimately, that dynamic is what keeps me coming back to the Fantastic Four after many decades and creative teams. They’re not a team of superheroes who banded together to fight evil, like the Justice League or Avengers; they were a family of adventurers who became super heroes. Like all families they quarrel and sometimes drift apart, but they are tied together by love and shared history.
A few notes about this project: I hope to cover one issue a week, starting with the first. This is not a new format, and there are many similar blogs tackling lengthy comic book runs (including, probably, the Fantastic Four). I was inspired by The Matt Murdock Chronicles, a sadly defunct issue-by-issue look at Daredevil, and particularly Austin Gorton’s X-aminations X-Men Reviews, a heroic attempt to document every X-Men related comic on the The Real Gentlemen of Leisure blog. If some of the features look familiar, I will confess to having borrowed some of the best elements of from those two blogs. For historic data, I’m relying on Mike’s Amazing World, a great resource.
When possible, I will take note of non-story elements that will be relevant, such as notes from Bullpen Bulletins and the letter’s page, when they appear. Unfortunately, I’m relying on my Marvel Unlimited subscription for early issues, which doesn’t include those elements, so I won’t have them available until we get to the comics I actually own. If nothing else, this exercise should help spur me to fill into the gaps in my collection.
So with all that throat clearing out of the way, here is the one that started it all, Fantastic Four No. 1:
Fantastic Four No. 1 Published: August 1961 Story: Stan Lee and Jack Kirby Pencils: Kirby Script: Lee Inks: George Klein (uncredited) Cover: Kirby and Dick Ayers
Synopsis: A mysterious man sends off a flare, summoning three strangely powered individuals: a woman who can turn invisible, a monstrous brute, and a teenager who bursts into flame. The man who summoned them is revealed to have stretching powers. A quick recap explains their origin: Scientist Reed Richards leads his best friend (Ben Grimm), his girlfriend (Sue Storm), and her younger brother (Johnny Storm) to sneak aboard a rocket for an unauthorized mission to space. Despite Grimm’s misgivings about the unknown effect of cosmic rays, he agrees to pilot the ship after his courage is called into question. In flight, the craft is bombarded by cosmic rays and after a crash landing, their powers manifest. After a brief squabble, they agree to use their powers for good.
Back in the present, Richards informs the rest of the team about atomic plants vanishing underground around the world. He pinpoints the location—Monsters Island!— and the team flies to investigate. After confronting a three-headed flying monster, Reed and Johnny are separated from Ben and Sue, tumble beneath the earth and meet the Mole Man, a misshapen man driven underground by a a cruel world. A fight ensues, Ben and Sue eventually catch up and Johnny blazes a path out of the cavern, sealing the Mole Man and his monsters beneath. An apparent nuclear explosion destroys the island as the team flies off.
What’s this all about?
The Fantastic Four was born from a mix of influences. The genesis was a business decision: Magazine and comic publisher Martin Goodman wanted a comic that could compete with the Justice League of America, a super hero team-up book launched a year earlier by National Comics Publication, a precursor to DC. Goodman directed Stan Lee, his editor, to come up with something, and Lee recruited artist Jack Kirby, then newly arrived at what would become Marvel. Who actually contributed what to the origin is still debated, but it’s clear both Lee and Kirby played a role.
The use of space travel and cosmic rays as an origin device is very much of its time: Sputnik had launched four years earlier, and Yuri Gargarin became the first man in space in April of 1961. Space was on everyone’s minds, particularly the teenage boys the comics was targeting. The specter of communism is also present, as Sue warns that “the commies” could beat the team into space (and of course, they had).
Unlike the Justice League, which was an assembled group of existing heroes with their own origins and costumes, the Fantastic Four was created together. Their origin and uniformed appearance is very similar to that of the Challengers of the Unknown, a team Kirby created in 1958 while at National (you can read more about that here).
It’s also worth noting that the powers acquired by the team aren’t particularly unique. Invisibility is a well-established power dating to H.G. Wells’ TheInvisible Man (at least), a man who changes into a hulking monster draws from Beauty and the Beast and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (and many others), Plastic Man was a stretching character dating from 1941, and not only did Marvel itself have a character who could burst into flames in the 1940s, but he was also called the Human Torch. At one point Stan Lee said he was riffing off of the four elements when he assigned the team their powers:air (Sue), water (Reed), earth (Ben) and fire (Johnny).
About that origin
The five short pages of origin are among the most scrutinized texts in comics. Over the years the story has been expanded and retconned, often in an attempt to address some of the story’s central mysteries: Why would Reed, allegedly one of earth’s smartest men, risk exposure to the cosmic rays that even Ben knew were a risk? Why would he take along not just his fiancee but her teenage brother? Why would he sneak aboard his own ship in the middle of the night? The in-story explanation is that Reed doesn’t have time to wait for official clearances because “conditions are right tonight,” and that Sue and Johnny insist on accompanying Reed and Ben.
Ben’s resentment at Reed for his disfiguration and Reed’s guilt and attempts to cure Ben have fueled dozens of stories and remain a potent thematic element of the Fantastic Four through the present. In one of the recent retellings, by Dan Slott in Point of Origin, the space ship was adequately protected from ordinary cosmic rays but the ship was subjected to a barrage of the rays from the alien planet Spyre, the team’s original destination (no actual destination was given in the first issue).
Ben’s long-simmering resentment at Reed is hinted at early on:
So who are these guys:
The first issue lays the template for hundreds of stories to come, and by-and-large the basic characters are established from the beginning, and while their appearances and powers change, the essential notes of their personalities will remain in place for years.
Reed, appearing with his pipe and hair that is going white at the sides, is basically the same confident, aloof professorial Reed we’ve known for decades. He is a bit overpowered in this first issue, at one point grabbing a nuclear missile aimed at Johnny out of the air and throwing it into the Atlantic (why the National Guard thinks firing a nuclear weapon over New York was prudent goes unaddressed).
The basic character beats of Sue that persist for years are also established: She’s demure and dainty, supportive of Reed to a fault. Her power at this point remains invisibility, a metaphor for her vanishing personality, until issue 22, when she gains the ability to create force fields. It wasn’t until the 1980s and under John Byrne that those force fields are depicted as offensive weapons, and she eventually she is described as the team’s most powerful member.
Johnny is a hot-headed teen (metaphor alert!) who is crazy about cars, a long-lasting element of his character. In his first appearances he resembles an actual flame, not the red man surrounded by flames he later becomes.
The Thing is the character whose initial appearance is most unfamiliar to modern readers. It’s not just his monstrous form, which transforms into the orange rocky one gradually over the next dozen issues (apparently Kirby found that version easier to draw) but his personality undergoes a major shift. His diction in this issue is more formal and archaic (at several points he says “bah!) and has none of the dropped g’s and colloquialisms that become his trademark. Nor does he have the sense of humor that helps define the character.
The Mole Man (here referred to as the Moleman) also debuts, and becomes a recurring villain. Although classically Silver Aged in his world-dominating ambitions, he’s given a sympathetic backstory and thus becomes a more nuanced character. Plus, he’s got some sweet moves:
The more things change
Some elements, however, will remain with the book for years. For example, they’re fighting with each other from the get go:
In what becomes a long sexist tradition, Sue stand back and reacts while the men take action:
And Kirby delivers some knockout art:
For sale
A mint condition (9.8) FF No. 1 will set you back $4.6 million
About that cover
Fantastic Four 1 is one of the most copied, parodied or homaged covers in comics. It’s delightfully silly, and has nothing to do with the interior (who put those ropes around Mr. Fantastic, anyway?) It’s notable for a few other reasons, as well. The logo, with those groovy sixties letters, will be one of the the most enduring in comics, and while Marvel will occasionally swap it out for a more modern look, it often returns. Instead of Marvel’s logo, there is a tiny “MC” in a box under the Comic’s Code Authority seal. And the blurb introducing the team promises that they’re “together for the first time,” implying this is uniting a group of individual characters, like the Justice League.
Here are some other versions of the cover (it should be said Byrne in particular loved referencing it):
After a very (very) long hiatus, I’m back blogging on Percival Henry, this time to sum up my year in reading. After a few years of feeling I haven’t read as much as I should, this year I deliberately tracked what I read and pushed myself to complete more books. And while the 18 I read still isn’t all that impressive a total, it’s an improvement over last year. As you’ll discover, I’m not particularly strategic about what books I acquire, and I’m willing to take chances on a book based on the author’s reputation, or the jacket design or because it is cheap. I have huge stacks of unread books, some which I’ve lugged from city to city (or country to country) for decades, so part of my project is whittling away the unread books in my life. When possible, the cover images below are from the edition I read.
Here the are the books, in the order I read them, with a brief review.
1, The Scavengers Guide to Haute Cuisine, by Steven Rinella (2006)
I read this in January, as part of my research for a feature I wrote for Quartz about Rinella, host of the Netflix series Meateater, which you can read here. Rinella is a big personality and a talented writer and both come across in this book, a light-hearted odyssey describing his attempts to hunt, fish, and gather all the ingredients for a 45-course feast. As I mentioned in my article, while it was obvious that Rinella is a much better hunter than I am, it was unsettling to discover he is probably a better writer, too.
2, Hillbilly Elegy, by J.D. Vance (2016)
I picked this up last year at our local library’s annual used book sale, in part because it got a lot of attention after Trump’s election and I wanted to see what the fuss was about. Vance is his most effective as guide to the the pathologies of multi-generational rural white poverty and the forces that sustain it, although it doesn’t do much to explain Trump’s election, as some have claimed and which subsequent scholarship has refuted. He’s less effective at weaving a narrative, and his weaknesses as a untrained writer are often apparent.
3, The Buried Giant, by Kazuo Isihigiro (2015)
I read Ishigiro’s The Remains of the Day years ago and loved it, so when he won the Nobel Prize in 2017 I thought I would try him again. I picked up a used copy of The Buried Giant at the Strand bookstore knowing nothing more about about than the dust jacket but the idea of turning the tropes of a fantasy novel into literary fiction intrigued me. The premise—a quest to slay a dragon set in Arthurian England amidst warring Celts and Saxons—has lots of promise. Ultimately, though, it was a disappointment. The book is really an extended allegory about memory and loss, and its characters are never fully realized but instead serve mainly to stretch out the story so Ishigiro can make his thematic points.
4, The House that Ruth Built, by Robert Weintraub (2011)
Another book purchased for $2 at our local library sale. Nominally a book about Babe Ruth and the 1923 Yankees, it’s actually much more. It’s an account of the founding and early years of the Yankees; a profile of the incumbent baseball power in New York, the Giants, and their ferocious manager John McGraw; and a fun tour of the speakeasies and nightclubs of early 1920s New York City. More than a baseball book, it’s a cultural history and I was surprised how much I enjoyed it.
5, Sword and Citadel (Book of the New Sun parts 3 and 4), by Gene Wolfe (1981 and 1982)
Perhaps my proudest accomplishment in this year of reading was finishing Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun quadrilogy. Widely recognized as among the greatest works of science fiction (and I think justifiably), these books are intricately plotted, densely written, sophisticated in their ambition, complex in their themes, and absolutely absorbing. Broadly about the adventures of an apprentice of an executioner’s guild, the books take place in an unrecognizably distant future, on a earth that became a space-faring civilization before forgetting its achievements and descending into feudalism, with the occasional relics of science surfacing as magic. The series has a cult following that has spawned websites and even a podcast dedicated to unraveling them, and I read these books with a dictionary next to me to help decipher Wolfe’s archaic vocabulary. I recommend them wholeheartedly but they are not casual reading.
6, The Girl from Kathmandu, by Cam Simpson (2018)
One of my ambitions this year was to read the books of my friends and colleagues. I think I put off reading them out of an irrational jealousy of their accomplishments, but I have vowed to overcome my pettiness. I this case, I’m really glad I did because Cam, my former colleague from Bloomberg in London, wrote a magnificent book based on reporting he began when he was at the Chicago Tribune about the deaths of migrant workers in Iraq after the US invasion. The level of reporting on display here is breathtaking, and Cam’s almost anthropological examination of family life in rural Nepal is fascinating. Unfortunately the narrative doesn’t resolve itself with the satisfying resolution we hope for, but as Cam well knows, life can be more complicated than fiction.
7, The Wanderer, by Fritz Leiber (1964)
Probably the worst book I read in 2020. Leiber has a big reputation in science fiction and fantasy, the book won a Hugo, and the cover looked really cool, so it seemed like a good bet it would be worth my time. Dear reader, it was not. This story of how a scattered assortment of humans react to a new planet showing up in earth’s orbit is painfully dated, often sexist, and borderline racist at points. The narrative bounces among various groups of characters, none of whom solidify into real people, and while the premise is promising, the story goes completely off the rails at the end when the aliens appear and engage in intra-species sex with one of our heroes. It’s worse than it sounds.
8, Truman, by David McCullough (1992)
I have been lugging this huge book around ever since I acquired it in the early 90s (I’m assuming it was a gift, but sadly I don’t recall from whom). I remember starting it when I was in my 20s but abandoning it early, since I had no patience for McCullough’s slow unwinding of Truman’s family history. But perhaps I just wasn’t ready for it; McCullough’s books are written for middle-age dads -—there’s a reason they always appear in the weeks before Father’s Day—and I am now the target demographic. It’s a great, fascinating book about a great fascinating man. Truman is perhaps our most accidental president. His life, in many ways, was a series of occasions of falling up and if it wasn’t for his stint in the Army during World War I —which stamped him as a leader and problem solver—he might never had left his family’s farm in rural Missouri. McCullough is really a master of this sort of writing. It’s an admiring biography without ever being hagiographic, and is awash with anecdotes and Truman’s own letters that enliven the story.
9, We were Eight Years in Power, by Ta-Nehisi Coates (2017)
I bought this collection of essays to read “The Case for Reparations,” perhaps Coates’s most well-known work, as background for a project I edited for Quartz about How to do Reparations, but went on to read them all. The book flickers around the autobiographical, and through the introductory notes before the essays Coates charts his progression from a marginally employed blogger to one a leading public intellectual invited to the White House. The Obama presidency looms large in this book, as Coates seems to wrestle between fury at Obama’s unwillingness to really grapple with the evils of racism, and grudging respect for the man’s ability to operate in a white man’s world, in a way that is alien to Coates. Coates’s seething anger at injustice is never far below the surface, and it’s bracing, sometimes startling, to have the world’s cruelty explained so plainly.
10, Mr. Miracle, by Tom King and Mitch Gerads (2019)
I read a lot of comic books and graphic novels this year, but Mr. Miracle was the only one that felt novelistic in its scope and ambition. The book, which collects a 12-issue limited series, concerns itself with the bifurcated existence of Scott Free, an escape artist and occasional superhero, who has fled the horrors of his youth on the planet Apokolips to settle into middle-class existence in Los Angeles with his wife, the warrior Big Barda. The story draws heavily on a rich web of characters and stories created by comics legend Jack Kirby in the early 1970s, and writer Tom King has fun playing off the cosmic grandeur of Kirby’s Fourth World with the banal existence of raising a family in contemporary America. But there’s a lot more going in here as Free, the ultimate escape artist, wrestles with depression and suicide, and struggles to extricate himself from his brutal past and the shadow of his monstrous adoptive father, Darkseid. King and artist Mitch Gerads take full advantage of the visual medium to play with our perceptions, and we’re never quite sure how solid a grip Free has on reality. Mr. Miracle is a book that rewards a familiarity with the characters and their backstories, so it’s unclear to me how a new reader would take it all in, but I found it both entertaining and thought provoking.
11, Finders Keepers, by Stephen King (2016)
After decades spent snobbishly dismissing Stephen King, I’ve gradually come to respect and enjoy his books. This is the second in a trilogy of crime novels centered around Bill Hodges, a retired detective, but the real star is the villain, a creepy loser obsessed with the works of a Salinger-esque novelist. The book has a lot to say about authorship and fandom, territory King probably knows better than most, but it never feels didactic.
12, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, by Stephen King (2000)
I read this more-or-less at the same time as I read Finders Keepers, and it was fun to see King’s thought process at work. The autobiographical elements of this book were more appealing to me than the writing advice, in part because his story as a self-made writer is legitimately fascinating, and in part because his writing guidance is geared more toward aspiring novelist than jaded journalists. But I enjoyed it all.
13, Death Comes for the Archbishop, by Willa Cather (1927)
Another book that I’ve carted around most of my adult life. The account of a French cleric’s molding of the Santa Fe diocese in the years after the Mexican-American war, it’s a lyrical portrait of faith, character, and most of all, landscape. There’s no real plot, but a series of vignettes that trace the lives of Bishop Latour and his faithful companion, Father Vailland, as they navigate the complex world of Native Americans, Spanish Mexicans, and the new Americans pouring into the territory. With spare, elegant writing Cather describes life on the vast frontier and a community that seems perched on the very edge of the known world.
14, Rendezvous with Rama, by Arthur C. Clarke (1973)
The literary equivalent of comfort food. This was either the second or third time I’ve read this science fiction classic, which I bought for my son, but read on my own when he lost interest. In many ways it’s a perfect sci-fi story: an unknown vessel enters the solar system and a plucky band of astronauts is sent to investigate against a backdrop of political maneuvering back home. I remember loving it when I first read it as a teenager, and while it’s a bit dated (the casual sexism of the astronauts is ironically old fashioned) overall it holds up remarkably well. I think it’s no accident I read it in the weeks leading up to the presidential election when escapist nostalgia was very appealing.
15, The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead (2016)
The Underground Railroad got a lot of attention when it came out, and its marriage of the brutal realities of slavery and the fanciful creation of a literal railroad buried beneath the antebellum south offers a lot. Yet for me the book was never more than the sum of its parts. Whitehead’s depiction of life on a plantation was both horrifying and unfortunately familiar, and the book only really picks up when escaped slaves Cora and Caesar find themselves in South Carolina in a situation too good to be true. I wished Whitehead had more fully embraced the alternate history aspect of his story and investigated the origins of the railroad, but it feels like he shied away making that leap, not wanting to trivialize history by turning it into fantasy.
16, Gigged, by Sarah Kessler (2018)
Another book by a former colleague which I put off reading far too long. In this case, my procrastination did Sarah’s book a disservice, because it feels we’ve already passed moment she captures in her book, when the gig economy seemed new and different, and poised to upend the traditional arrangement between management and labor. Very few people today are excited about the potential of the gig economy, and at best it seems away for workers furloughed by the pandemic to scrape together extra money, and at worst another way for Silicon Valley to siphon money from the rest of us. Sarah does a great job of rounding up characters who represent different facets of the gig economy—an Uber driver who feels suckered, a housewife hacking out a living on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, a rural social worker matching workers and with opportunities— and smartly observes that gig work isn’t a one-size-fits-all proposition. By the time Sarah’s book came out in 2018, it was already pretty clear who the winners and losers of the gig economy, and perhaps no one should be surprised the one gig worker who flourishes in her book is the tech bro who was doing just fine before he left his full-time job.
17, Unbroken, by Laura Hillenbrand (2010)
Another volume picked up at the local library’s used book sale. I didn’t know a whole lot about it, other than it was by the author of Seabiscuit, it was about an Olympic distance runner, and the movie adaption (which I haven’t seen) was directed by Angelina Jolie. As perhaps might be expected from those clues, the book is a an stirring story about, you guessed it, someone overcoming some serious adversity. In this case, it’s Louis Zamperini, the misfit son of Italian immigrants who discovers a gift for distance running in the 1930s, races in at the Berlin Olympics, becomes a bombardier on a B-24 in World War II and becomes first a castaway, then a prisoner of war in Japan. The story, which oscillates between heroic, harrowing, and horrifying, is amazing and told 60 years later with a remarkable level of immediacy and detail that might raise the eyebrow of a more skeptical reader (or seasoned reporter). No matter how it came together, it was a riveting story to read and I learned a whole lot about the Pacific theater of World War II and probably more than I wanted to about the suffering endured by POWs.
18, Black Betty, by Walter Mosley (1994)
I think I’ve had this book since it was first published. I spent a summer as an intern at W.W. Norton & Co in 1992, right when Mosley was beginning to experience some success (if I recall correctly, he was still working in IT, not having had the breakthrough that would allow him to quit his day job). He had published two books by then, and I remember how excited we were when it was revealed that Bill Clinton was a fan. Black Betty is his fourth book, and continues the story of Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins, an occasional amateur detective scuffling his way through a noirish Los Angeles in 1961. Mosley borrows heavily from Raymond Chandler, and like The Big Sleep, Black Betty features misunderstood dames, a hero struggling to stay afloat, and a hopelessly convoluted plot. The big difference, of course, is that Mosley’s hero is Black and so Rawlins has to navigate two worlds, that of black Angelenos, and of the whites who employ and exploit them. Rawlin’s world weariness gets a bit tedious, but despite its age and historic setting (26 and 59 years ago, respectively) the story and its concerns are remarkably contemporary.
For anyone paying attention, yes, it’s been a very long time since I posted on this blog. Sorry.
I was moved to pick it up again after seeing Black Panther, and leaving the multiplex with some thoughts that seemed bigger than just a Facebook post. Warning: there will be spoilers
It’s hard to separate Black Panther, the movie, from Black Panther, the cultural event. Much has rightly been made of its historic significance, a big-budget popcorn movie with a black director and mostly black cast. The New York Times had no less than 10 articles about the movie in the week before its opening, touching on everything from its hair styling decisions, to the appropriateness of white children donning Black Panther masks. When Marvel first announced the movie four years ago, it had no way of knowing it would land at such a fraught moment for race relations in the US, and for the US’s relations with the rest of the world (and particularly with “shit hole” countries). Timing in movie marketing, as in all things, is everything, and Black Panther—a declaration of African American creativity, political significance and, yes, buying power—has arrived just when we needed it most.
Also welcome is the movie’s African-ness, which makes it refreshingly distinct, and it’s one big reason to recommend the movie. Under director Ryan Coogler, fictional Wakanda isn’t merely the backdrop to the story, but virtually a leading character. Every scene reveals a new wonderment, from its interpretation of African tradition, such as T’Challa’s coronation beneath a waterfall festooned with hundreds of his countrymen in traditional attire, to a dizzying plunge into the nation’s African-influenced technological heart. Coogler’s vision of Wakanda is different from that of Jack Kirby’s, its inventor, who drew it as mechanical jungle in 1966, but it’s faithful to the spirit of Kirby’s vivid imagination. Others are more qualified than me to judge how much of its depiction of African culture is authentic and how much is Hollywood pastiche, but its world-building ambition is dazzling.
Black Panther’s challenge is presenting characters and a story to match the wonderment of Wakanda, and unfortunately that’s where it falls short. The plot hinges on the machinations of Killmonger, an exiled prince of Wakanda who returns to usurp the throne, but it takes far too long to build momentum. It’s almost derailed by a detour to Korea, and a pointless melee in a casino (maybe it’s a trend: The Last Jedi had a similarly unnecessary casino scene), before ending with a confusing and implausible fight scene for the future of a nation that seems to involve only about two dozen combatants. There’s also a distracting and pointless plot point involving a CIA agent, played by Martin Freeman, shooting down cargo planes. Very little seems urgent, and it’s telling that one of the moments of real drama comes when Killmonger orders the burning of a few plants.
Killmonger is at least a compelling villain, with a backstory and motivations more complex and nuanced than those of 99% of comic book bad guys. As played by Michael B. Jordan, he’s easily the most charismatic character on the screen, and that’s a big part of the movie’s problem, because T’Challa, the Black Panther, never is. It’s strange for the protagonist of an action movie to fade into the background, and yet T’Challa never feels essential to his own movie. Part of the issue is the producers’ inclination to turn what should be a solo story into a team movie, and many of the qualities that make Black Panther a great comic book character are farmed off to the supporting cast: Killmonger is more assertive; his sister, Shuri, is more tech savvy; his mother, Ramonda, his more regal, Okoye, his general, is more skilled in battle; M’Baku, a rival king, is more powerful.
Chadwick Boseman plays T’Challa with a soft-spoken grace, but while that works when he’s in suit and tie, it fails him in superhero garb. He’s passive, almost indifferent, and recedes as other actors step forward. The story doesn’t serve him well, either, as it’s a catalog of his humiliations and defeats: He is tongue tied into incompetence around his love interest Nakia; he barely fends off M’baku’s challenge; he fails to capture Klaue on his ill-advised mission to Korea; he foolishly agree to fight Killmonger in ritual combat before he is soundly beaten and left for dead. He then disappears from his own movie, only to be rescued by his M’baku. And in the climactic battle, he is all but irrelevant before finally defeating Killmonger. With that record, it’s no wonder his council of elders challenges his authority at every turn.
It’s a shame T’Challa’s character is so under developed, because Black Panther has so much else going for it. The good news is, as with all superhero blockbusters, there will be a Black Panther sequel, and another chance to spin a story befitting a king.
This week, basketball fans witnessed the odd spectacle of a coach complaining that a foul was not called on his player.
In context, in sort of made sense. Spurs star Kawhi Leonard tried to foul the Thunder’s Russell Westbrook in the closing seconds of the fifth game of their playoff series. The Spurs trailed, and if they fouled Westbrook, they would regain possession and have a chance to tie the game. In this case, despite Leonard’s mugging of Westbrook, no foul was called (and Westbrook scored on the play). After the game, Spurs coach Gregg Popovich groused the call was “pretty obvious.”
Fouling for possession at the end of the game has become so routine that we don’t consider the strangeness of the ritual.
Consider the purpose of the foul in the structure of basketball. The game is, ostensibly, not a contact sport. Given human nature, play can get rough. Fouls are in place to regulate the violent impulses of players. And generally, defensive players try not to foul—or try not to be called for fouling, a difference—and complain when they are. The offensive player then goes on to take one, two or three free throws, depending on the game situation
But after the free throws, the offensive team surrenders the ball, whether they score or not. And that quirk of the rules is exploited at the end of games, when coaches hedge that regaining possession is worth more than the chance that the other team scores. As a result, the last minute of any close NBA game is gummed up by a procession of fouls, free throws, times outs and more fouls.
It’s not just an aesthetic problem, though, but a distortion of the game. It’s hard to imagine this was envisioned in 1924, when the rule establishing that the fouled player take the free throws was first established.
The exploitation of the rule follows the law of unintended consequences, an economics principle that holds that actions of people—and especially of government—always have effects that are unanticipated.
In the real world, my libertarian instincts are tempered by the knowledge that power is asymmetrical, and people and institutions that hold it will take advantage of those without it, unless their are rules to hold them in check.
In sports, however, where the playing field is (literally and figuratively) even, I’m much more laissez-faire. Sports should have as few rules as necessary to protect the integrity of the game and the safety of players, and they shouldn’t be tinkered with to correct some new wrinkle in strategy. I hated the illegal defense rule in basketball, think picks should be legal in the NFL and cringe at the idea of banning the shift in baseball.
In the case here, the losing team is relying on a loophole in the foul rule to do something they can’t through skill or defensive strategy: regain possession. By closing the loophole teams would be forced to steal the ball or get it back through a defensive rebound. In all likelihood, the team with the lead would keep it, just as they do now, but the games would end faster.
Fouls in basketball serve a necessary purpose, and getting rid of them all to restore sanity at the end of the game makes no sense. One option would be to give referees discretion about when they call them, and if the player is clearly fouling t regain possession, they could ignore it. But that puts even more control in the hands of the imperfect refs, and could give players incentive to commit rougher fouls in order to get them called.
Unfortunately, I think the solution is another rule: Any foul committed in the last minute of the game results in four free throws (or, if they’re not in the bonus, a two-and-one-and-one). By increasing the penalty for fouling, the calculus for coaches and players would shift. Fouling for possession would no longer be the default strategy, but one weighed against the cost.
I’m not fixed on the details. Maybe the number of free throws should be three, or five. Maybe it goes into effect with 90 seconds left, or 45. But it would be a clear improvement over the current end of game drudgery.
Welcome to the latest installment in an (extremely) occasional, and occasionally controversial, series ranking the best team names in pro sports. Earlier editions ranked the best names in baseball and the NFL. This time, we’re doing the NBA. As before, I’m using three basic criteria:
Originality. How unusual or creative is the name? Is it unique, or a generic name used by other teams?
Geographic specificity. Does the name reflect or honor the team’s city or region? Would it sound weird if the team was relocated (a major problem in the NBA – stay tuned)?
Unmaketability. I like names that aren’t designed to sell merchandise. The more off-beat or quirky the name, the better.
And for the NBA, I’m adding a fourth category:
Basketballishness. Basically, how well does the name fit the sport? Basketball names should evoke action and movement. The Fairbanks Glaciers would not be a good basketball name.
Lastly, this is not science. I’m ranking them according to my preferences. I’ll weigh some categories differently depending on the team. Disagree with my choices? Cool. Leave a comment, or even better, compile your own list and I’ll run it here. On to the rankings:
30, Toronto Raptors
The NBA has a lot of generically bad team names, but only one objectively awful one. The Raptors came into existence in 1994, hot on the heels of Jurassic Park, the Steven Spielberg blockbuster featuring velociraptors, a nasty sort of dinosaur. Naming your team after the flavor-of-the-month movie means selling out your long-term identity for a quick marketing boost, and should be beneath an NBA team. A worse option would be the Toronto Terminators, but not by much. It’s too bad, because Toronto otherwise has interesting team names: the whimsical Blue Jays, the strangely spelled Maple Leafs and even the CFL’s Argonauts (which is actually a great name). Maybe some enlightened future owner will see the light and change it.
29, Brooklyn Nets
It’s not a horrible name so much as a deeply peculiar one. Naming your team after a piece of equipment suggests either a profound lack of imagination or misunderstanding the purpose of a name. A team name should create an identity, forge a bond with your fans and inspire them and your players. Naming your team after string does none of those things. It’s like naming a team after furniture.
28, Washington Wizards
This feels a bit unfair, since the Washington Bullets, under owner Abe Pollin, changed their name for the noblest of purposes, to disassociate the team from the gun violence that plagued their city. But did he have to pick a new one that was so lame? There’s something particularly pathetic about the name, as if it was selected by a panel of kindergartners. Wizards cast spells and recruit hobbits to find rings. They have nothing to do with basketball or Washington. Here’s a hint for would-be team namers: Alliteration is rarely your friend.
27, Sacramento Kings
The first in a string of inoffensive, yet totally boring and nondescript team names. The Kings have bounced around from city to city, and their name hasn’t made sense in any of them. Since when is monarchy a good thing? Why did we fight a revolution?
26, Atlanta Hawks
The NBA doesn’t have as many bird names as baseball and football, but Hawks may be the worse of all of them. Completely generic, the Hawks could play in any sport in any city.
25, Golden State Warriors
Another bland name with no distinguishing characteristics. The “Golden State” part is at least interesting; maybe more teams should adopt the state’s nickname. The Empire State Yankees has nice ring to it.
24, Cleveland Cavaliers
The Cavaliers, if I remember my history, were English nobility loyal to King Charles I during the English Civil War of 1642 -1651. What this has to do with basketball in Cleveland, I have no idea. I’d give them points for creativity except the University of Virginia beat them to the moniker. A naming choice driven mostly, it seems, by alliteration.
23, Milwaukee Bucks
Another name chosen pretty much at random (team records say it was the result of a contest, with R.D. Trebilcox of Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin, the winning entrant). I’m not aware of any other Bucks out there, so it’s modestly original, but I’m also not aware of any other teams named for animals celebrated for getting shot, decapitated and their heads hung on the walls of redneck bars.
22, Los Angeles Clippers
The Clippers used to be in San Diego, where the name at least made some sense: a clipper is a sailing ship, and San Diego is a nautical sort of city. But like a lot of NBA names, it became an oddity after the team moved. (Yes, I know LA is also on the ocean, but yachting is hardly the first thing you think of). And unfortunately for the historically inept franchise, the name lends itself to various “clip joint” jokes. But it’s still better than the Buffalo Braves, the team’s first name.
21, Los Angeles Lakers
One of the NBA’s most decorated teams, the Lakers have labored under one of pro sports’ geographically weirdest names. Los Angeles is literally lake-less, unless you want to count the Silver Lake Reservoir (or the La Brea Tar Pits). The name traveled with the team from Minneapolis, Land of 10,000 Lakes, in 1960. Do they deserve credit for not changing it? Maybe, because the alternative could have been far worse. But even if they were still in Minneapolis, it’s not a particularly rousing name. I award one bonus point for rhyming with “fast-break makers,” as per the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
20, Orlando Magic
The Magic isn’t as bad as it first appears. The name nods at Orlando’s Disney empire, and Magic Johnson gives it some basketball cred. I don’t even object to using a singular noun to describe a team. But Magic is just so cheesy.
19, Memphis Grizzlies
Yet another misplaced team. The Grizzlies began life as the Vancouver Grizzlies before they moved in 2001. In a strange twist, they’re actually the second iteration of the Memphis Grizzlies; the first was a short-lived pro football team. Since there is some history, and because Grizzlies once could be found on the plains, the name isn’t quite as out of place as others.
18, Phoenix Suns
Sure, it’s hot and sunny in Phoenix, but lots of cities get sunshine. The bigger problem is the ponderous nature of the sun. It’s a massive ball of burning gas hanging in the sky, which is not very basketballish. Technically, the sun is moving through the galaxy at 500,000 mph, but it can’t exactly turn on a dime. (It’s also unclear why the name is plural – what other suns are they talking about? Alpha centauri?) Phoenix’s WNBA team, the Mercury, has a much better name.
17, Denver Nuggets
It’s hard to imagine a team willingly naming themselves the Nuggets, so they get credit for being creative, original and, in the context of Colorado’s gold mines, regionally specific. But maybe the only object less mobile than a sun is a lump of rock. Wikipedia tells me the franchise began life as the Denver Larks, before changing their name to Rockets. It pains me to say it, but Nuggets is an upgrade over those.
16, Dallas Mavericks
I’ll admit to my inconsistency here: the Mavericks name, chosen in a 1980 fan contest, was at least partially influenced by the TV show (and James Garner had an ownership stake). So what makes it so much better than Raptors? Maverick, at least, has some regional meaning – a maverick is cowboy-speak for an unbranded calf – and a maverick personality fits basketball better than, you know, a dinosaur. And the name just sounds better. This is not an exact science.
15, Utah Jazz
I wrestled with what to do with the Jazz. If the team was still in New Orleans, it might be at the top these rankings. “New Orleans Jazz” has everything: regional specificity, originality and basketball flair (does any art form suggest basketball, with its improvisational energy, more than jazz?). But they’ve been in Salt Lake City since 1979, and the name, as someone once quipped, makes as much sense as the New Orleans Tabernacle Choir. It’s hard to think of a city less jazzy than SLC, making the name not just strange but wrong. I have them ranked in the middle tier, but not with a lot of confidence.
14, Indiana Pacers
Not terrible, but not great either. Evoking Indianapolis 500 pace cars, and the local harness racing industry, the name ticks the right boxes, and it at least suggests movement. Maybe it’s the association with the hideous AMC hatchback, but Pacers falls flat for me.
13, Chicago Bulls
The Bulls are a perfectly satisfactory name. The name draws from Chicago’s stockyards, and sounds right. Bulls aren’t the most nimble animals, but they’re more mobile than the team’s Chinese translation, the Red Oxen.
12, Houston Rockets
Another solid name. It’s got a local connection – “Houston, we have a problem” – and Rockets are fast and dangerous. A bit generic, but not bad.
11, Charlotte Hornets
Taking their name from a bit of Revolutionary War lore (Lord Cornwallis allegedly referred to the city as “a veritable hornet’s nest of rebellion”), Hornets are quick, fierce and have a sharp sting, all good basketballish qualities. It’s a much better name than the unfortunate Bobcats, which the city was saddled with for a few years.
10, San Antonio Spurs
I give the Spurs lots of credit for originality. It’s not an obvious choice – it does fall into the equipment category – yet fits the region, and as a verb, contains a lot of action. And like a lot of good sports names, is short enough to fit nicely into a headline. The team started life as the Dallas Chaparrals, which also wasn’t bad, although a bit obscure.
9, Miami Heat
Another singular name, and much better than its upstate rival, the Magic. Yes, lots of places are hot, but the short name packs a lot of punch. It suggests both temperature and attitude, which fits Miami well. It also suggests intensity, which is maybe not a Mimi trait, but good to have in a basketball team. And while I’m not grading logos, theirs is one the the best marriages between name and image in all of sports.
T7, New York Knicks and Boston Celtics
Two names that just go together. They’re both TNEEG-SDANAs (Teams Named for a European Ethnic Group that Settled in Defined Areas of North America, like the Vikings), they’re either hard to pronounce (Kanicks?) or mispronounced (ask someone in Ireland to say Celtic) and have nothing to do with basketball. Yet they’re historic, colorful and have persisted for decades, long after their region’s denizens stopped being identified by their Dutch or Irish roots. Needless to say, no one was thinking about selling jerseys when they chose these names.
6, New Orleans Pelicans
Another bird, but instead of a sharp-beaked raptor (ahem), New Orleans went out of the box with pelicans, a big, dopey looking bird with a goofy bill. It’s very local. The team says it chose the name because “it represents the culture and resolve of the Gulf Coast region while also symbolizing Louisiana’s most pressing initiative of coastal restoration and wildlife conservation.” That sounds like a lot to ask for in a team name, but its still interesting and colorful. Pelicans also have a wingspan up to 12 feet, a very useful trait in basketball.
5, Minnesota Timberwolves
A classically good name. Wolves are relentless and can run forever, and adding “timber” attaches it to the woods of northern Minnesota. And a much better choice than its predecessor Lakers.
4, Oklahoma City Thunder
I was tempted to punish the Thunder for erasing the name of one of sports’s great names, the Seattle Supersonics. But this ranking doesn’t have an ethics component, so I can’t dock them for their trickery and deceit. And it is a great name: it evokes big storms rolling across the prairie, and thunderous dunks. Yeah, it’s a bit commercial, but I can live with it.
3, Portland Trailblazers
Trailblazers suggests pioneers, creativity and Lewis & Clark; ‘Blazers, it’s shortened version, evokes speed and dash. An excellent name.
2, Philadelphia 76ers
76ers combines a name that’s distinctly local, completely unmarketable, and a lot of fun. Like the San Francisco 49ers, it’s a name that’s perfect in Philly, and would make no sense elsewhere. And while it’s not overtly basketballish, I’d argue the patriotic red, white and blue color scheme is reminiscent of the ABA’s old circus ball, and “Sixers” just sounds fast.
1, Detroit Pistons
This one has it all, a near-perfect synthesis of originality, regional specificity and basketballish action. Yes, the team was born in Ft. Wayne, but Pistons have an even stronger connection to Detroit’s auto industry, and are an inspired alternative to something like coupes or hotrods. And the fast, driving power of a piston is an exact match for the speed of basketball. Even the motion evokes dribbling. Pistons does pretty much everything a team name should, and does it with panache.
If there was one moment in the Feb. 11 Democratic debate that crystallized the difference between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton for me, it was when Clinton name dropped Henry Kissinger, noting with pride that he approved of the job she did at the State Department. For most progressives, Henry Kissinger is a war criminal who has successfully evaded prosecution. If Clinton wanted to present her liberal bona fides, she undermined them with that off-hand remark. But for Clinton, Kissinger is a respected figure, an icon of the Washington establishment that she has been part of for decades.
Here’s the thing: even though Clinton is very much a creature of official Washington, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Governing is about making comprises and cutting deals. Ideology is important, but not if it gets in the way of progress. Clinton may be chummy with venomous snakes like Kissinger, Lloyd Blankfein, and Jamie Dimon, but I also believed her when she says she will fight for the rights of women, children and minorities. Her strategy is that of the insider, making small deals that will yield incremental improvements. In our current political landscape, that may be the most effective way forward. I remember when Obama was fumbling through the creation of Obamacare, and thinking Clinton would be much better at the horse trading it required.
Sanders, on the other hand, is an ideologue who has lived a political life on the fringes. I doubt he’s ever been invited to the same parties as Kissinger, which is why Clinton looks so compromised next to him. It’s hard to see him cutting small deals. He wants to burn the establishment to the ground, and given what he’s up against, he probably would fail. But were he elected, he would set a tone that could have lasting impacts. Through his appointments and executive actions, he could introduce fresh and radical new views into government, and begin the process of a slow political revolution. Voting for Sanders would be like a vote for Obama: you’re not electing a manager but an attitude (the same would be true of Cruz voters). But while Obama wanted to build a bridge, Sanders wants to storm it.
Ultimately, Sanders vision is so threatening to the establishment that I fear he is unelectable. The forces of Wall Street and corporate America will spend everything they need to to thwart him. The establishment can live with Clinton (as evidenced by their considerable support of her campaigns) and may in fact prefer her to Cruz.
Clinton and Sander represent two very different political philosophies, but both could be effective agents for change. I’m an independent and can’t vote in the New York primary (a subject for another day) so I won’t have a say in this debate. But whatever the outcome, we could do a lot worse.
I’m late to the cult of Snowpiercer, which had a brief appearance in theaters three years ago, but has had a much longer life in online chat rooms. It’s not hard to see why. Like The Matrix and The Hunger Games, movies with which it shares both aesthetic and thematic qualities, Snowpiercer asks Big Questions while serving up stylish and riveting action. The plot is more metaphor than actual story: in the near future, efforts to halt global warming have plunged the world into a deep freeze. All life is extinct, save the passengers on super train that circles the globe once a year. Like the world of the Hunger Games, society is divided between the haves, who live in decadent luxury at the front of the train; and the have-nots, the grimy rabble packed into the rear of the train, subsisting on a diet of protein Jello. The absurdity of the situation is more or less addressed as the movie unfolds and a band of rebels, led by the reluctant, brooding Chris Evans (surprisingly effective in a non-Captain America role), battles their way car-by-car to the front of the train to seek retribution, or at least redistribution. Despite these narrow confines of story and setting, Snowpiercer succeeds through the vivid, crisp direction of Korea’s Bong Joon Ho, and has enough wrinkles to keep it interesting. The movie’s climax, a confrontation between Everett and the elegant Ed Harris as the train’s creator and engineer, does lurch into some tedious philosophical territory but that’s a failure only of Snowpiercer‘s ambition. The strong cast also features Tilda Swinton as a bizarrely accented enforcer of the social order, and John Hurt as a decrepit Obi Wan Kenobi guiding the rebellion.
(Inside the luxury suites at Texas A&M’s Kyle Field. Photo: Sam Craft, The Eagle)
College sports in America are broken.
Consider the recent events at the University of Missouri. As most people know by now, president resigned after protests from students over his administration’s handling of racial incidents on campus. The key event in his ouster was the decision of Missouri’s football players to join the protest and their threat to boycott Saturday’s game against Brigham Young University. It wasn’t their moral authority that forced the issue but their financial clout: A forfeit would have cost Missouri $1 million. Whatever you think about the Tim Wolfe’s resignation, he wasn’t brought down by the cause of racial justice.
Further evidence of the disconnect between college sports and the universities they are purportedly part of:
* Texas A&M spent $485 million to expand its football stadium to seat 102,733, according to the New York Times. The renovation was funded in part by boosters who collectively paid $125 million for the rights to rent 12 luxury suites for seven or eight home games a year.
* The University of Louisville is reeling from accusations that an assistant coach used prostitutes to recruit high school students to its men’s basketball team. “I knew they weren’t college girls,” one recruit told ESPN.
* Thousands of athletes, along with other students, at the University of North Carolina, took part in an 18-year academic fraud that allowed them to receive grades without attending class or complete course work. The scandal led to the resignation of Chancellor Holden Thorp, while Roy Williams, men’s basketball coach since 2003, received a contract extension through 2020.
All of this is further proof, if any was needed, of the influence and power college sports has over universities, and the perverse relationship between academics and athletics at its core. From criminals recruited to campus, local police turning a blind eye to athlete misdeeds, college exams that ask how many halves are in a basketball game and $100 million coaches, universities are beholden to the prestige and money of big-time sports. The tail is not wagging the dog; it’s killing it.
Fortunately, I have a solution. It’s radical, and radically simple. It preserves much of what there is to like about college sports – the pageantry, the traditions, the intense competition – while eliminating much of what is rotten.
Football and men’s basketball become professional franchises owned by the university, and the athletes become its employees.
Teams would continue to play in the facilities on college campuses, wear the same uniforms and school colors. Athletes would draw wages and be eligible for the same tuition benefits as other employees. Some will pursue degrees and others won’t. They can take jobs in the off season, and earn money in whatever legal way they see fit. The NCAA would no longer have jurisdiction over those sports; there would be no need for recruiting rules or for minimum academic standards. Misbehavior would be dealt with by law enforcement, not coaches.
Not all athletic departments could afford to pay their athletes wages. This plan would probably be limited to the “Power Five” football conferences and their basketball equivalents. Those that couldn’t pay would opt out, and step their programs down to FCS (Division I-AA). Since most athletic programs run at a deficit, that’s where they belong, anyway.
Athletes could unionize, a movement that’s already begun at Northwestern, and universities could sign collective bargaining agreements putting in place mechanisms like salary caps and drafts to maintain competitive parity.
Other sports would remain under the current system, although ideally athletic scholarships would be eliminated and replaced with four-year grants based on financial need. Eventually, other revenue-generating sports – women’s basketball, hockey etc. – might choose to professionalize.
Owning what would essentially be minor-league franchises would be a departure for universities, but it’s not unusual for colleges to run profit-oriented businesses. Dartmouth College owns a hotel, Stanford owns a driving range and North Carolina has formed a joint venture with a pharma company to develop an AIDS cure.
By making that change, much of what is odious about college sports disappears. It’s not perfect, but it addresses the four main points any solution must:
1, It keeps the money flowing. Any realistic proposal has to accept the world as it is; the calendar can’t be turned back to 1940, when the University of Chicago dropped football to pursue a purer course. The massive revenue streams – universities share $11 billion from selling the right to broadcast the men’s basketball tournament – will be preserved because the product would be the same.
2, It compensates athletes for their labor. One of college sports’ biggest injustices is the financial exploitation of the athletes, who earn millions for their institutions and receive scholarships in lieu of pay. As Taylor Branch puts it, saying scholarships are fair compensation is “like saying that any worker who gets medical coverage doesn’t need or deserve a salary.” Athletes should be able to freely negotiate the terms of their employment, a fundamental right of workers everywhere.
3, It doesn’t force everyone to be a student. Not everyone belongs in college, but, because of collusion with the NFL and NBA, the system forces anyone interested in a career in basketball or football into university courses. Many athletes have no interest in academics, and are ill prepared by their high schools for college work. To maintain their eligibility, universities funnel them into the easiest courses and invest million in tutors and study centers, yet subject “student-athletes” to punishing travel and training schedules.
4, Most importantly, it severs the athletic enterprise from the university, and eliminates the need for the pretense that football is just another extra-curricular activity, like the glee club. When a football player spends four years at Oklahoma State without knowing how to read, it damages everyone associated with the school. When Rutgers shrinks it doctoral programs, yet pumps $27 million into sports, it tells faculty and students what’s important. Big-time sports are incompatible with the mission of a university, and it’s presence weakens the institutions, financially, pedagogically and morally.
I covered both college sports and higher education for years, so I think my reasoning is sound, but I wanted someone to check my math and I ran my plan past an expert on higher education. One flaw he identified is that gifts from boosters to athletics would no longer be tax-deductible, which could dry up a major source of income. Boosters could still, of course, contribute to the rest of the university, and it’s not clear that donating to build a university-owned stadium would run afoul of the IRS. It’s also not clear that athletics programs would need to spend as lavishly on facilities to woo recruits when they could attract them with better pay.
The professor’s other critique was that he couldn’t see universities giving up on the fantasy of the student-athlete; that professionalizing colleges sports would be admitting the hypocrisy inherent in the system. He may be right, and in the short term, this proposal is more of a thought experiment than an action plan. But the current path is unsustainable, and it may be courts or lawmakers that force a solution on universities if they fail to adopt one themselves.
