Ohio State University Higher Education and Student Affairs Professor Matthew Mayhew has issued an abject apology after penning a column entitled “Why America Needs College Football.” Mayhew argued that the return of college football could get the country through “uncharacteristically difficult times of great isolation, division and uncertainty.” That did not sit well with some at the university and Mayhew published Why America Needs College Football – Part 2 to seek forgiveness for the harm that he caused. The column and its confessional follow-up are unnerving for many in academia in the current debate over free speech on campuses. It is entirely appropriate and commendable for an academic to reconsider his views and retract any statements which he now considers racist or insensitive. However, the retraction of such views as inherently harmful raises questions about the range of acceptable speech today. There are clearly good-faith reasons to favor the return of college football as well as good-faith reasons to oppose it. The question is whether expressing the former is now unacceptable at universities for a professor or student. Despite being a sports fan, I am uneasy about the return of college football during the pandemic. I welcomed the publication of the first column as the start of a possible (and needed) debate on the question and the underlying economic, social, racial and academic issues.
In the original column, Mayhew and graduate Musbah Shaheed wrote:
This election season has demonstrated how stifled, polarized and dangerous our political differences have become, and college football can remind us of respect — even in the wake of deep disagreement. We can root for different teams, scream at the players, argue with the refs and question the coaches, but win or lose, at the end of the day, we leave the stadium, watch party or tailgate with a sense of respect for the game and the athletes that train so hard, leaving it all out on the field every time. Indeed, if a player is injured, the entire stadium usually applauds, not just fans from one team.
Many have found the return of football and baseball to be a huge emotional boast during this long isolation. However, the column apparently led to the backlash and Mayhew’s apology that “I was wrong. And even worse, I was uninformed, ignorant and harm inducing.”
I am struggling to find the words to communicate the deep ache for the damage I have done. I don’t want to write anything that further deepens the pain experienced by my ignorance related to Black male athletes and the Black community at any time, but especially in light of the national racial unrest. I also don’t want to write anything that suggests that antiracist learning is quick or easy. This is the beginning of a very long process, one that started with learning about the empirical work related to Black college football athletes.
Mayhew then thanks academics Donna Ford, Joy Gaston Gayles, and Gilman Whiting, for “their willingness” to work with him on these issues and his education.
There are very compelling arguments against resuming college football during the pandemic. This includes the concern that the college environment lends itself to more risky or less compliant conduct. Indeed, Mayhew and Shaheed stressed that they was only supporting the return to the season if it was done safely:
To be clear, we are not suggesting that athletes put their lives or their health at risk for the sake of entertainment: players, coaches and fans should strictly adhere to safety guidelines. And to be clear, we frankly hated writing this piece. As higher education experts, we routinely scrutinize and criticize colleges and universities for placing too much emphasis on athletics, and it pains us to admit that college football may play a starring role in the political theater of American life.
As an academic, I am concerned with the inherent conflict in schools barring group meetings and events while permitting football games and practices. I am also concerned over whether these students will feel pressure to participate or lose their scholarships or benefits if they do not. There are also compelling arguments that the risks can be addressed as Major League Baseball and the National Football League have done. We have seen the successful use of precautions at the National Basketball Association which are being cited as a model for such events. However, academics should be free to write on both sides. A professor could view the football season as something with great value for society during this period and also something that can be done safely. That view should not be “harm inducing,” even if others disagree.
From a free speech perspective, the characterization of such a column as harmful is concerning. Notably, the second column was authored only by Mayhew, leaving student Musbah Shaheed in a difficult, if not precarious, position of not retracting a column that Mayhew now says was harmful. As someone who may want to go into teaching, there is obviously a concern that this could be used against him in seeking positions given the position of his co-author. Mayhew mentions Shaheed but he is fairly ambiguous on what specifically in his original column was racist. What he is clear about is that arguing for the resumption of the season was offensive and hurtful and should never have been written:
“To all communities of color and especially the Black community, I am sorry for causing pain by ignoring yours. I really hate the idea of hurting anyone. I hate that I have done this: if I had not ignored the pain of so many, this article would have never been written.”
Mayhew notes that the harm includes “that my students have to carry my ignorant racist energy with them at all times.” Mayhew treats the entire column as harmful not any particular line or statement that should have been changed. Yet, isn’t it possible to favor the resumption of college football and not be racist or harmful to people of color? Indeed, many athletes and commentators of all races have supported the move.
Many colleges and universities have curtailed free speech or barred controversial speakers by claiming that opposing views are harm inducing for some students or faculty. Public confessions of racism has become common around the country. The greater harm is the chilling effect on speech and the rising intolerance for opposing views.
The professor has offered a ritual recantation, similar to those made by enemies of the revolution during the Soviet purge trials and the Chinese Cultural Revolution. It conforms to the dictates of identitarian politics and cancel culture, but it says nothing about college sports or the wisdom of playing during the current epidemic.
Recent efforts to form a labor union by those who play college football suggests that the sport exploits all those who play it, not only blacks. To reduce college football to a racist activity replaces a complex reality with a simplistic and incomplete analysis which does little to address the problems inherent in the relationship between college administrations, college football coaches, and the young men who play it.
The question of whether to play sports and carry on other activities during an epidemic is also complex. Almost as many Americans have now died of COVID-19 as of the Asian Flu in 1957 (adjusting for increase in population, the Asian Flu killed 215,000 Americans), but we did not blame politicians for those deaths, nor did we hand the country over to the tender care of physicians and public health experts with no experience in governance. In 1968-69, 100,000 Americans (170,000 adjusted for population) died of Hong Kong flu, but the world did not lock down (a term coined during the prison riots of the late 1960s), so athletes in Mexico City were able to raise their fists in a black power salute and the concert at Woodstock had a large audience the following year.
To decide whether to play football during the current epidemic requires a serious discussion of the virus and its effects. But instead of a serious discussion by a variety of experts, we have been treated to nine months of anecdotes, appeals to our emotions, and injunctions to listen to a small group of experts and to obey the authorities, and not to question either. Our media have functioned as echo chambers in which experts who agree with one another talk to journalists who repeat what they say. We have heard the views of Neil Ferguson of Imperial College, who panicked Johnson and Trump with his flawed model, which has proven to be completely useless; and we have listened to Dr. Fauci tell us face masks were useless, but absolutely necesssary. But the media in both countries have ignored the findings of Carl Heneghan and his colleagues at the Centre for Evidence Based Medicine at Oxford and those doctors at Stanford and other American and British universities who disagree with the experts who have echoed Ferguson and Fauci. There is no such thing as “the” science; there is only science, which is a process of constant testing, not settled dogma.
Official statistics from the United States, Britain, Sweden, and elsewhere suggest that the virus has been deadly for many over the age of 60, with as many as 75 percent of the dead from those older than 65, and half of those who have died of (or with) the virus had already reached or exceeded the average age of life expectancy. It also appears to be lethal for those with serious underlying health conditions, but it does not seem to kill the young , nor does it appear to kill those over the age of 60 who are healthy. But it has not killed 75 percent of those over 60, and many of those listed as dying of the disease, have died with it — from other causes. How many, we do not know because nobody has compiled those statistics. But it is now clear that the original estimates that morbidity might be as high as 5 percent have been revised to somewhere between 0.3 and 0.5 percent. Again, we do not know because each country collects data differently, and we do not have reliable large-scale studies. But it seems clear that the virus is not as lethal as first thought, and the average age of those infected has fallen by thirty years, perhaps expalining the increase in confirmed cases but no corresponding increase in either hospitalizations or deaths.
The sad reality is that the older we get, the fewer years we have left, and we become susceptible to serious complications from infections we would have survived easily when we were younger. As an old guy with underlying conditions, I am very aware of this, but I see no reason to spend my declining years locked in a room nor to lock down the young and the healthy. Students and college athletes are rarely over the age of 60 and the vast majority have many years to live before they exhaust their life expectancy. Consequently, their risk of death or debilitating complications from the virus should be very low unless they have a serious underlying condition. If they do, they can decide whether and how to protect themselves.
If there is little reason to close colleges and universities or to keep football players off the field, it would seem that the professor’s earlier argument in favor of playing football was was more carefully reasoned than his later admission that he needs a lengthy course of re-education regarding race.
Of course, if they play football, coaching will be more challenging because an unpredictable number of team members will be under quarantine on any given weekend, and the members of the backfield wil be hard-pressed to perform well if the offensive line is in self-isolation. These are certainly questions that relate to the virus, but neither can be resolved by “anti-racist learning,” although they can be avoided by cancelling the entire season.
I would miss college football if they did so, but I would understand. What I do not understand is applauding someone who has been bullied into reveresing an opinion. Bullying is not free speech, it is intimidation; and a coerced confession is not an admission of guilt, it is an act made under duress.
Solution is an affirmative action plan for poorly qualified whites to play college football.
How ridiculous that his column resulted in the overreaction and his feeling the need to (or being pushed into) apologizing. People need to grow a spine and rejection pressure to apologize. Last I checked, this is not China or North Korea.
Here’s an idea: reconstitute college consequential sports teams as private business corporations. Rent out the facilities to them and let them recruit anyone they care to and pay their players market rates. Reconstitute other sports teams as private clubs financed by dues, donations, and endowment income. Rent out facilities to them. Allow students and institutional employees to use the facilities as a perquisite (when the paying customers haven’t booked them).
He’s a poltroon.
These apologies remind me when the Chinese would be forced to stand before their community apologizing for something the state didn’t agree with. Then they would be paraded around wearing dunce caps and signs around their necks. Is that the direction we’re headed?
Maybe those who criticize football because too many blacks play the sport should ask the players if they want football shut down? I bet they answer HELL NO! It is 1 way they can break the bonds of poverty and lead a much better life. And you shi*s want to take that away from them only to make them more dependent on your ‘slave system’? Give me a break and go back to doing your deep dive in a pit toilet.
The schools that have inter collegiate sports teams are pit pools.
“I was wrong. And even worse, I was uninformed, ignorant and harm inducing.” Ironically, this perfectly describes his apology.
Anybody who is harmed by his initial opinion needs HELP. These leftist indoctrination camp colleges are mentally and spiritually crippling the impressionable kids that attend. THOSE professors are the ones who need to write cringe-worthy apologies.
This so called Academic would normally be a ‘stand-up’ person, believing in what he/she says, after having thought through the issue(s). Being a ‘stand-up’ person usually means that you are a principled in morality, & ethics, and have made up your mind. What it doesn’t mean, especially as a Academic, is that you will change your mind because people of other of other beliefs pressure to change your mind.
Professor Mayhew, I give you a GRADE OF F.
You have earned a GRADE OF F for insincerity, for lack of style, and for not actually believing in what you say.
BTW, when will your next opinion on this subject be coming from you? Isn’t this a case of Stare Decisis?
What a creep. Boycott his classes!
Being offended is a choice. People who choose to be offended are usually extremely intolerant.
We have all done/said things that we regret.
Mr. Mayhew has given himself a doozie to regret later in life.
I doubt if his children and family will cite him as an example as they look back.
All-in-all, as clear a picture of cravenness as we are likely to see.
We don’t need no college football!
We don’t need no thought control!
All in all it’s just another kick down the road!
Prof Turley is muddled. He seems to say that the author should not have written what he first wrote, but on the other hand he should not be criticized for writing it — which is what Prof Turley himself has done.
JT: “I welcomed the publication of the first column as the start of a possible (and needed) debate on the question and the underlying economic, social, racial and academic issues.”
His retraction/apology seems so unbelievable it falls into the category of, Trump’s ‘It was sarcasm.’ routine. Maybe the professor was being sarcastic. Otherwise, this does indeed paint the academic junta in a ludicrous light.
His retraction was so perfuse it smacked of a political hostage’s message while captors held the camera. And today’s campus political correctness is so ludicrous it makes Trump’s incorrectness delicious to supporters and murder inducing by the indoctrinated left. After all, Mexican are rapists, white nationalists are fine people and injecting bleach is something to try.
Most colleges are not worth the cost to attend. They are run by left wing loons. 90% + college professors are liberals and pound their Marxist drivel into the youth of today and charge them $50k a year to do it. Wake up folks. Spend your money where it will do you some good for the rest of your life.
And I agree with this comment.
So because three black professors didn’t like his first perfectly normal essay, he wrote a second one built on lies. Nobody, not a single person, including himself, believes his first essay was “uniformed”, “ignorant” and caused “harm” to anybody.
Mayhew is weak. The black professors are strong. They used their power to cause him to write a follow up essay that he knows is a lie.
This is scary. I honestly don’t care if they play college football this year or not; I don’t follow it. But in this case, requiring the professor to abjectly apologize reminds me of nothing so much as the show trials of the Bolsheviks, in which the “bourgeois” were required to humbly admit their guilt in public confessions. Ugh! I find it hard to believe that such an event has taken place in one of our institutions of higher learning. I would have thought that the response to an essay, which may have been misguided – although there may be good arguments on both sides – would have been an essay arguing for the contrary view, rather than what sounds to me suspiciously like a session of “brainwashing” the professor. What have we come to??!!
We came to this in earnest at least 15 years ago. The seeds go back farther. ‘Where were people like you then, when it was still a small number and not entire generations that had been brainwashed?”, is a better question IMO. That level of brainwashing is damned tough to undo.
As much as people love to brag about their alma maters at ages the appropriateness of those sentiments is way past its vintage (hint: other than possibly your classmates, nobody over 40 gives a rat’s ass where you were educated), it would appear an awful lot of you cease paying attention to education in general once you’ve received your stamp of approval. Though certainly more obvious now, none of this is new. Again, where were you? And what do you propose we do now that you finally ‘get it’?
Right On! The Professional Classes resemble a caseload of credentialed crazies (libs) masquerading as informed and wise. Late to the game, they now drool socially approved mantras learned in the childhood of their imaginations.
Exile him to Michigan.
So the Marxist Communist politician commissars got to him and gave him an ‘education’ and he issued a public apology? Mao would be Proud of them and forcing his public commitment to continued struggle sessions.
Yes, college football benefits the businesses that feed off the college athletics plantation. and also benefits the wicked and unholy child sex trade of which college athletics funds and and from which it prospers.
For example, Penn State, the ‘Sanctuary City for Paedophiles’, has for decades operated a child sex trafficking enterprise, grooming tens of thousands of innocent children for the sexual depravity of well connected politicians, wealthy donors, and high ranking university administrators. Penn State bribed former FBI Director Louis Freeh to whitewash the scandal, and then delivered several young boys to former Democratic Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell for his hideous depravity in exchange for the early release of Pedophile State from NCAA sanctions. Newly unsealed documents revealed George Mitchell’s connection to Jeffrey Epstein https://www.vanityfair.com/…. Does the media possess the journalistic integrity to investigate the George Mitchell-Louis Freeh-Paedophile State-Joel Myers-Barry Myers international child sex trade operation?
I love college football. Having said that after watching the last few weeks of the new season, the lack of discipline in covid 19 protocols from players, coaches and referees is glaring. It’s too early for an apology of this nature, but if outbreaks occur in the SEC, ACC, etc. over the next few weeks a re-examination of the 2020 season is warranted. The new rapid testing announced by president Trump last week will be instrumental in any determination.
“but if outbreaks occur in the SEC, ACC, etc. over the next few weeks a re-examination of the 2020 season is warranted”
You failed to define “outbreak”.
Testing positive doesn’t mean jacksh*t. The tests are totally unreliable, and the vast majority of athletes who do test positive are asymptomatic.
It’s a fvcking cold virus, and this nation is full of pantywaists who are either terrified of their own shadow, or are purposefully adhering to a BS narrative for purely political reasons.
So what if outbreaks occur.