University of Oklahoma Graduate College Coin Toss
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UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA GRADUATE COLLEGE COIN TOSS: REESTABLISHING A RECIPROCAL RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN RHETORIC AND ATHLETICS IN AMERICAN HIGHER EDUCATION A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE FACULTY in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY By JAMES MICHAEL RIFENBURG Norman, Oklahoma 2013 COIN TOSS: REESTABLISHING A RECIPROCAL RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN RHETORIC AND ATHLETICS IN AMERICAN HIGHER EDUCATION A DISSERTATION APPROVED FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH BY ______________________________ Dr. Christopher S. Carter, Chair ______________________________ Dr. Michele Eodice ______________________________ Dr. Catherine Hobbs ______________________________ Dr. Alan Velie ______________________________ Dr. Kathleen E. Welch © Copyright by JAMES MICHAEL RIFENBURG 2013 All Rights Reserved. Acknowledgements Jaye Amundson, Chris Anson, Jonathon Bolton, Peter Carriere, Chris Carter, Miriam Clark, Brent Csehy, Susan Cummings, Michele Eodice, Catherin Hobbs, Susan Kates, Nene Kisseih, Ted Nunnally, Moira Ozias, Eustace Palmer, Kevin Roozen, Michelle Sidler, Alan Velie, Rob Viau, Kathleen Welch Amy & Maddux Rifenburg iv Contents Introduction ...................................................................................................................1 Chapter 1: Wrestling with the Ancients: Establishing a Reciprocal Relationship Between Rhetoric and Athletics ..................................................................................29 Interchapter #1: Myron L. Rolle..................................................................................68 Chapter 2: Play Literacy, Textual Problems: The Dangers of Multimodal Rhetoric for College Football and Basketball Players .....................................................................71 Interchapter #2: Prentice Gautt..................................................................................118 Chapter 3: Embodying the Sophists, Distributing the Play: Tracing Trajectories of Literate Activity in College Football.........................................................................122 Interchapter #3: Woodrow Wilson ............................................................................170 Chapter 4: Speaking Concretely: What Composition and Rhetoric and Athletics Have to Teach Each Other; Or, What Do I Do With the Large and Indifferent Football Players in the Back Row? ..........................................................................................176 Interchapter #4: Sherri Coale.....................................................................................239 Conclusion: “Oh, for the Tongues of Angels”: The Rise of The Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletics.............................................................................................242 Works Cited ...............................................................................................................274 Appendix A ...............................................................................................................296 Appendix B................................................................................................................297 Appendix C................................................................................................................298 Appendix D ...............................................................................................................306 Appendix E ................................................................................................................310 v Figures Figure 1: Cov. 4 Play Action .......................................................................................83 Figure 2: Reo 37 ..........................................................................................................89 Figure 3: Excerpt from 1942 University of Oklahoma football playbook ..................91 Figure 4: 54 Fist ...........................................................................................................96 Figure 5: Nike ..............................................................................................................99 Figure 6: Cov. 4 Play Action .....................................................................................150 Figure 7: Signaling defensive plays during Auburn versus Georgia, fall 2008 ........152 Figure 8: Auburn’s 4-3 defense during Auburn versus Georgia, fall 2008 ...............161 Figure 9: Resemiotization trajectory of football plays ..............................................198 Figure 10: Offensive placards used by University of Oklahoma’s football team against Florida A&M, fall 2012 .............................................................................................296 Figure 11: Proofreading sheet previously used by Athletic Academic Services at the University of Oklahoma ............................................................................................297 vi Abstract In the following pages, I consider the troublesome relationship between rhetoric and athletics in American higher education and how this relationship plays out in the first- year composition classroom. Specifically focused on Division I universities and the high-profile and high-revenue sports of football and men’s basketball, I move from illustrating how athletics was instrumental to the rise of rhetoric during fifth and fourth century BCE Greece, to theories of multimodality in the contemporary first-year composition classroom. Throughout, my emphasis is on charting how the field of composition and rhetoric has exacerbated this troublesome relationship but is well- positioned to advocate on behalf of student-athletes and (re)discover fruitful connections between athletics and rhetoric. vii Introduction On Friday, November 11 2011, the Michigan State University Spartans’ men’s basketball team took on the Tar Heels of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The game was played on the deck of the U.S.S. Carl Vinson, a 95,000 ton Nimitz-class aircraft carrier in Coronado, California. With President Obama and basketball Hall of Famers Magic Johnson and James Worthy in attendance, the match-up between these perennial powerhouses ushered in the 2011-2012 season of college basketball. The Spartans fell to the highly talented Tar Heel team and, just four days later, the same Michigan State squad faced off against the Duke University Blue Devils in New York City’s Madison Square Garden—2,700 miles away. Again, the Spartans lost, but the outcome of these match-ups is tangential to the fact that a college basketball team, in the span of four days, traveled from East Lansing, Michigan, to California, back to East Lansing and then onto New York City. All the while the student-athletes practiced (probably) and studied (hopefully). And all this occurred during the final weeks of the fall academic semester. The Oklahoma Sooners’ men’s basketball team has a similar account. Competing against St. Louis University in Anaheim, California—the site of an early season tournament—the Sooners found themselves on the wrong end of an 83-63 score. Played on Sunday, November 27, the game did not end until around 11 pm CT. Monday morning at 8 am, the basketball players were reporting on campus in Norman, Oklahoma for mandatory tutoring sessions.1 One player mentioned to me that the team 1 One position I hold at the University of Oklahoma is Program Development Coordinator in Athletic Academic Services. As such, I have the opportunity to work closely with student-athletes during their 1 arrived in Oklahoma at 4 am that morning. Again, all this travel occurred during one of the more challenging times in the academic calendar. This push toward sports at the expense of studies is a recent and unsettling development. Describing his experience as a student at Notre Dame in the late 1960s, Allen L. Sack writes, “after we won the national championship in 1966, the Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, then president of Notre Dame, refused to let the team play in a postseason bowl game, because that would make it difficult for us to prepare for final exams—an inconceivable stance for a president of a Division I institution to take today” (para. 2). Sacks is correct; a president or chancellor would probably not make the same decision today. Athletics, not academics, have heavily influenced a university’s public perception; individuals love or hate schools, not based on academic merits, but sports teams.2 Academics have suffered and faculty groups, the vanguards of a university, are just now beginning to offer productive reform-minded proposals, which place greater emphasis on the “student” part of “student-athlete.” * In American higher education, a variety of factors have continued to widen the gap between athletics and academics. For one, National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) academic compliance mandates—stipulating how and when an individual may offer a student-athlete academic assistance—are vaguely constructed bylaws yet call for harsh enough penalties to cripple a school if an individual or group of individuals were to break one. Additionally, the pressure to build a winning, revenue-generating program mandatory tutoring sessions. At OU, all student-athletes enrolled in first-year composition courses are required to have tutoring sessions for two hour a week. 2 For a more in-depth discussion of individuals identifying with a university or college through sports, see pp. 174-184 in J. Douglas Toma’s Football U.: Spectator Sports in the Life of the American