President Richard Brodhead, who came to Duke in July after serving as Dean of Yale College, sat down with Chronicle Sports Editor Jake Poses last month to discuss issues in collegiate athletics and athletics at Duke.
You came from Yale to Duke, where athletics have a higher profile nationally. What role do you plan to take nationally, and do you want to be someone who speaks out about intercollegiate athletics?
Duke is a university active on so many fronts. Whether athletics is the one where I would seek right away to be a leader I can’t say—I think others would actually be more natural at first. How long have I been president? Six months. For me to stick my face in front of those who have been at this for many years would have a certain inappropriateness.
But I take athletics very seriously, and I was attracted to Duke in no small part by the combination of the high quality of its athletics with the strong sense of values that circumscribes that program.
Do you think Duke’s values differ significantly from some of the trends that have been discussed nationally?
I would never be comfortable at a school where student-athletes were not taken seriously as students as well as athletes. When I go to the football stadium and I see the statistics about the number of football players who graduate from Duke, I take great pride in that. Over the course of your life intercollegiate athletics only takes you so far in the best case, and a good education takes you a lot further.
Are you worried about some of the separation between athletes and non-athletes on Duke’s campus, or do you think that is a natural separation?
When any group of people share a deep dedication to something, they inevitably spend lots of time together—their commitments drive them closer together. If you find student-athletes spending a lot of time together, there is no surprise in that. I would certainly prefer a world in which everyone who wished to also got out of their team world and got a broader sense of who their contemporaries are. The students I know who are student-athletes, certainly every sign I have is that they have much broader acquaintances than who their team members are.
NCAA President Myles Brand has talked about getting away from a “sports-entertainment” setting and getting back to a university setting. Are there certain things at Duke that you and your peers need to rein in that have gone too far?
Here we are in the middle of basketball season, but one has to remind themselves that this school has produced teams at the highest level in intercollegiate competition this year. I think it was an under-noted fact that Duke led nationally in the Sears [Director’s] Cup competition at a point this year until Stanford pulled ahead with a cheap 100 points for a volleyball championship. I was delighted having watched all those teams play, but I’ll tell you, the people I know who are on the field hockey team—they were second in the nation—it includes people who are pre-med and all kinds of challenging and interesting things, and that is the kind of mix I am happiest to see.
In college athletics there are things one hears about that falls outside of any limit of what I would tolerate—recruiting abuses, academic dishonestly instances and things of that sort—those things have no business in college sports, and colleges and universities have an important role to take in asserting the joint values of scholar and athlete and of education and athletics. I have not found anybody at Duke to quarrel with me about this. When I speak to [Athletic Director] Joe Alleva or any of the coaches I find that that is there thought as well.
Then of course you come into questions of emphasis. When Duke accepts a student-athlete we have to think of them as a student as well as an athlete and we have support them as a student as well as an athlete, and we have to define their aspirations for success in academic terms as well as athletic terms.
Are you worried that your view is not necessarily the same views that the coaches have. Do some coaches consider them athletes first and compromise certain academic issues, and even their social lives, for the good of the team or the pressure of winning?
Since the day when I myself was a student, college athletics have changed a lot and they haven’t only changed in the world of very high visibility sports and very high visibility teams. There has been a professionalization of college athletics that is true of every sport.
The most minor sport, not that I consider any of them minor, the amount of time people spend practicing, the amount of specialized training and coaching people have before college—these things have come a very long way. In such a world you have to figure serious athletes go to places where the coaches take athletics seriously. I do think, though, that every conversation I have had with people in the Athletics Department administration and with the coaches that everyone understands that what is important here is the balance of multiple values rather than the absolute dominance of one.
Would you be against moves like adding a title game in football or an extended playoff?
I begin to answer that by asking on what grounds would one decide. At the press conference at the end of the Lakers business on July 1, I said something to which Coach K nodded his head vigorously. I said that in a college and university setting, no matter how good your team, basketball will only be a relative value, not an absolute one. Part of the interest in coaching college and not the pros is getting the proportion of different values right.
It seems to me that if there were no other considerations, who would care if there were 40 football games? But the trouble is that in academic terms you run up against exam schedules, you run up against the particulars of the ends of the term, you run up against the physically taxing nature of certain sports that produce extra injuries the longer you play.
The price of college athletics has been another hot-button issue as some have reported that athletic budgets are growing at twice the rate of other expenses at universities. Is that the case at Duke?
Lets put it this way: Athletics isn’t cheap. And one of the things that Myles Brand has said is that although general public thinks that athletics are a source of great revenue they are also a source of considerable cost.
You talked about the pride of being No. 1 in the Director’s Cup, but several years ago Duke decided that winning the Director’s Cup was not an attainable goal right now. Do you think that in the next five or 10 years that philosophy on athletics can change, and Duke can go after the Director’s Cup?
You are never going to hear me say that my highest goal for this University is to win a national athletics cup across all sports. I have lost my voice totally at sports competitions. I have been to lots of different sports since I have been here—I’ve been to wrestling and it is one of the places where you see the nature of what disciplined skill looks like. It is a beautiful, beautiful thing.
But I think of athletics as a very important value but not the absolute value. I don’t believe that Duke should seek to be uncompetitive in a wide variety of sports, and as I say, I just loved it this fall when we were out in front in men’s soccer, women’s soccer, women’s cross country and field hockey—that is a lot of fall sports to be out in front in.
I have admitted to you that I do take considerable pleasure in being the president of a university that scores so high. On the other hand you are never going to come in here and find that I am trying to re-organize the University for the sole purpose of athletics.
What are some of the differences between Duke and Yale on the athletics side?
The kind of things that are discussed at a school like Yale and Duke are not that different. One of the serious sources of concern is as the level of athleticism rises in college athletes, how are you going to encourage people to know when enough is enough? If you spend four hours a day, if you spend five hours a day, if you spend six hours a day, when have you reached the point where that is not wise?
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.