NY Times Writer Cries About Alma Mater's Successful Football Season - 'Making Me Increasingly Uncomfortable'
The University of Arizona, my alma mater, has been mired in college football mediocrity for as long as I can remember.
Granted, that’s preferable to a basketball program mired in scandal, but still.
During the occasional, and rare, season in which the Wildcats crack the top 25 in college football, I’m ecstatic. It’s just a fun time all around for all those connected, be it the students, the school itself or any of its alumni.
Not to hammer home the obvious, but that’s what you would call a normal response from a college football fan when his or her team is nationally ranked.
Sadly, not everyone is capable of normal in 2018.
Case in point, Northwestern alum and New York Times writer Carmel McCoubrey recently wrote an opinion piece lamenting the state of Northwestern Wildcats football.
But McCoubrey wasn’t concerned because the Wildcats are struggling. No, she was worried that Northwestern is becoming too good.
In the article, headlined “I Miss Northwestern Football’s Losing Tradition,” McCoubrey seemed all too eager to be the Grinch to Northwestern’s football season. Currently sitting at 6-4, which on its face is not super impressive, the Wildcats are ranked 22nd in the College Football Playoff rankings, sit atop the Big Ten West with a 5-1 conference record and have an outside shot of winning the Big Ten title.
“The football team at my alma mater, Northwestern, is having a pretty good season,” McCoubrey began her article. “Once, that would have thrilled me. Now, it just makes me uneasy.”
She called Northwestern’s recent gridiron success “disconcerting” but was quick to point out that she wasn’t just another “non-athlete” complaining about a school pumping money into its football program.
“It’s a commonplace (sic) for non-athletes to complain about too many resources being devoted to athletics, but colleges should spend money on sports for a lively campus and to promote students’ health,” McCoubrey wrote, before dropping her real gripe with football.
“And there’s the problem: Football’s not healthy.”
Oh boy. Here we go.
“News of Northwestern’s triumphs now just serves as a reminder that there are real young men behind those wins whose brains are being battered,” she wrote. “I want the Wildcats to win less so they won’t play as much.”
Clearly, McCoubrey is a firm believer that football causes chronic traumatic encephalopathy. And to be fair, CTE certainly has been linked to some of sports’ more depressing headlines. But CTE is also disputed science, with its fair share of critics.
More importantly, how pathetically selfish is it for McCoubrey to utter the words, “I want the Wildcats to win less so they won’t play as much”? Believing that one fewer bowl game or conference championship game a year will somehow prevent CTE shows a remarkable lack of understanding of how CTE is thought to work.
Why wish for the hard-working men trying to make a school proud to lose games? By that logic, why not just wish for football to be outlawed across the country?
McCoubrey’s selfishness is beyond asinine. Just look at the way she ends her opinion piece.
“The Wildcats play Iowa on Saturday. A victory would put them a step closer to the Big Ten championship game after the regular season. I’ll root for them to play safe — and lose,” she wrote. (Bad news, Carmel: Northwestern beat the Hawkeyes 14-10 to clinch a spot in the title game.)
Words cannot begin to describe how arrogant and selfish McCoubrey’s tone is here.
Scientists and doctors much smarter than I am have argued for both sides of the CTE debate. I’m not here to make a case either way because, honestly, I just don’t know enough.
What I do know is that playing football is a choice. It’s a choice young men have made to either give themselves an avenue to exorbitant riches or to fight for the honor of their school. Sometimes it’s both, and both are noble causes.
For McCoubrey to spit on those causes is beyond pathetic.
Truth and Accuracy
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
