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To Change Tailgating, Change Football
January/February 2012
by Mark Oppenheimer ’96, ’03PhD
Mark Oppenheimer ’96, ’03PhD, writes the Beliefs column
for the New York Times and directs the Yale Journalism
Initiative.
Extreme cases make bad law, so I am not ready to draw
any conclusions about whether Yale should fix or end the tailgating ritual
(especially because it is still unclear what happened to cause that poor
woman’s death). But I do wonder if the drinking and recklessness at student
tailgates have increased as Yale’s football prowess has lessened. Not because
Yale plays poor football, but because its games are so meaningless. Students
know that in the world of college football, beating Harvard is not much of a
trophy. So they stay outside and drink.
Meanwhile, even as the Yale football team has gotten
less nationally competitive, the players have become a subculture separate from
the rest of the school, self-segregated in fraternities and off-campus housing.
Fifty years ago, we had the best of both worlds: a strong team, and a campus culture
in which the players were typical Yalies, many of them well-rounded types who
played other sports in other seasons, too. Now we have the worst of both
worlds: a relatively mediocre team whose players would not likely be at Yale
but for their football prowess.
I believe in sports as a vital element of campus culture
and of the balanced life: my father, as it happens, was a varsity soccer player
at Yale, Class of 1967. But I believe we need to return to a small-college
model, in which our athletes are not so different, academically, from our
non-athletes; in which it is possible to play two or three seasons of different
sports; in which walk-ons stand a stronger chance of making the team. Such a
model would better integrate sports into the lives of all Yale students. The
athletes would be more likely to live in the residential colleges and form
friendships with flute players and Political Union types—and those friends
would be likely to attend games. And more students would arrive at Yale thinking
they might go out for a team.
Our football team would, of course, win fewer games.
But the average student’s relationship to Yale athletics would be that of an
enthusiastic fan, or even a hopeful participant, rather than—as it stands
now—an annual binge drinker.  |
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