BS HIGH

 

               When it comes to the corruption surrounding sports in the USA I’m not easily appalled, but that barrier was breached the other day when I watched an HBO documentary titled, appropriately, BS High. It was about “Bishop Sycamore High School,” a non-existent entity created by a Columbus, Ohio, conman who recruited some 50 football hopefuls and put together a schedule of games highlighted by a contest with rich and mighty IMG Academy that was televised nationally by ESPN. 

               As journalism, the production was lackluster. The game in question took place two years ago (on August 29, 2021) and the circumstances surrounding it had previously been published and aired, albeit to an Ohio audience smaller than that of HBO’s.  Key facts were missing or presented blurrily. The producers raised issues they did not later address, and their ire was directed mostly at Ohio authorities for allowing it to happen rather than at the (much) larger context in which it occurred.

               Further, it glorified its central figure, one Roy Johnson, who pulled off the scam without any credentials as a coach or educator and with a checkered past. The cheeky Johnson was interviewed extensively on camera, alternatingly laughing and snarling, but clearly enjoying the attention he was receiving.  Attention, after all, was what his play was all about, and he accomplished it in spades.

               In a scheme that predated the IMG game by a couple of years, Johnson cast his net among local African-American boys who had those sports “dreams” we hear so much about but had been passed over by college-football recruiters.  Using the “sports academy” model that has become ubiquitous in this land, he told the young men (and their parents) that his “school” would give them the gridiron exposure they need to crack the collegiate big-time.

If the subject of academics arose it was glossed over in Johnson’s pitch, and later. BS High never had any classrooms or teachers, and the documentary produced no complaints on that score from the recruits or their parents. And why should it? As one young “student” put it, the deal was “you come, play ball and move up.”

  That view echoed a similar one voiced a few years before by Cardale Jones, then a starting quarterback for Ohio State U.  right there in Columbus. “Why should we have to go to class if we came to play football?” he asked.

At any rate, having charged tuitions variously described in the show as $12,000, $16,000 or $20,000 (who paid, how much and how was never spelled out) Johnson assembled a team a few months before the 2021 season. It practiced on a rented field with the players living in hotel rooms he never paid for and eating whatever he could scrape up. One ploy he cheerfully admitted to was ordering 25 prepared chickens from a grocery store and then not having them picked up until just before closing time, after they’d been marked down.

By that time he’d assembled an eight-game football schedule against high schools that, apparently, asked few questions. The first two games resulted in losses by scores of 38-0 and 19-7. The televised IMG game, from a field in Canton, Ohio, connected to the NFL Hall of Fame there, was so ludicrously one-sided—final score 58-0-- it wound up exploding the whole scheme. Even though most of its players were older than the high-school norm, Johnson’s team lacked talent and plan, and several of his players suffered on-field injuries.  It didn’t have enough helmets to go around, so players swapped them as they ran on and off the field. The thing should have been whistled before the 60 minutes expired. The stink it generated resulted in BS High’s last five games being cancelled, and its players dispersed.

               It was fitting that ESPN and IMG Academy were hooked in the scam. ESPN, ever hungry for programming, has fed the professionalization of high-school sports by featuring prep games on its stations. IMG Academy, in Bradenton, Florida, is the model U.S. youth-sports factory. IMG was created  in the 1960s as International Management Group by Mark McCormack, the visionary lawyer/agent who, with golfer-clients Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player, revolutionized jocks’ commercial ties, generating income that far exceeded their on-field earnings. The firm now is an octopus with international tentacles across the sports spectrum.

               IMG got into the ed biz in 1987 by buying the Florida tennis school run by Nick Bollietieri and quickly expanding its offerings to seven more sports (football, basketball, baseball, soccer, golf, track and field and lacrosse).  Its 1,000 or so current students, in grades six through 12, attend academic classes in the morning and spend afternoons in intensive sports training under professional eyes. Its teams criss-cross the country playing games and its golfers and tennisers play national tournament schedules.

               Full tuition for boarding students is about $90,000 a year, or $70,000 for day students. Scholarships are available, but the place is there to make money so not every student gets one. While the aim of most-students’ parents is a college scholarship of some sort, the economics of that aren’t clear—just a one-year, full-tuition payment exceeds the money value of many such “rides.” Chalk up the rest to parents’ desires for vicarious thrills, the surrender of colleges’ educational missions to their entertainment arms, and our general sports craziness.

               HBO’s search for villains in its documentary began and ended with Johnson; the producers waxed apoplectic over the fact that Ohio criminal law has no penalty for deeds such as his. That left retribution, if any, to the civil courts via lawsuits, a number of which Johnson is facing.

Equally to blame, though, were the parents who turned their sons over to the conman and paid to do so. If any of them thought to visit the “school” to check on his educational claims (a subject not addressed in the show) they must have bought into the “just play ball” reasoning. Not without cause, though.   

                             

              

TENNIS ANYONE?

 

In my columnizing days I looked forward to the U.S. Open tennis tournament, which takes place every year around this time. It meant two weeks in glorious Gotham on the Wall Street Journal’s dime, my favorite way to travel. Wife Susie or one or another of my kids often would join me for a few days, using tickets to which I had access. Sometimes a New York friend, too.

While I loved visiting the city (living there hadn’t been quite as big a pleasure), I also loved the tennis. I was an avid player then, so I had a feeling for the sport, and the Open offered total emersion. I best liked the first week, when the side courts were active and unfamous players would have it out in early-round matches.  I was something of a tennis maven, able to hold forth on that 43^rd-ranked woman from Sweden or that tall, lefty Australian junior, and whatever the court the tennis was excellent. As Charles Barkley said about the NBA, there are no bad players in the U.S. Open.

But no more. Now I barely watch the sport— maybe a set here and there on TV during the Grand Slam tournaments, almost never a match start to finish. The main reason is that the stylistic differences that used to flavor competition no longer exist. Just about every top player plays the same, baseline-rooted game, and while small differences in ability are decisive at the elite level they’re hard to discern with the naked eye. It’s difficult to tell the players apart if they aren’t wearing different-colored clothes.

 Evidence of the change has been easy to see. Wimbledon’s grass courts used to show wear in sideways-T-shaped patterns on each side of the net, one path along the base line and another down the center to the net. In recent years only the baselines paths show wear. Gone is the so-called “big game,” the serve-and-volley style that brought glory to the likes of Jack Kramer, John McEnroe, Pete Sampras and Martina Navratilova, along with the puncher-boxer matchups that made for memorable duels.  The great rivalries of recent-decades past—McEnroe-Borg, Sampras-Agassi, Navratilova-Evert—were of that nature. Now it’s all boxer-boxer, for better or (by me) worse.

The villain is technology, which has changed tennis more than any other sport. Starting about 1980 the wooden racquets that always had been standard in the game began giving way to ones made of first, metal, and ultimately, graphite. The new materials created weapons that were stronger, lighter and more flexible than before. They also allowed larger racquet faces, from a former nine inches across to 10 to 12 inches, with corresponding increases in the size of “sweet spots,” the face areas for optimum shot results.

  Those things made tennis easier to play, which was good for recreational players, and boosted the power of the pros’ games. At first it was supposed that big servers would benefit most at the expert level and, indeed, service speeds have zoomed. People oohed and aahed at 100 mph serves in Kramer’s day but now top women players routinely register triple digits while the best men exceed 130 mph.  Returners, however, countered by stepping back a pace or two, and the new racquets permitted them to blister back their deliveries almost as fast as they came in. That made net-rushing unprofitable.

What’s happened in tennis has been paralleled in other sports, but with fewer consequences. Pole-vaulting heights climbed radically with the 1960s switch from bamboo to fiberglass poles, and the advent of high-tech clubs and balls have allowed the golf pros to conquer space, but both sports have proceeded much as before, only over greater distances (PGA Tour courses used to measure about 6,800 yards, today about 7,500 is the norm).  In tennis, the whole serve-and-volley game has been a casualty, probably a permanent one.

The predominance of the baseline style has changed tennis in another important way, with longer rallies making for longer matches. This comes through strongest at tennis’s biggest showcases, the Grand Slam events (Wimbledon and the Australian, French and U.S. Opens). There, the men play best-of-five sets singles matches instead of the best-of-three format of the women, and the other men’s tournaments. Best-of-three setters usually are concluded in about 90 minutes while best-of-fivers that go all the way typically run about 165 minutes (two hours, 45 minutes). 

Oftimes, though, four- or even five-hour contests take place, sometimes punctuated by contestants cramping and/or barfing. That’s inhumane. Murphy’s Law made its certain appearance in 2010 at Wimbledon when John Isner and Nicolas Mahut played a fifth set that went 138 games (70-68) in a match that spanned more than 11 hours over three days. Wimbledon didn’t allow a fifth-set tiebreaker then and the fossils that run the place took eight more years to institute one.  Such is the state of tennis governance.

Five-setters can be tough on spectators, too. In my trips to the French Open, whose gritty clay (dirt) courts permit the longest rallies, I learned that the seasoned match-goer watches the first set of a men’s singles match and goes to lunch during the second. If the sets are even after two, he or she might sip another glass of Beaujolais before returning to the stands.

Men’s tennis in this century has been dominated by three players—Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic—who have won 20, 22 and 23 Grand Slam titles, respectively. Federer, now retired, is best known for his grace, Nadal for his athleticism.  Djokovic’s main strength is stamina, as attested by his astonishing 37-10 career won-lost record in five setters. They’re running marathons out there, and when the men’s Slams grind to conclusions he’s usually been the last standing, a man for his time if there ever was one. Usually, I’ve been watching the highlights on Sports Center.