Of the approximately 10,000 critical letters that Thomas Ehrlich received in the spring of 1988 as president of Indiana University, one of them, written by the East Coast legal scholar, remains particularly memorable.
“President Ehrlich, I am 84 years old, in a wheelchair, and I live for Indiana basketball. You can take your damn flies and go back where you belong,” the letter said.
Professor Ehrlich, who had only been in the position for a few months, had clashed with legendary Indiana basketball coach Bob Knight, and local fans showed where their loyalties lay and what they thought of his fashion style.
The tension between academia and college sports is a theme that Indiana’s president emeritus, now 90 years old himself, explores in his first novel. The Search: An insider novel about a university president.
Although the two later became friends, the character of Buddy Knowland in the novel is loosely based on the “extraordinarily charismatic” but controversial Mr. Knight, who won three national championships with the Indiana Hoosiers and coached the U.S. team to an Olympic gold medal in 1984.
Professor Ehrlich, who is now an associate professor at Stanford University School of Education, said: Times Higher Education that a lot has changed in university sports since 1988 – but “none of it good”.
With “outsized” budgets of more than $250 million (£194 million), annual salaries of football and basketball coaches at the biggest universities of up to $13 million, and players now spending more time on planes than in the classroom – and getting paid for it – it is “frightening” how the focus of some institutions has shifted away from academia, he said.
“The players have become gladiators and I think that has a very dangerous and destructive effect on the academic functioning of a university,” he added.
The former chancellor of the University of Pennsylvania and dean of Stanford Law School said his arguments with Mr. Knight, who died last year, were “very unpleasant” but otherwise the sport largely enriched his time as Indiana president.
He particularly enjoyed designing the “institutional architecture – the challenge of turning a great university into an even greater one”, to which sport can contribute.
“There really is this festival dimension – the sense of togetherness, especially at public universities, where I couldn’t walk down the street in Indiana without seeing graduates,” he said.
“They wanted their university to succeed, they are proud of it and they want their teams to win – just like I do.”
Professor Ehrlich, who has authored, co-authored or edited 14 nonfiction books, said he hopes people will enjoy his first novel and get a sense of what it really feels like to be a university president.
“I hope it increases concern and response to this dangerous money rush and the deeply disturbing search for money in college sports,” he added.
