Wrestling With Government Interference
Twin Cities Business Monthly, September 1998
By Mitchell B. Pearlstein

As I write, the United States Senate is considering legislation, authored by Minnesota's own Paul Wellstone, that would require colleges and universities to justify, as many as four years in advance, any significant cutbacks in intercollegiate athletics -- and to allow student-athletes who are miffed by any such cost cutting or actual elimination of a sport to appeal the decision in federal court.

I should quickly add here -- lest one think that this extraordinary misuse of federal power is the fantasy of a lone, extra-liberal Democrat -- that the Senate took up the bill only after similar legislation passed in the Republican-led House of Representatives, where its prime chaperone was a conservative Republican, Rep. Dennis Hastert of Illinois.

Exactly how conservative is Hastert otherwise? As recently as 1996, the six-termer was deemed 100 percent pure by the American Conservative Union -- the same year in which he received a perfect zero from the American Civil Liberties Union.

As humorist Dave Barry might note at this point, I'm not making any of this up.

In summary, this is how Wellstone and Hastert, by means of an amendment to the major higher education law, seek to "encourage" colleges and universities to guarantee nonrevenue-producing sports, those for both men and women, a "fair shake." Quotations are directly from a letter signed by Wellstone and Hastert, as well as by Rep. Jim Leach of Iowa, another disoriented Republican.

• Institutions of higher education that "choose to terminate funding for, or reduce funding and/or participation levels to the point of effectively terminating any sport" would be obliged to provide a statement justifying the fiscal necessity of the action.
• Colleges and universities would be bound to inform students of any reduction that "may" occur or is "likely to occur" over the course of their four full years in school "in the number of athletes that will be permitted to participate in any collegiate sport, or in the financial resources that the institution will make available" to it.
• If, perchance, these procedures are not observed, a scratched team has the "right to appeal to Federal district court in order to restore the terminated funding."

In challenging the proposed amendment, the National Collegiate Athletic Association and other higher education groups offer arguments like these:

• It would result in unprecedented congressional micromanagement of colleges and universities, opening the door to federal heavy-handedness not just when it comes to wrestling and swimming, but also to history and literature.
• It would undermine congress' own efforts to curb college costs by causing schools to jump through even more hoops before reducing or excising programs.
• And the amendment would lead to all manner of unintended consequences. For example, announcing the scaling back of a team, say fencing, four years down the road likely would lead to that team's near-immediate and total demise, as coaches likely would start looking for new jobs, current athletes likely would look to transfer pronto, and prospective fencers still in high school almost surely would not enroll in the first place.

Yet as sound as these objections are, the most fitting response to Wellstone and Hastert -- both of whom were collegiate wrestlers -- runs briefer and sharper:

Where, in all that is constitutional and sane, is it written that a question like this is Washington's business in even the slimmest way? With all due respect, guys, but are some old half nelsons catching up with you?

I appreciate Wellstone's devotion to wrestling. "I can't even begin to express my attitude to the sport," he has been quoted as saying. "I was really a tough kid and heading for trouble. This sport really saved me."

But does that even begin to justify inviting the federal government to intrude even further into the intricacies of the academy? I would like to think the answer is self-evidently no. But as witness the amendment's seeming bipartisan popularity, my confidence evidently has been misplaced. Why might this be so?

I could say something glib about how old wrestlers, regardless of party, are just different. But a better, not to mention physically safer, answer has to do with how 65 years of big government has habituated just about everyone to its surface pleasures and possibilities.

I might also say that cases like this can wind up proving useful, as they can spotlight just how wide of the track we have veered. The fact, over and above, that this is a jock story probably makes it especially educational insofar as sport lends itself uniquely to popular and metaphoric lessons.

I cite this in contrast to lessons that many people don't seem inclined to accept about other examples of governmental overkill -- for example, mega-tobacco bills. While I personally view that legislative excursion as hugely wrongheaded, I recognize that many don't concur. Maybe, just maybe, what we've needed as a nation is a good locker room story with a sobering cold shower.

-- Mitchell B. Pearlstein is president of Center of the American Experiment, a conservative think tank in Minneapolis.

(After this column was written, Senator Wellstone, because of limitations on the number of amendments permitted to the Higher Education Act Reauthorization, withdrew his "wrestling" amendment. But since a similar measure previously passed in the House, a Senate-House conference committee will consider the issue, presumably in September.)