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The Tonica News

Also, big-time college players should be paid

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Jim Nowlan an football officials I talked with, those days are long gone. Digital technology now gives coaches the capacity to learn instantaneously during the game, from assistants up in the press box, about opponents’ defenses and of stuff players on the field can’t know. And the team playbook is an order of magnitude more complex than it was in my day, when we passed the pigskin maybe three or four times all game. Winning is apparently even more important to parents than it was in my day. A losing coach won’t be around for long, as he might have been in back when. So, coaches are under pressure to take advantage of every tool available, including calling the plays and defenses. And though they wouldn’t admit it, the coaches love being a greater part, maybe the dominant part, of the action. In effect, the high school players have become pawns under the Friday night lights. At the big-time college football level, the top five conferences, such

as the SEC and Big Ten, are really professional businesses. Coach Lovie Smith at the University of Illinois makes $4 million a year and former athletic director Ron Guenther half a million in annual pension payments, with teams that can’t beat the College of the Little Sisters of the Poor, adding insult to injury. When I was teaching at the University of Illinois in the 1990s, the political science adviser helped the U of I players as much as possible. They had trouble scheduling a fifth course each semester, because from noon until 8 p.m. or so each day, they were at work: weight training, practice, games. Then, when a player used up his eligibility, his scholarship was yanked, often long before graduation. Sister Marie Golla, Ph.D., the adviser, would raise holy hell with the athletic department, sometimes getting scholarships reinstated. I would now and then help Sister Marie by taking a few players into independent studies, their fifth course in a semester. We met after evening training table meals. The players also lived in separate dorms, secluded from other students; they rarely became a part of campus life. Now and then a player made it to the pros, but average tenure there is just three years, I recall. Few make really big bucks.

Here is what we can do to protect players from being pawns in a larger, adult game. The U.S. Tennis Association prohibits coaching from the sidelines, from the pros down to the juniors. In high school tennis, players even make their own in-or-out line calls, which has to build a sense of integrity. At the college level, the National Labor Relations Board dismissed a case in 2015 brought by Northwestern University football players, who sought labor union recognition. The NLRB dismissed the case, effectively denying the players the right to organize. The NLRB basically punted, finding that most of the big-time schools are public universities, over which the NLRB had no control. So, the NCAA continues to play adult, incredibly profitable games, while the players are moved around like chess pieces. Since the schools are public, public opinion will have to be brought to bear on the elite football schools to share the wealth, paying their players a decent salary. I say, let the high school players call their own games, and learn from the experience, pay big school football players — and fire Lovie Smith.

Note to readers: Jim Nowlan of Toulon can be reached at jnowlan3@gmail.com.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Improving teen driver safety must be a top priority To the editor: Nearly half of all teen drivers will experience a car crash before graduating from high school, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) cites one of the main reasons being that parents are becoming less involved in training teen drivers after they receive their licenses and are not regularly reinforcing teen driving safety measures. A recent report released by the Governors Highway Safety Asso-

Write to us Letters to the Editor should not be more than 500 words in length. Only one person can sign a Letter to the Editor. The author of the letter must include his/her name, hometown and telephone number. The author’s name and hometown will be published, however, the telephone number is only used to verify the authenticity of the author’s signature and will not be published. ciation highlights that progress has been made in the past 10 years to curb the number of teen driv-

er-related crashes, but teen drivers are still 1.6 times more likely to be involved in a car crash than adults. Illinois has made important strides to improve teen driver safety, such as banning the hand-held use of mobile devices while driving, and implementing a Graduated Driver Licensing system that gives beginning drivers more supervised time behind the wheel before graduating to full licensure. As a result, teen driving fatality crashes have decreased by 60 percent in Illinois since 2008. The Illinois Insurance Association (IIA) and its members recognize that while progress has been made,

more needs to be done to protect teen drivers and their passengers. IIA continues to promote safe driving initiatives for teens such as the NHTSA’s “5 to Drive” campaign, which offers teen driver safety tips and highlights five practices statistically associated with safer outcomes: no drinking and driving, no distracted driving, no extra passengers, no speeding and consistent seat belt use.

Kevin J. Martin Springfield

Note to readers: Kevin J. Martin is executive director of the Illinois Insurance Association.

First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

• Friday, November 9, 2018

henever I go to a high school or college football game, I cringe at the sight of players on the field, standing as if witless (which they aren’t), looking to the sidelines for instructions from the coaches as to plays to call and defenses to mount. I fear that technology, coaches and parents have connived, unwittingly, I’m sure, to take the game away from the kids. Let’s give it back to them. When I played high school football 60 years ago, we called our own plays in the huddle. And it was a good learning experience. In addition to using our own wits, we learned how to work together and make our own way on the field. Quarterback Dan Carrington was the final word on play calling, yet players often chimed in with such as: “Go off left tackle, Dan. I know I can handle this guy.” Then we went off tackle, and “this guy” reared up, pushed our left tackle aside, and smote down our halfback for a loss. Thus, Dan learned how to measure his teammates and whom he could trust. Dan later became president of Western Union. According to coaches and veter-

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Who is calling the signals? Let the kids play

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