Win One for the Giver? Alumni Giving and Big-Time College Sports.

For intercollegiate zied many coaches americans, attempt athletics, to rousing rally thanks their half-time in large downtrodden part speeches to a charges 1940 in which movie epitomize frenthat zied coaches attempt to rally their downtrodden charges epitomize ntercollegiate athletics, thanks i large part to a 1940 movie that depicted Notre Dame's Knute Rockne beseeching the Fighting Irish to "win one for the Gipper" (former Notre Dame player George Gipp). In the years that have passed, a premium on winning has come to pervade college sports for more self-serving reasons, such as the athletes' need to establish national reputations so they can graduate into the professional ranks and the coaches' need to build winning records so they can entrench themselves in their positions or move on to even better things. Clearly, big-time college sports (football and, to a lesser extent, basketball) are no longer considered merely pleasant diversions from the important business of life if they were ever seen in that light. Americans may smirk at the unrefined athletic fanaticism that ignited a "soccer war" between Honduras and El Salvador, but how different are the passions that rage each autumn when the game of the season is played between Army and Navy, Texas and Oklahoma, Ohio State and Michigan, USC and UCLA, or Harvard and Yale? Although "the Gipper" is no longer with us, college football and basketball teams are still trying to win for the sake of the alumni. Many old grads are staunch supporters of the athletic department, its personnel and its policies; are faithful followers of the school's teams; and are prolific donors to the school's annual fund. But if the football or basketball team falls on hard times, athletic directors, coaches and even college presidents become a target for disgruntled alumni groups. Because alumni are thought to be so attuned to their school's athletic fortunes, it is widely believed that alumni donations soar after a successful season and plummet in the wake of athletic failure. In the words of the old saw, "Alumni are for giving but not forgiving."