Today's NYT Magazine cover story by Michael Lewis, The Ballad of Big Mike, relates a rags-on-the-way-to-riches tale about a young football player at Ole Miss. Only the most compulsive Sunday NYT readers will have actually made their way through this dull yet strangely disturbing tale of an inner-city lad weighing 334 lbs. (which figure could only be discovered when he was placed on a cattle scale), who was informally adopted by a rich family in Memphis. This 'adoption' led to his magnificent transformation from an underprivileged under-educated refrigerator-sized semi-zombie into a privileged semi-educated refrigerator-sized football player.
The real pay-off for reading the entire article comes right near the end when everything is in place to get him admitted to Ole Miss to play football except for the fact that all his grades are D's and F's. This is of course unfair, to expect passing grades of a young man who functions as a human barricade to anyone who tries to get past him on the football field, but such is the arcane bureaucracy of college admissions, even at institutions with a strong investment in organized sports. Much drama ensues and his grades go up during his senior year with the help of a round-the-clock tutor, but it is still quite difficult to get him interested in anything academic. The family is stymied by his inability to identify even with literature that speaks directly to his own most deeply felt experiences, such as Great Expectations and Pygmalion (who wouldn't want to identify with Pygmalion?).
So what do you do with all those pesky F's on a football player's report card? It's easy! You just logon to Brigham Young's Distance Education program. From there, you can pick from a variety of 'Character Education' courses. Each of these courses costs $40 and can be used to replace the F's on your High School diploma. As Michael Lewis brightly explains:
The B.Y.U. courses had magical properties: a grade took a mere 10 days to obtain and could be used to replace a grade from an entire semester on a high-school transcript. Pick the courses shrewdly and work quickly, and the most tawdry academic record could be renovated in a single summer. Sean [the 'mother' of the football player] scanned the B.Y.U. catalog and found a promising series. It was called “Character Education.” All you had to do in such a “character course” was to read a few brief passages from famous works — a speech by Lou Gehrig here, a letter by Abraham Lincoln there — and then answer five questions about it. How hard could it be? The A’s earned from character courses could be used to replace F’s earned in high-school English classes. And Michael never needed to leave the house!
As Sean, the adoptive mother remarks, “The Mormons may be going to hell, ...but they really are nice people.”
COMMENTS
sepoy | September 25, 2006
Any thoughts on why Lewis titled the essay, The Ballad of Big Mike?
lapata | September 25, 2006
Must be an homage to The Ballad of Ricky Bobby.
elizabeth | September 25, 2006
i think the part that i found most gobsmackingly bizarre was when the adoptive mom, unable to locate any baby pictures of him for the high school yearbook, simply went online and downloaded a picture of "the cutest black baby she could find." ...and so appalling that a kid could grow up that deeply deprived in the richest country in the history of the world. we suck.
exitr | September 26, 2006
Just you wait, 'enry 'iggins--just you wait! The cutest black baby bit was a real zonker, but I kind of respected Lewis more for letting it zonk for itself.
tsk | September 27, 2006
ladies and gentlemen............ the anti-webster.
b | September 30, 2006
same rules apply at the big league schools. cant let bad grades get in way of working at that i-banking firm. whats the stat? ~75% of ivy leaugers graduate w/ honors? hell, the same goes at the expensive prep skoolz - you pay 15 grand/yr and get high marks and good reccomendations and a ticket into an ivy. (or pay a coach the extra 30gs to make real sure if your that plagirizing girl)