Rice played Texas this weekend. Not because it was easy, but because it probably came with a nice paycheck.
Yes, even if the “rivalry” didn’t include Texas paying Rice upwards of a million dollars, as games with similar spreads often do, Rice got their money out of the deal. The affair was newsworthy. It put butts in seats. It put eyes on tweets. But why is it so historic? And what does this have to do with JFK?
If you, like me, forgot or didn’t know about this line, back when JFK gave his “We’re going to the moon, fellow patriots, and then we’re going to beat the U.S.S.R. in hockey in 18 years” speech he included a line that said, “why does Rice play Texas?” It was a classic line, and it’s given extended life to a regularly contested football game between the nerds and the more-economical-and-fun-but-not-quite-as-smart nerds. This piece of the history gets credit. But what gets forgotten is that when JFK was talking about the game, he wasn’t saying Rice should challenge themselves. He was explaining to the UT folks watching at home that buy games can really help a team out. And that philosophy is one he either learned from or taught our federal government.
When JFK said the “not because they are easy, but because they are hard” thing, he wasn’t talking about what was hard for us. He was talking about what was hard for our opponents. People forget: JFK was adept at doing a lot of things (and women). Guys like that don’t remember that, say, climbing a mountain is kind of tough for the rest of us. JFK wasn’t saying going to the moon was hard. He was saying it was the easiest thing in or out of the world, somewhere we could rack up a win by spending a lot of money.
This has become a trend in collegiate sports. Buy games are the norm now. They’re one of our favorite traditions. From Labor Day through the middle of September, and again the Saturday before Thanksgiving in the SEC, we watch with joy as two-thirds of college football games are the most boring blowouts imaginable but one or two Power Five teams messes up in a big way and schedules someone better than themselves, paying so much money to be humiliated on the scoreboard you’d think they just talked to John Delaney’s strategic advisors. In basketball, a very specific slice of Twitter gets fired up when Texas Southern wins one of its thirteen non-conference road games against ranked or near-ranked opponents. We love buy games. They are the foundation of our collective entertainment.
What we don’t talk about enough is that the United States government also loves buy games. That’s why after we went to the moon, we went to Grenada. It’s why we spent a dollar for every year since the dinosaurs died getting non-Communists elected in Italy post-WWII. It’s why Desert Storm happened. The fed’s realized all they needed to do to get the public to think they were good was to blow an inferior opponent out of the water, so they grabbed the pocketbook and made it happen.
Sometimes, of course, it’s backfired. We’ve underestimated a few road environments, a trap similar dynasties have fallen into. But for every time we’ve been Michigan losing to Appalachian State, there are a dozen when we’ve been South Carolina beating the pants off Charleston Southern, boosting the ruling regime’s status in the polls.
This is part of why it’s so sad that JFK died when he did. We have no idea what other amateur athletic innovations we’ve missed due to his untimely demise. Had he lived, perhaps the four-team playoff would have started in the 80’s. Had he lived, perhaps players would already be profiting off their name and likeness. Had he lived, perhaps the NIT would still get its due as the premier postseason basketball tournament.
We often say John F. Kennedy was a visionary. But we often forget the great extent to which that’s true.
