New NFL Draft Rules for 2014

OK, we all know that the NFL draft is now a huge business and owns a significant chunk of the off-season attention of fans. The “who’s rising” and “who’s falling” mock drafts are priceless little comedies on their own. To stand back and look at the amount of ink and pixels spilled for months is alternately bewildering and just a plain hoot.

But the draft itself is, to be honest, kinda dull. Sure, we are all interested to hear what our team does, and the teams we hate too. And we are captivated by the projected picks who fall Icarus-like from where they were “supposed” to go (I’m looking at you, Barkley). But the whole things needs more oomph. More drama. More entertainment.

So with that in mind I’ve come up with (I was going to write “drafted”…) a list of rules that the NFL should implement for the 2014 draft.

1. Quarterbacks can only be taken in the 1st and 7th rounds. First off, if you don’t think he is a star in the making, don’t draft him at this position. Just take a defensive lineman and move on. Second, this will make picks at the end of the 1st draft much more valuable, giving us trades and keeping me (frankly) from just going to bed.

2. Teams may only draft two players from the same conference. Teams also get a 3rd round compensatory pick in next year’s draft if they don’t take any players from the SEC. Variety, people!

3. Following a coin toss (not by a replacement ref), either the 2nd or the 3rd round will be conducted as a speed dating 2 minute round.

4. Teams may draft one punter, kicker, designated long-snapper, or Australian Rules Football player at any time without surrendering a draft pick.

5. In rounds 5 & 6 player picks will be randomly drawn from a hat.

C’mon Roger Goodell, work with me here!

Liberal Arts & Humanities “Skills” (#shudder)

Trying to get my thoughts down here on the push to promote liberal arts and humanities education because it helps students develop skills like critical thinking, oral and written communication, evidence-based argumentation, collaboration, etc. I’ve seen this a lot from politicians recently (who mostly of the time think that higher education is only for job training), and today from the Association of American Colleges & Universities, who just released their annual employer survey.

I fully agree that a good liberal arts education can indeed foster the development of these skills. But so can lots of fields. A good social science education, or even a well-designed STEM education can also promote critical thinking, communication, and the like. So there is nothing uniquely LA/H about this. Are we selling ourselves short? Missing the target? Dooming ourselves to a losing endeavor by conceding and making this our focus?

Particularly distressing are websites like Indiana University’s “Selling Your Degree” – painful, and not just the obligatory/pleading Lee Iacoca quote. A quick google search can multiple this sort of example ad nauseam.

Skills are a useful byproduct of LA/H education. They are not its main purpose or learning outcome. I prefer to think in terms of something that this kind of education does much better than other fields: developing certain characteristics. Skills are instrumental and utilitarian; characteristics like a passion for life-long learning are much more. Christopher Long writes similarly of habits:

“These habits include the capacity to communicate effectively, to appreciate diversity, to perceive globally, and to respond to complexity with nuance. But the cardinal virtue of the liberal arts is ethical imagination: the disposition to envision new possibilities of more just, enriching relationships beyond existing realities. This involves the capacity to discern and understand perspectives other than our own.”

So I simply do not want to concede the field of play to utilitarian, vocational concerns. AAC&U is a wonderful organization, and I applaud their efforts from a strategic perspective. We should support this discourse about skills when engaging with employers, politicians, and others because it is good strategy. But we should not lose sight of what we really want and what we really value.

https://www.seattleu.edu/artsci/value-liberal-arts/