UNC athletic director Bubba Cunningham says that sports can heal
Posted June 1, 2020 3:31 p.m. EDT
Updated June 2, 2020 8:06 a.m. EDT
UNC athletic director Bubba Cunningham has had plenty to deal with as a pandemic has sent the entire world into a tailspin, much less the sports world.
But the recent upheaval surrounding the death of George Floyd has reopened a lot of old wounds related to centuries of racism, and somehow the pandemic - as big as it is - has taken a backseat as protests sweep the nation.
Cunningham talked about how the two issues are more related than it would initially appear and more when he joined The Adam Gold Show on Monday.
"Obviously the pandemic is something that we have been focused on almost exclusively for the past two and a half to three months, but the last 5-6 days, our attention has certainly been diverted to a national crisis, a crisis that has really been affecting our country for over 200 years," Cunningham said. "It's the continued tension about racism in our country. While they're unrelated, the pandemic and racism and the issues that we have with George Floyd and that specific incident, they're not unrelated.
"The frustration that is being exhibited - lawfully and unlawfully - throughout the country in the past few days is something that's been brewing for years. Unfortunately, the George Floyd incident ignited the entire thing. Now, we're trying to wrestle with two incredibly difficult, challenging issues. One is systemic and one is a virus that has an incredible impact on many, many people. We have to be able to work toward resolution on both of them."
Cunningham was a child in Flint, Michigan when the Detroit riots happened in 1967. He knows that some of the unrest has stemmed from the fact that history continues to repeat itself and we as a nation "haven't learned".
He does think, though, that sports is something that can help heal even what seem like the largest divides among us. Intercollegiate sports in particular.
"The (national) policies that we've had in place for years that have prevented folks from achieving their dreams, we've got to figure out a way to provide more opportunities for folks to learn. I do believe that sports is critical in that role. We have to provide hope for people. I believe that the more you can participate, the better off you're going to be," Cunningham said. "I hate to take this huge leap, but when you have more teams in the basketball tournament, you have more teams that have hope of going somewhere. When you have more opportunities to get a scholarship to go to college, when you have more opportunities to get that education, you're going to end up with better outcomes. So everything we do should be about creating more opportunities for people to get to where they want to go.
"We continue to try to limit it to the elite. This plays into Name, Image and Likeness; it plays into what's happening now. During this pandemic, we have lost over 30 varsity teams at the intercollegiate level. Well, those are scholarships, those are opportunities that are not going to come back. Those are the things that I worry about. How do we continue to press for opportunity? Because we do need to provide hope for people to have a better outcome."
It's not just educational opportunities, though, Cunningham said. Sports can teach lessons that go beyond that.
"You can think of all these different sports and what they teach people. In football, you have 11 people on the field. One of them has the ball, but everybody relies on everybody else to do something and do it well so the team is successful. Those kinds of analogies, those kinds of leadership opportunities, those kinds of participation opportunities, are what we need to carry over to real life," Cunningham said. "We need to think about that in our political arenas, voting for things that are of value to us, putting people in charge that have the same values and discipline that we have and expect of our leaders."
Between the combination of getting an education in the classroom and in their sports arena of choice, Cunningham said that sports can help model a way forward for everyone.
"Athletic teams bring people together for a common cause. It doesn't matter race or nationality or gender or gender identity or sexuality. It is about bringing a group of people together for a common cause. We have this opportunity in sport to try to bring communities together - not only to participate, but to spectate, and to learn and to grow. At the intercollegiate level, at the college level that we have today, we're providing many opportunities for students to come and get an education. Get an education, play a sport and hopefully learn incredible lessons through sport participation," Cunningham said. "Where I feel like these two issues are so connected is that we have not delivered in a lot of different ways to many different communities and many different populations within our country. Our educational system has failed people. Our judicial system has failed people. Our criminal system has failed people. Our healthcare systems have failed people. And we have to come together to try to figure out better policies that allow for better outcomes for people.
"I believe that college athletics and sports in general - K-12 athletics, community activities - recreational sports - all of those things will lead to better outcomes. And we need to really focus on the importance of those things and how we can create policies that allow more kids to participate, more kids to play sports, more kids to go to college, more kids to get an education. That to me fundamentally is what our role in intercollegiate athletics and higher education is and should be."
Cunningham says he's taken calls from both coaches and players at UNC who are, as he put it, fearful. And he wants to do all he can to help assuage that.
He and the rest of the University leadership are trying to figure out a way to get people to come together. When school returns, they'll be dealing with a pandemic, of course. But they'll also need to do a better job of making people feel safe on campus for reasons that go beyond COVID-19, Cunningham said.
And just like they did with COVID-19, Cunningham said they'll consult the experts on this as well.
"We have to have a change in behavior and the way we change behavior is by changing our daily actions, our daily beliefs, and you only learn that through learning, growing and developing. So what are those things that we're going to do that will have an impact on these 800 that we have today, the 18,000 on our campus, that will go in and impact society as we go forward? As a leadership group at the university, we need to think about how we're influencing our students today, how we're leading our students today, for leaders of tomorrow. That's the educational part of what we do," Cunningham said.
"I do believe athletics builds that sense of community and we can be an example of an integrated society that functions really, really well. We saw our group come together with the pandemic. We have all kind of said, okay, the experts on this campus are the doctors and the epidemiologists, the virus infection folks, and we've relied on them. Four months ago, we weren't relying on them. We were relying on a whole different group of people to advise us. Now, we need to think about who are the leaders in this environment that will be able to best inform us to create some policies, to create some educational program, to create some change that will be helpful to many."
