When I was a boy those were [the things] never discussed in “polite company.”

Either the standards of polite company have changed or I’m running with the wrong crowd.

Today’s taboo? Athletics.

Oh, you can argue about who’s the greatest at this or that sport. There are even sports talk shows on radio. This newspaper has a sports section.

What you can’t do is evaluate the role of varsity athletics in our schools.

Are the benefits worth the costs?

Are there available alternatives?

Those are forbidden questions.

The benefits of athletics are well known. I experienced them through participation in every sport my high school offered. Discipline, competitive spirit, cooperative teamwork, a sense of accomplishment and self-worth – not to mention physical fitness.

School sports provide entertainment. [Our bleachers hold 5000 spectators at schools that hold 1500 students.] Sports increase school spirit, even class attendance, for non-participants. Some athletes do better academically than students with more time on their hands. And even those who don’t can excel at something.

For thousands of years sports and games have helped prepare our youth for the combat called war. [Even through most of the Twentieth Century.] Today that training is provided by the video games that simulate our computer-controlled weapons of war.

But thankfully sports and games are still with us. Far better the Olympics than World War III.

[No,] The question is not whether we should have sports programs in our community. The question is whether they need be in schools.

In Europe they’re not. Schools are for academics. Athletics are for community “sports clubs.” [Does it work? The only true “World Series” is for soccer not baseball. Their men’s teams win. Ours lose.]

Lest sports clubs be immediately dismissed as an alien idea consider the range of non-school sports already available to Iowa City’s youth.

The Kickers soccer program. The national Amateur Softball Association’s tournaments that produced our Olympic women’s softball team. The Eels Swimming Club. Hershey Track and Field, with its state and national meets. A basketball league with 32 teams.

That’s only a small sample. [And the City’s Recreation Department just added staff to increase teens’ participation.]

There’s a dollar cost to our school district for varsity athletics. Roughly $1 million a year. That’s on top of two football complexes each worth nearly as much.

Then there’s the [“opportunity cost” – the] lost opportunity to do something else. An average teacher’s salary plus benefits is $50,000; $1 million is 20 teachers.

The school board is drafting academic ends policies. It wants to avoid students falling through the cracks with reading and math skills. We don’t have enough money even for reading. As for writing, math and science forget it.

One local high school’s football program lists 12 coaches (some are volunteers). Meanwhile, we cut back our district-wide team of four math resource specialists even though advised to hire more.

Do varsity athletics improve our 10,500 students’ physical fitness? Teens’ obesity and clogged arteries are a major health problem. How many of our spectator students could pass the President’s Council on Physical Fitness standards?

Someone who’s been around long enough to know tells me the pressures to win in high school sports are now the equal of those at the University of Iowa not that many years ago.

High stakes athletic contests create ethical conflicts of interest for administrators, coaches, teachers, and student athletes. That’s another cost.

[The president’s office of a major university asked me to change a football player’s grade. I didn’t do it, but some professor must have. The student kept playing.]

[My high school football coach treated my serious knee injury with a needle of painkiller and put me back in. Fifty years later I’m still wearing a knee brace for jogging.]

[Women high school athletes are now using steroids. “A win-at-all-costs mentality,” says epidemiologist Dr. Charles Yesalis.]

[One-fifth of high school football players sustains concussions each season.  Neurologist Dr. James Kelly insists, “There’s no such thing as a ‘minor’ concussion.”]

Sports builds character? In the Nile Kinnicks, yes. It’s also accelerated athletes’ violence on and off the field.

Benefits from school sports? Of course.

Worth the costs? Don’t ask.

Many will criticize this column. Most will be apathetic. Like other school districts, our emphasis on varsity athletics won’t diminish. Our high school’s walls and trophy cases will continue to emphasize athletics over academics.

Because “local control of schools” means the public gets what it wants. And we want sports.

Nicholas Johnson is an Iowa City School Board member and writes a regular column for the Press-Citizen. More information is available on his Web site, http://www.nicholasjohnson.org.