Viewpoint: Death of the renaissance man
U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has been successful in politics, but also is a talented basketball player.
In my capacity as men’s basketball beat writer for The Hoya, Georgetown University’s student newspaper, I recently attended the opening weekend of the Nike Pro-City League, formerly (but still more commonly) known as the Kenner League.
The Kenner League is one of Georgetown’s hidden gems. Held in the dog days of the blistering D.C. summer, it features current, former and future Washington-area basketball stars competing in freewheeling run-and-gun games. Every basketball program in the area is represented: from Georgetown to George Washington, American to Catholic, the White House to Maryland, Howard to George Mason -- wait, what?
Yeah, that’s not a typo. U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, 47, made an appearance for a squad called "Can’t Be Stop" -- hold your jokes -- and actually fared well against a team full of college athletes in their prime.
The sight of a sitting Cabinet member in a casual summer league was entertaining for all involved, and my blog post on the event was quickly picked up by The Washington Post, among others. Some quick Google research revealed that Duncan played at Harvard University and even had a brief professional career in Australia. Who knew?
The more I thought about the hype around Duncan’s appearance, though, the less sense it made. In this country, we’ve seen plenty of athletes go into politics -- often locally, but occasionally nationally. Ex-bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger served as governor of California, ex-Oklahoma quarterback J.C. Watts was a U.S. Representative from Oklahoma and ex-Phoenix Suns point guard Kevin Johnson is the sitting mayor of Sacramento, Calif., just to name a few.
Duncan’s achievements don’t match, or even compare to, those big names. He never won an NCAA tournament, played in the NBA or even made a big splash while playing for the NBL’s now-defunct Eastside Melbourne Spectres in Australia. So why the fascination with his exploits?
The difference between Duncan and most athletes-turned-politicians is that the latter were famous for their athletic exploits before entering politics; they used their celebrity to win office after retiring from sports.
Duncan is different. He retired from professional basketball at the ripe old age of 27 to pursue a career in education, and his little basketball fame wasn’t what got him a position in the U.S. Cabinet.
Watching him play at a high level, then, at once makes him more accessible and more impressive. Here is a man who was skilled enough to achieve the dream millions of young Americans pursue -- to be paid thousands of dollars to play a sport he loved -- and gave it up. But not only did he give it up, he excelled in a completely unrelated career enough to earn a job in the White House.
Duncan represents the renaissance man, a dying breed in the era of specialization of labor. His willingness to play casual ball with a bunch of college kids not only brings him closer to the people, it brings with him a sense of wonder and nostalgia for a bygone age -- when the world’s most successful statesmen were not just statesmen, but athletes, artists and poets as well.
There are a few left, although they’re usually quiet about their former glory. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), for example, was a three-sport athlete at Yale University in soccer, hockey and lacrosse -- unheard of for even the best athletes today. Still, they are fading fast. As young children are encouraged to specialize more and more, renaissance men like Duncan and Kerry will all but disappear.
So when you get a chance to see one in action, appreciate it. There’s a reason you get that rush of admiration when you see a statesman sink a jump shot.
Patrick Curran is a Summer 2012 USA TODAY Collegiate Correspondent. Learn more about him here.
This story originally appeared on the USA TODAY College blog, a news source produced for college students by student journalists. The blog closed in September of 2017.