How many of us who competed in college athletics and benefited from them will it take to convince you? What level of evidence are you looking for? I may have missed it, where did anyone in this thread advocate more money allocated to college athletic programs?
I’m not being facetious, what type of evidence are you looking for? The vast majority of college athletics aren’t Div 1 football and basketball, but that’s what gets the most press and money. But that’s not all of college athletics.
I don’t doubt that some of you (athletes) have benefitted from these programs. But others have lost more than you’ve gained. Colleges’ mission is education (duh) and athletics programs often assume an importance WAY beyond providing SOME students with physical activity and leadership skills. Athletes are granted privileged status above ordinary students, despite their generally below-average academic performance. My only personal experience with college athletics was as an instructor in a school with a large athletic program where I was frequently (many times per term) pressured into passing student-athletes who deserved to fail my courses–sometimes when I refused to adopt a different standard, my grades were changed by my supervisors over my objections. And the student athletes STILL had a much lower graduation rate than the non-athletes. It was and is a disgrace, and the Penn State coverup is just a symptom of the corruption and evil that lies at the heart of college athletics. The students who chant “We Are Penn State” speak more truth than they know–they are corrupt, evil glorifiers of the athletic program above any other principle that Penn State claims to stand for. You like athletics? Fine–so do I. I watch professionals compete, and I understand they’re in it for the money and the glory. But college athletic programs could be banned instantly and no one would be any the worse for it, and a lot of people would live better lives. College is about learning. You want to learn leadership. There are many opportunities to acquire leadership skills in the classroom–take advantage of some of those.
Long thread; I hope I don’t re-iterate too much.
I’ve always been of the opinion that sports should be something you do when you go to college; it shouldn’t be the reason you’re there in the first place. If they’re going to continue the charade of Physical Education and Sports Management majors, who then drop out in their junior year to enter whichever professional sports draft, then they ought to bite the bullet and just announce brand new majors: Bachelor of Linebacker Arts; Point Guard Sciences; etc.
Or they should go the way of baseball and just produce levels of farm teams where talented atheletes out of highschool could actually get paid in real live money, instead of ‘booster club benefits.’
It absolutely cracks me up to see people with Notre Dame paraphenalia, or who never miss Florida State home games, or will argue fealty to USC above no other … and they actually graduated from Antoine’s School of Acupunture or whatever.
Big time College Sports is just watered down professional sports at this point. Which is why, of course, nothing will ever change about it.
Some do, many don’t. Perhaps fixing the problem schools (a difficult task, for sure) will allow us to retain the many beneficial features of athletics programs. Everyone knows there are problems, but you dismiss the benefits without examining them. As has been said many times in this thread, once you move past the big two (football and basketball in Div 1) the problems are much smaller and easier to manage.
Athletics exist at colleges because historically college was not a trade school or even a training ground for people to go into higher education. It was primarily a place where the upper class / wealthy sent their children to make them more rounded and prepare them for their life as members of high society.
A proper gentleman was expected to not only know Latin and Greek but also depending on the era certain physical activities such as polo, fencing, tennis etc.
There was also a certain nucleus of researchers/thinkers at the major schools in Europe and later America, but it wasn’t until the latter part of the 19th century you saw any movement away from this old model of college education. I’d say even as recently as the 1920s most students who went to Ivy League schools were probably expected to do something like crew, polo, or etc.
Historically for children of the upper class, the current college-as-trade-school system was simply not necessary. The trade of these young men was going to mostly be determined by their familial connections, and the only skill set they really needed was an ability to mingle and connect with other upper class individuals.
However, right as college was transitioning to more of an everyman’s thing, football and basketball were hitting the national consciousness along with radio and the colleges as has been mentioned became the place where most competitive football that people cared about was going on. It wasn’t until the 40s and 50s when you could even clearly say professional football teams were better than college teams (and by the 60s there was no longer any doubt.)
Cite please that this is the norm across all schools and all sports and not the exception at Large Division-1 school’s in mainly basketball and football. I need convincing that this holds up across the board for women’s athletics as well.
To be honest, I can’t be convinced that athletics have no part in college, but I could be swayed to believe that they should be done only at the club level and not as University managed and funded programs.
It shows. I think your experience has severely skewed your perception.
Graduation rates overall are as good or better for student athletes. PDF’s with break downs by sport available on the linked page. If you check those out, you will find graduation rates for men’s basketball and football to be the lowest, while other sports are much better, and women’s sports have excellent graduation rates pretty much across the board.
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](http://www.ncaa.org/wps/wcm/connect/public/ncaa/academics/how+academic+reform+is+measured)
(Bolding was done by me.)
College athletics has turned into the minor leagues for the pros. Let them pay for college athletics beyond intramural. Baseball still has a minor league system. They pay their potential pros to be groomed as possible big leaguers.
The NBA and NFL should have their own minor league systems. Then the great athletes who are also after a higher education can get it . The players who have no ability or interest in a college education should not be in school taking up space that genuine students deserve.
Exactly. Div. 1 college football and basketball teams should be converted to minor pro teams. They can still be run by the university as revenue generators. Stop the facade of having the athletes be registered as “students”.
Retain the other sports which are true amateur endeavors and are beneficial to regular students. Increase participation in intramural sports where the goal is physical fitness for ALL students.
What exactly is the wrong message?
My kids’ school doesn’t recognize class rank, but they do recognize the top 3%. My daughter has been recognized with this every year (currently a Junior). It is amazing how many do nothing other than take multiple AP classes. My daughter has a 4.66 GPA (4 point scale), is a class officer, represents her HS in leadership forums, mentors kids new to the school, and lead ESPN’s nationally ranked #1 HS Girls Soccer team in goals scored. She committed as Sophomore to play at a prestigious D1 University that we never could have afforded otherwise.
Sure, she would have gotten a fair amount of academic money but not as much as when coupled with athletic money. A major misconception is that all athletes get everything paid for. Not even close. A great offer is 50%. Some do get more (and a few all), but many more get way less.
Opal mentioned something about money being spent on team jerseys while they got things printed on recycled paper. Companies like Nike and Adidas sponsor the teams. They give them the uniforms in return for exposure. It costs the university zero.
There have been posts about preferential treatment. The only thing we have experienced is that they get priority scheduling during the sport’s season only. In other words, they get help getting into classes that work with the training schedule and travel commitments required to play the sport.
One of the biggest things the recruiters stress is the GPA of the athletes/team, the graduation rate of athletes/team, and in our particular situation the acceptance rate to med school for athletes/team.
There is no realistic professional career for women’s soccer players so this is what they work for… they are using it to get a better education then they otherwise could have.
Again, what is the wrong message?
To be honest, I am not sure why this issue deserves the “all or nothing” treatment. I know that there are some “sports haters” on the dope but do you really not see a difference between the football program at Ohio State and a tennis team at D-III University?
Just as different colleges have different levels of academic quality, different athletic programs treat their student-athletes differently. I ran track at a D-III school and I never saw any of the wonderful perks that are supposedly heaped on all college athletes. I missed an average of one class a season when I competed. Which was on par with my classmates who skipped class to sleep off the previous nights activities. Granted my absence was university excused but that was irrelevant until you get to 2 or 3 (depending on the professor) absences. Personally, I do not see the absence thing as an advantage at all. We are talking about college, where you are presumably pursuing a major of interest to you. Most people actually enjoy class. With regards to preferential grading, I am fairly certain that this issue is restricted to bigger programs. No one gave me answers or leniency for being on the 4x100m relay team.
A similar issue used to piss me off in high school as well. I played football and ran track all the way through. Our football team got a ton of swag from the boosters. Nothing like cars and test answers but a ton of school themed clothing and workout gear. The irritating part was that football was awful and the track program was one of the best in the state but track got absolutely nothing.
On a side note, I used to miss more classes during one school year for Model Congress than I did for 3 seasons of sports in all 4 years of high school. We also had meal stipends for overnight conferences.
I used my test taking ability to buy myself an education. No practice, studying or fancy expensive test prep program. At least a college bound athlete that is talented enough for a scholarship has to work at it.
I find this funny. I’m a gigantic sports fan (pro sports) AND a huge proponent of club level athletics in college (having played some wonderful, fiercely competitive intermural basketball in my college days) and because of those two experieices am a “hater” of inter-collegiate competition, which fosters only a misplaced sense of loyalty to an institution (viz. Penn State) and a perversion of the function of a university. But, nice try.
Remind me (maybe in another thread?) to describe some of the unfair advantages that athletes were given in college (when I was an instructor in a major-sports university), including being supplied with plagiarized papers by the athletic program, which then pressured me to excuse the plagiarism as “an honest misunderstanding” when I caught them at it. No sense of shame at all.
A personal anecdote in no way shape or form constitutes the norm. Do all University Football programs have a coach who rapes 10 year old boys… because I know one that did?
Unless I am missing something, none of what you wrote actually addressed my question. Do you believe that there is no difference in the treatment of student athletes at a major-sports university and a major-academic university?
I can understand wanting to restructure college athletics in order to limit favoritism but completely abolishing inter-collegiate sports is rather extreme.
I think my experience is pretty universal. It certainly applied to me every term of the eight I taught at this school while I was there, and to every other grad student who taught there as well.
Your experience is at one school. I don’t doubt that the program there needs to be reformed. It can not however be applied to every other school out there.
I’m not saying that there aren’t any bad apples out there… just that one bad apple doesn’t spoil the whole bunch (wow… I should write that one down… others can feel free to quote me).
One school, not known as a particular sports factory, and my experience is pretty universally shared by instructors at such sports factories, where student athletes are allowed sometimes to remain functionally illterate. How is that possible if the school is taking any pains to see that the “student”-athletes get an education? Don’t you think illiteracy is one of those things that would be monitored, if anyone cared to do so?
You keep saying that your experience is “pretty universal” but you don’t provide any evidence to support that. I have met many people in my professional career that went to school on an athletic scholarship and not a single one was anywhere close to illiterate. Others have cited GPA’s, Graduation Rates, etc. of student athletes being higher than the norm. You can claim that the GPA’s cited are “artificial” but frankly I don’t believe you. Sure, there are some systems where that may be the case, but again I don’t believe from my experience that it is the norm, and certainly not enough evidence to support your opinion that ALL collegiate athletics EVERYWHERE should be banned.
College basketball and football should be run by the pro leagues. They are minor leagues for them anyway. College baseball is different because there actually is a minor league system.
College football and basketball has lots of players who do not belong in college. They also have some who are dangers to the institutions and other students.
Many high level sports programs cost the institutions money. The coaches and staff are too damn expensive. The pay rates encourage them to cheat. They get caught cheating and the college pays for years while the coach walks off rich and goes to a new program to start over.
Penn State football was bigger than the institution.
At least in part, this is because the NFL and the NBA have been willing to support the ongoing existance of college football and basketball, by making it virtually impossible for a player to skip college ball and go straight into the pro ranks (not that many HS grads would be able to make it in the NFL, but a number of them went straight into the NBA before the rules were changed).
Thus, you have guys who are tremendous athletes, but academically challenged (at best), and really have no business being in college, other than it being the only realistic path for them to make it into pro ball.