My college football team send a couple of guys to the pros we weren’t by any means a major college but we took football seriously despite being an engineering school. We had study halls and weekly grade checks with teachers and those certainly helped kids pass classes also the dumber ones were funneled into easier majors.
I was also on the track team and we got no help. No grade checks no study halls no communication with teachers when classes were missed for sports we were completely on our own. There is certainly a difference between the different teams.
I know a lot of dumb kids that went to college but I don’t know any of them that played football past the junior college level. There are certainly dumb jocks but I have trouble believing they are a higher percentage of the high school population than the dumb drama geeks or dumb burnouts. In college, it makes sense particularly at big state schools with high admission standards that there would more dumb jocks than the rest of the school population but I have met some seriously retarded engineers from LSU that I can’t imagine you could be much dumber and remember to breathe. Seriously, I had one argue with me that you could change the diameter of a circle without changing the radius.
Yes and no. From college on I have had the (I lack a good word for here - something very neutral) of being around average players and stars from several sports. Quite a few have been dumb as rocks; Tony Dorsett for example. Many were average-working-class-level smart. But a few were really bright, learned, and interesting to be around. Franco Harris pops to mind as the latter case.
One thing I will say; a lot of the dumb as shit dudes did better financially in the long run than some of the sharper ones I’ve met. I don’t know what this says but as I ran through my brain right now that crossed as I pondered the names.
Depends on the sport. For skiing (in New England anyways) all winter you are taking off Thursday night and returning on Saturday night for Carnival races. There’s nothing like that in the Fall and Spring. Some sports aren’t that intense in the off seasons. You can get an hour in the gym three times a week and morning runs without wrecking your semester. Non-revenue sports are much less intense, and that’s the majority of NCAA student athletes.
When I was in 9th grade I sat next to the quarterback of the football team in English class. He was a nice guy but dumb as a box of rocks and failing the class and one day asked me to do his homework for him. Being book smart but socially naive I agreed thinking he would be my friend or, perhaps, even more. Of course he continued to ask me to do his homework and I continued to do it. He passed with a D and went on to quarterback the state championship high school football team. He never acknowledged me again after 9th grade. He flunked out of college and ended up working in a sporting goods store.
My feeling is there are a lot of not so bright kids who struggle in school and so gravitate towards sports because it’s something they do excel at. I also think there are a lot of kids whose parents praise them for their athletic ability and ignore everything else and so the kids learn where to go for praise and ignore everything else.
All true, but it’s not the kids or the parents to blame here.
Schools either value academic integrity or they bend it to accommodate a state championship team, or a financially benefitional tennis team. They either bend to pressure from parents, coaches, athletes or they demonstrate the kind of integrity learning institutions are supposed to.
And when they bend, at first on tiny little matters, like a single grade, they are then teaching every student, teacher and parent that integrity isn’t how the world really runs. And pretty soon you got pro athletes literally getting away with rape and spousal abuse, while a whole nation chooses not to care because, that’s just how it is!
You want a better world? A better politic? You gotta start with this kind of shit, in my humble opinion. Because that’s what it’s going to take.
My stepbrother was the quintessential “jock” at high school: captain of the football team, multiple candids in the yearbook, popular with all of the girls, etc. Today he has a Masters Degree and is a respected Sports Medicine professional in his city.
Also on my stepbrother’s football team was a guy who got a full-ride scholarship to Harvard. He went for a week, said “fuck this,” and dropped out to follow the Grateful Dead. Not sure what’s become of him.
Oh, absolutely. At the college I attended there was a whole curriculum for football players. The class I remember most was Geology 102. Casually referred to as “Rocks for Jocks.” The whole semester could have been reduced to a children’s picture book on geology. But, by golly, it kept the GPAs of the football team at a C average.
I don’t know about that. I’m in Colorado and I took my daughter to visit the CU campus in August. The ski team was running on the hills one week before classes even started.
Ivy League schools don’t have athletic scholarships. It’s possible to get a full ride, but not based on the ability to play a sport, especially not football.
Most of those folks run 4-5 times a week regardless of whether they’re training for anything specific. That’s just not the same time sink as a 4 hour practice or being away every weekend. There’s pre-season conditioning in every sport, but it’s all a matter of degrees.
I teach at a high school with a football team that perennially competes for state championships. In fact, the current Heisman Trophy winner went to my school.
Are the players dumb? No- most are average students, some a little above average.
The school and community are football crazy, but if I give a player a failing grade, the coaches will support me. In fact, if a player doesn’t submit work, I can tell his position coach and that coach will get on the player’s case to get the work done.
And in SOME sports, the players tend to be superb students. Our tennis players all take AP classes and do well in them.
One of my neighbors, a few doors down, is a College Football Hall of Famer and a Rhodes Scholar. He’s a physicist and worked for NASA during the space age. He might be the smartist person I know. And he’ll drink a couple of beers with you during a football game.
A bit of googling pointed me at who I suspect to be your neighbor – that’s very cool! (I won’t post the links I found, out of respect for privacy.)
And, no doubt, there have been some brilliant minds who’ve also been great athletes. A couple others who come to mind:
Alan Page (Notre Dame / Vikings defensive lineman) became a lawyer, and was a long-serving member of the Minnesota Supreme Court.
Bob Thomas (Notre Dame / Bears kicker) is on the Illinois Supreme Court (and served as Chief Justice for a time).
Pat Haden (USC / Rams QB) was also a Rhodes Scholar, and lawyer.
John Urschel (Penn State / Ravens offensive linemen) retired from the NFL at age 26 to pursue his PhD in mathematics.
Pat McInally (Harvard / Bengals punter / WR) graduated cum laude, aced the Wonderlic test, and went on to become a successful businessman (including creating the Starting Lineup brand of sports action figures).
I knew a bunch of the football players in college. Some fit the stereotype exactly, but most of them were just regular dudes, and a few of them were quite sharp and became good friends of mine.
I can also tell you the cliché about jocks beating up on the nerdy kids is, IME, total Hollywood bullshit. While I’m sure it has happened somewhere at some time, for the most part the jocks fuck with each other and basically ignore everyone else. It’s easier and more fun to mess with people you know (and you can anticipate their reaction) rather than some random kid you’ve never seen before, no matter how geeky he may be, who you have no idea what they’re going to do in response.