'Student' athletes

[frogimus]

I don't know about that. With some of the stories about athletes getting away with sexual assault, combined with the quasi-prostitution sometimes provided by the universities themselves, and then PED's and other drug abuse, there are a lot of people using college athletics as an opportunity to pursue harmful criminal activity. And of course the coaches at big schools are paid an order of magnitude more than any other employee at the university; that's a lot of scholarships that aren't happening.

It's not just a question of fake degrees, there's a nasty underbelly to the college athletics culture.

Well I support the athletics of the university I attended through season tickets and the booster organization. I see many of these nasty student athletes donating time to delivering meals to the elderly, coaching kids at the Y, doing other charitable activities. Yes, it is a public university. No, it isn't one of the big name programs. These kids are getting degrees in engineering, pre-med, law enforcement, education.

It sucks that they are being judged by the actions of a handful of schools.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Eh. Logically shaky ground there. "There is enough illegal/immoral stuff done in relation to it, so we should abolish it," is logically slippery, and can set a precedent that is difficult to control.

That wasn't really my rationale, though. Even if every college athlete was an upstanding citizen, and furthermore even if they were all genuinely interested in getting a university education and pursued it rigorously, it would still not be a good system to make them quasi-employees of the university without adequate rights or protections.

Whatever misbehavior that exists I think is more a symptom of dysfunction than a cause of it. Universities make money by winning in the big sports, so they push ethical boundaries in pursuit of that goal.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Well I support the athletics of the university I attended through season tickets and the booster organization. I see many of these nasty student athletes donating time to delivering meals to the elderly, coaching kids at the Y, doing other charitable activities. Yes, it is a public university. No, it isn't one of the big name programs. These kids are getting degrees in engineering, pre-med, law enforcement, education.

It sucks that they are being judged by the actions of a handful of schools.

My alma mater is a big state school notorious for large-scale rioting after sporting events and low graduation rates among its big sport athletes. I have ties to several colleges, though, and it seems to be that the sports side goes much better when there's no revenue generation involved. A state school is supposed to be a non-profit institution supported by taxes and tuition. Adding anything else to the mix creates conflicts of interest and starts the whole thing headed down the wrong path.

Frankly, money ruins everything.

 

[Zombie_Babies]

People may take those attachments with them wherever they go, but I don't think they would form them in the first place if they had strong professional teams to root for instead. It seems to me that there's very little overlap geographically between the major college powers in basketball and football and the professional teams. To me, that's why big college sports is such an American phenomenon.

Ohio State. The state itself has the Browns and the Bengals and yet OSU football is bigger than anything. Admittedly the Browns aren't great right now but they were (believe it or not). When people go to college they're typically at an age that that rah-rah stuff sinks in. Lotsa kids go to these schools so it adds up. I don't think it has a lot to do with lack of a good pro team.

For football and basketball, yes. However, there are other sports with different models. Minor league baseball and college baseball coexist perfectly fine. In the tennis world, going to college is a disadvantage; college players rarely succeed as professionals and the professional players that make a living at it do so at a young enough age that they skip out on a lot of education.

Yep, non-money sports seem to do ok.

Well, the NCAA comes out very well, but I would argue that the NFL and NBA would be better served by having developmental leagues like some of the other sports (which we've occasionally seen feeble attempts at but not anything that would replace college athletics).

I agree. The NBA does currently have a D league but it's more for guys that couldn't cut it right out of the gate. But yeah, I think they'd both be better off with a different system.

I want to agree with that in principle. However, I would think there has to be some limitation on how much education. College isn't for everyone, and it's at least debatable whether it should be paid for by everyone. Certainly, I would have preferred it if I were recruited like a college athlete and if my education had been paid for, but that doesn't mean it's right.

Meh, it's education. Everyone should at least be able to give it a try and how much money their parents make should have nothing to do with it. The rich get smarter? No thanks. I'd much prefer an equal field of play.

I understand the thought there. Unfortunately, as my thermodynamics teacher once said - there is no such thing as a free lunch. The buildings, the books, the teachers, and all must be supported. Everyone in the chain of providing that education needs to eat. As a practical matter, then, there is a cost that *someone* has to pay if it is going to happen.

(I know you understand this, but I am constantly amazed at how many folks forget it - like they forget that the machines your doctor uses to give you medical services cost money too, so I state it just to be clear.)

The question that remains is *who* should pay - the nation through taxes, or the individual, or what. And that's politics we can't really go into.

Yep, it ain't gonna be 'free', that's a given. I think I've hinted enough at the direction I'd prefer to take it (there's a way we do it now - that you mention - and another way to do it, I clearly don't like how we do it now so ...) so I'll leave it at that.

Something needs to change, though. The direction we're going in is a terrible one. We've got kids accruing debt they won't be able to pay off and that's, well, stupid. Everyone says 'you have to go to college' and what that means for most people today is 'you have to take on a ludicrous amount of debt and live at your parents house, being a further burden on them and delaying your independent life, for a much longer time'. Why? And that's what's so damned irritating about some athlete getting special treatment like this. What's a degree mean if the organization certifying it is willing to do that? Nothing. Education needs to be extricated from for profit nonsense immediately. And it needs to be equally available to everyone who wants it.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Ohio State. The state itself has the Browns and the Bengals and yet OSU football is bigger than anything. Admittedly the Browns aren't great right now but they were (believe it or not). When people go to college they're typically at an age that that rah-rah stuff sinks in. Lotsa kids go to these schools so it adds up. I don't think it has a lot to do with lack of a good pro team.

That might be an exception, though neither of those teams is exactly the cream of the crop of professional football. However, there are plenty of counterexamples.

I agree. The NBA does currently have a D league but it's more for guys that couldn't cut it right out of the gate. But yeah, I think they'd both be better off with a different system.

The D-league hardly compares with the tiered leagues of European soccer or the enormous minor league baseball system. It just isn't enough.

Meh, it's education. Everyone should at least be able to give it a try and how much money their parents make should have nothing to do with it. The rich get smarter? No thanks. I'd much prefer an equal field of play.

And if someone wants to spend their entire life earning Ph.D. after Ph.D. in liberal arts fields while never getting a job? Again, I like education too, but there are limits.

Something needs to change, though. The direction we're going in is a terrible one. We've got kids accruing debt they won't be able to pay off and that's, well, stupid. Everyone says 'you have to go to college' and what that means for most people today is 'you have to take on a ludicrous amount of debt and live at your parents house, being a further burden on them and delaying your independent life, for a much longer time'. Why? And that's what's so damned irritating about some athlete getting special treatment like this. What's a degree mean if the organization certifying it is willing to do that? Nothing. Education needs to be extricated from for profit nonsense immediately. And it needs to be equally available to everyone who wants it.

I totally agree that money ruins things, including education, and that massive reforms are needed at all levels.

And I do think that the whole student athlete thing is a bit of a dodge. Creating a small number of poster boys-people who come out of poverty and go to school next ti societal elites on a sports scholarship-covers up the enormous number of non-athletes who never get that chance. When these examples of fraud happen, it breaks us out of our illusion that everything is fine, and ignorance is bliss.

 

[Umbran]

Universities make money by winning in the big sports, so they push ethical boundaries in pursuit of that goal.

Dude, Universities make money doing lots of things. They get money from tuition. They get money for research grants. They get money from owning real estate, from investing, and all sort of other things. Many of these revenue stream involve students in one way or another. Universities are based on students, and need money to operate, after all.

Universities are stuck in a money economy. If you want kids educated, then money must pass into the university. If the university wants to improve, it must seek more money. If you cut off sports, then some universities will have to seek the revenue elsewhere, and maybe they won't be any more ethical in that than in anything else. Or maybe they'll be ethical, but fail to get the revenue, and while ethical, student education will suffer.

Which comes down to "Pick your battles carefully, as unintended consequences are a pain."

 

[WayneLigon]

I understand the thought there. Unfortunately, as my thermodynamics teacher once said - there is no such thing as a free lunch. The buildings, the books, the teachers, and all must be supported. Everyone in the chain of providing that education needs to eat. As a practical matter, then, there is a cost that *someone* has to pay if it is going to happen.

(I know you understand this, but I am constantly amazed at how many folks forget it - like they forget that the machines your doctor uses to give you medical services cost money too, so I state it just to be clear.)

The question that remains is *who* should pay - the nation through taxes, or the individual, or what. And that's politics we can't really go into.

I'd feel a lot better about that if college football coaches were paid on the same scale as the physics or biology professor, and not multiple millions of dollars per year.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Universities are stuck in a money economy. If you want kids educated, then money must pass into the university. If the university wants to improve, it must seek more money. If you cut off sports, then some universities will have to seek the revenue elsewhere, and maybe they won't be any more ethical in that than in anything else. Or maybe they'll be ethical, but fail to get the revenue, and while ethical, student education will suffer.

Which comes down to "Pick your battles carefully, as unintended consequences are a pain."

I'm of the mind that it would be better, even at the cost of some of our ostentatious facilities and noble institutions, to fund education in an honest and upfront manner.

 

[sabrinathecat]

As someone who never understood the attraction of watching team sports, or any sports, the whole thing of bringing back alumni to support the team, yadda yadda yadda, makes no sense to me. I don't get teary-eyed at the thought of going back to my colleges, or any of that. I'm not a joiner.

The idea of special privilege for ANYONE to break rules or have a double-standard is flat out wrong to me. The idea for college sports was that the top students were allowed to join teams, provided they kept their grades up, not that schools would cherry pick athletes to have on their teams and put a token class-load on them. Like the "suicide room-mate=all A's" policy, giving special treatment and a different set of rules for athletes vs regular students is just flat-out wrong.
Now, if someone needs remedial classes to catch up in order to achieve the degree they need, I'm all for that. Yes, get them the classes they need.

San Jose State had a class English 100W. It was a writing class necessary for all students to pass, customized by major. Near when I was graduating, many departments wanted to ditch the requirement. Only two steadfastly opposed the removal: English department and Chemistry department. Seems that both sides thought it was important for students to be able to write at a college level. The requirement was still in place when I left, and hopefully still is. What was behind the request to remove the requirement? The Computer Science and Computer Engineering students were getting bogged down with too many required classes. They wanted an out, and figured removing an English class was the way to go.

Getting back to sports and universities: way too much emphasis is placed on athletics in the culture as it is. Academia is supposed to be about study, not $. Yes, money is needed. There is a better way to handle it.
And then we dance into a political discussion, so I have to end there.

 

[Derren]

This thread makes me glad that schools where I live are not dependent on private funding there is no such thing as organized college/high school/whatever sport leagues.