Friday, September 7, 2012

The Shame of College Sports

No.1 Article of Georgia High School Football

College sports are a great American institution; celebrated in prose and song; where in legend hearty trainee athletes strode over the sporting fields bringing honor and joy to the ivied halls of higher learning. But the reality of college sports is not so romantic.

Consider the players. Once trainee athletes, many are now athletes who often cannot find the classrooms. There are quality programs such as the forces academies and premier schools like Stanford, Duke, Notre Dame and Wake Forest with high graduation rates. There are exceptional individuals as well, for example Myron Rolle strong safety for the University of Florida and a Rhodes Scholar. And determination shows that graduation rates for trainee athletes are now the same as for the general population.

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But these statistics hide the snake in the grass. Included in the full, athletic statistics are the minor sports, where graduation rates are high. Also added to the mix are the Ivy League schools and other schools that do not offer athletic scholarships. When only major sports at major sports schools are considered, the photograph is far less rosy.

The Shame of College Sports

Graduation rates for football and basketball players are commonly lower and in some cases dismal. The Connecticut men's basketball team has a graduation rate of 25%. Some whole schools are tiny better. Alabama graduates 44% of its athletes, Minnesota 44%, Georgia 41%, Texas 40% and Arizona 39%.

The question is why school administrations tolerate this. The answer, of course, is money. In 2009 Penn State's football program generated profits of million on revenues of million or a behalf of 8,235 per football scholarship after factoring in the cost of the athlete's room and board and 'education'. The Pac-10 has a 12 year Tv ageement worth billion. This monsoon of money has created a casual connection with ethics.

Recent well publized scandals have led to the firing of coaches and executives at some of college's celebrated sports programs. The shame is that no operation was taken until either media exposure or criminal proceedings had exposed the sordid details.

Thankfully high profile scandals like these, while a bitter condemnation of the ethics of college sports, are rare. What is not so rare is the professionalism of amateur sports. Colleges recruit blue ribbon basketball players they cynically know have no interest in the classroom. They are only playing out their mandatory college year before entering the Nba.

Top rank football players cannot enter the Nfl draft for three years after graduation from high-school; which is beneficially for both the Nfl and major colleges. The Nfl gets three years of minor league instruction for its players at no cost and colleges make money off the players without having to pay them. College athletics has provided free or subsidized instruction for many athletes who have used it to embark on victorious careers.

But think the 32 athletes superior in the first round of the 2011 Nfl draft. Only 12 of them had at least four years at college (and that includes years at junior colleges). Athletes in minor sports live in the general population. In the majors they live in athletic dormitories. In the minor sports they take courses in work building disciplines, in the majors they take courses to assert eligibility. In the minors the coaching staff holds tiny sway in schoraly decisions. In the majors it takes a strong willed schoraly to derail the gravy train.

At its top level college sports is played by mercenaries who pick the schools that will best embark on a professional work not for any schoraly benefit. Coaches will pay lip assistance to graduation, but no coach in the history of the major programs has ever been fired for a substandard graduation rate. It is a cynical exercise.

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