College Sports: How can we fix it?

Obviously they're getting both since University of Alabama is one of the highest ranked public universities academically.

It's #43 in the ranking I looked up. That's...not great, considering that that's after limiting the list to the subgroup of American schools that tends to be far worse. For comparison, the school that's way way way ahead of it at #15 is currently in the process of falling apart, because they were basically letting their football program run the place.

And my parents both went to Alabama. They've been rather successful, but both think they'd have been better off going anywhere else.

edited 10th Dec '11 2:33:10 PM by INUH

As I have mentioned before, one reason why I am adamant that the benefits are not coming is that coaches and other parts of the athletic departments are apparently "unaffected" by budget cuts that the universities have to undertake in the rocky economy we're in. Case in point, what's happening in Idaho right now. The state board of education approved of statewide budget cuts while at the same time approving a raise in the salary of Boise State's head coach.

Merit or otherwise, coaches should not have raises, even my university's own!

Also, we have Mack Brown of Texas who has gotten raises during the rocky economy when cuts are still being made in UT-Austin, and now he's the most highly-paid head coach in the nation. Coaches are FAR. TOO. OVERPAID!

edited 10th Dec '11 3:47:40 PM by EarlOfSandvich

@Inuh: Vis-á-Vis the idea that schools are designed for giving people educations: Well, that's exactly what that school does, it gives people an education and the opportunity for them to play football. Football is an extracurricular activity, it is not like students who don't participate in it are really affected.

Football teams raise revenue for the school, it only makes sense for schools the support their teams financially because they can get major returns which can be used for other aspects of the school.

I think the point isn't necessarily that they spend money on sports or that sports are bad, but rather that sports take up a disproportionate amount of the budget.

But I guess if a sports team makes more in revenue from ticket sales than it spends to play and train (I don't know about this), it wouldn't make a difference either way.

I still don't understand why they don't have special schools for sports like Julliard (spelling?) is for music. I mean, it seems like such a thing would be established so they could really get all the best people together to pick from...

Because sports is not part of the general curriculum, so a school that specified in it would not be a university unless they also had an educational element to it. (And then you guys would bitch about how important football is being made in this school, when the funding should go to far more noble pursuits like education) And you can't have a competition with only one or two teams. The current system works fine from where I am standing.

True. Is Julliard considered a full university? I know little about it, save that it's the fancy music school.

And, I don't really care that there's sports, so much as it seems counter-intuitive to have schools spending significantly more on their extracurriculars than on their actual academic stuff; though, I never considered that the sports teams might make back what they spend plus profit, and if so, then it's not really relevant at all and the point is moot (to me, anyway).

Again, parents both went to University of Alabama. Both of them are pretty angry about that, and mom outright refuses to call it a school.

Maybe they should have gone to a private school then? Football and academics aren't an "either or" thing at schools really. There's a lot of large public schools worse than Alabama for education that aren't as football focused either. Sports are just another career path anyway.

They chose to go to that school, had they wanted to, they could have gone to a different school. How do they have any right to complain when it was their own informed decision to go to a school that is not known for being great at academic studies? If I went into Mc Donald's and complained about the fact that it was fast food and not to the same quality as The Fat Duck, I'd be laughed at and derided for expecting such. If you don't want to go to a shitty school, don't go to it. It is not a simple concept to grasp is it?

30: They do make more money than they spend. Substantially. I've heard "spending all their money on football" in this topic repeatedly, but people don't seem to understand how much of the budget exists directly because of that spending. If people didn't make money off of football, it wouldn't still exist. Invisible hand, etc., that's how Capitalism works.

Invisible hand. Ha.

But, if they do—I suppose I'll take your word for it, then—then it really doesn't matter, and the only problem is people focusing too much on the sports and not realizing that that is not in fact why the school exists (well, unless it really is, but since such schools don't exist, I'll assume that it isn't).

I.e. the culture around college sports isn't... necessarily healthy.

NCAA athletes are required to have a certain GPA, and thus must be successful students (I think it's a 2.0, which is lower than it should be, but individual schools sometimes have higher. I think Penn State famously required a 3.0 [as well as other moral excellence, such as no boozing too hard] from its players, but citation needed).

Edit: Also that commercial series they've been running for a few years now, with a bunch of college athletes stepping off the field, and suddenly their uniform turns into a business suit/lab coat/judicial robe/etc., and then it says "X% of NCAA athletes will go pro in something other than sports." That seems to say that the NCAA has its priorities straight, though to be fair, the NCAA did furnish the commercial.

edited 10th Dec '11 10:09:50 PM by TheEarthSheep

Well, 2.0. is a C, which is technically average. The way grades are today most people treat A's like C's and C's like F's, though...

How can they be focusing too much on sports, even the students who play football or whatever still have to succeed in their studies. For them, study and football have to be treated equally.

I have only ever seen that at secondary education. Where I live 70% is an "A" (Well, a 7) and that is rather difficult to get, 5's are average and you only need a 4 to pass (IIRC). Is it different in the USA?

edited 10th Dec '11 10:12:09 PM by YeahBro

I'm talking about, for example, this Penn State thing. I imagine "not wanting to hurt the team" was part of the twisted thought process that would produce an answer of "let's not do everything in our power to nail this jackass to a firing line."

Which, I must say, would be a horribly backwards thinking process.

It also ties into the more general American culture of taking organized sports far too seriously...

Well yes, but as has been pointed out earlier, athletes like that are role models. They should be people the average person actually should look up to, not look at, like in a straight direction, and say "Well I don't need any more than a 2.0 if Aaron Crawford, some kind of defensive back for Texas A&M doesn't!" (That's honestly the only player I could think of)

Edit: Point is, if you're putting some of your students on national TV, you should at least make sure they're above average.

Yeah, it's different here. A while back there was a relatively big scandal about 40 or 50% of Harvard students getting As in their classes.

edited 10th Dec '11 10:14:38 PM by TheEarthSheep

Yeah. Usually, 90%+ is the A range, 80-89% is B range, 70-79% is C range, etc.

I don't really know much about the Penn State incident beyond kiddy-fiddling and riots. Could you explain what happened and how it is a sign that people were trying to "protect the team"? Because from my understanding, the child rapist was not actively coaching the team.

So, do they make tests and that really easy over there?

edited 10th Dec '11 10:21:44 PM by YeahBro

The basic gist, as it was related to me, is the guy who did it is a former assistant coach of the team, and the (now-former) head coach caught him with a kid in the act and did the bare legal minimum to report it, which led nowhere. The guy later molested a bunch of other boys, too, even though they could have stopped it there.

I'd bet you good money he didn't do everything he could have to avoid embarrassing the team, too.

As for tests, I don't know, really, about that...

That seems to be a problem with the person who reported it and not really one of a football culture.

Well, it's not really the only case. A few years ago Reader's Digest ran a good story about a Texas mother who took on the local school board over high school football players using steroids with the knowing permission of their coach because it helped them do better in the game.

There tends to be an overemphasis on "the game and the team matter more than anything" long after it ceases to be rational. That's not something you can really target with policy or legislation though, methinks...

But can't you find similar cases with any other major pastime and money-making things? I mean, I think we have all heard cases where academic results are fudged in order for universities to get more students through the doors. People will break the law and do immoral things if they think it will get them more money, it is just how things are.

But then the question becomes is "this is how it usually works" justification to not try and fix it?

Academic cheating is no better than sports-related immorality.

A more accurate analogy is that if you offer a starving person a pile of shit to eat, they might be desperate enough to eat it, but they still have the right to complain.

edited 10th Dec '11 10:55:29 PM by INUH