At Auburn, people enrolled as students got to take phoney classes to boost their GPAs... because they could play football really, really well. I think even Nadir agrees with me that inter-scholastic athletic competions must cease, so that schools and students can focus on education.
Why do these athletes even need to go to college? We education snobs admire non-scholarly fields. We just don't want either fields diluted by inclusion of the other.
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"Among those caught off guard by Auburn’s performance was Gordon Gee, the chancellor of Vanderbilt, a fellow university in the Southeastern Conference and the only private institution. Vanderbilt had an 88 percent graduation rate in 2004, compared with Auburn’s 48 percent, yet finished well behind Auburn in the new N.C.A.A. rankings.
'It was a little surprising because our graduation rates are so much higher,' Mr. Gee said. 'I’m not quite certain I understood that.' "
Except for women's basketball (consistently one of the best programs in the country), Vanderbilt always has horrible too mediocre athletic teams. That's because the school has very high academic standards and it actually pushes its student athletes to go to class and perform well.
It has long been debated that NCAA schools should pay athletes because those colleges and universities make so much money from their athletic programs that they could constitute a semi-pro league. The NCAA's argument is that students are receiving and education in exchange for their service. We have known for years that this is a crock.
And these abuses go beyond the classroom. I once worked for a company that forced the Mississippi State football team into sanctions because they were paying football players fat commissions for telemarketing jobs (selling books to professionals and businesses) when the players couldn't read!
Athletic scholarships could provide a legitimate avenue for some students to earn an education, but the universities ignore the future that these players will have when they are graduated (or not) with no real knowledge.
Nadir: Why not just let these athelets pursue their athletic ambitions irrespective of school? Why force them to attend school? An 18-year-old comedian or actor can take classes in between jobs, using money from those jobs to pay for school... or not even attend school. Marrying academics and athletics is preposterous, and inevitably leads to the curruption of one, and the currupted one is always academics.
Even in theory, "athletic scholarships" requires a sacrifice of scholarshp on behalf of athletics: I cannot improve my jumpshot without taking time from my german history lessons, and I cannot improve my german history knowledge without taking time from my jump-shooting. The only reason we marry the two is out of tradition... a very bad tradition, but one that many of us enjoy.
The NFL, unlike the NBA, wants to insure that it has "better educated" and "more mature" rookies upon their entry into the league.
But I think athletic scholarships "could be" a positive force, and have been for some athletes who used the opportunity to gain an education. Those athletes learned how to use the millions they later received in professional sports and were able to lead productive lives after retirement.
I have no sympathy for those athletes who squander the opprotunity because they choose to work on their jumpshot instead of conjugating german verbs or english verbs for that matter.
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