<p>Momof2010, well if that’s true across the board, then it would make previous assertions that foreigners taking spots and money from Americans sound like sour grapes. My experience has been just at the high school level, where recruitment decisions are made, and I have not seen an overabundance of highly motivated and talented American athletes. In fact the top athletes get recruited early to top D1 schools, and the rest go to less competitive places and are awarded less money. That’s just competition, not theft.</p>
<p>Our student pursued a sport–it is a passion–and we never looked at the $ spent on the sport as working towards a college scholarship.</p>
<p>Our student is participating in college–
No $.
The Ivy League does not award $ to athletes…
They have the same academic stats as other admits, and do their sport for the love of it, just like a violinist plays for the love of it…
No $.</p>
<p>So frankly why not eliminate athletic money/scholarships and make it about the grades/merit and financial need?
Frankly many parents have mis information about colleges and scholarships and the coaches perpetuate the myths.</p>
<p>Because in the ACC, SEC, PAC-17, Big 13, etc., there would be no really good football and basketball if the players needed to be close academically with the student body as a whole. No good football = no tv $$$$.</p>
<p>^ That makes the point…they are supposed to be students first…
If we just want a “football league”…then perhaps we need the minors like baseball…</p>
<p>I think all students–including the athletes should be close to the gen pop of the college they attend…</p>
<p>Regardless of scholarship award, consider the advantage of time spent on sports. The old adage, “Time iis the Devil’s workshop”. is disspelled by the amount of healthy time spent at practices, games, camps, etc. This is all with adults who can impart much. Thanks to Title IX, there is finally opportunity for girls to be into sll sports.</p>
<p>@ Fogfog…</p>
<p>While your opinion is entirely valid, the issue is much more complex than that. Athletics gives many students an opportunity for higher education that wouldn’t otherwise get one. Given that the number of players that actually make it each year to the NFL, NBA, etc. are far smaller than the number of freshmen football players entering college each year, the system serves other purposes.</p>
<p>No one can deny that the advertising dollars for these new TV networks are governing many decisions made my the NCAA for Football, and that they are affecting other sports and inevitably academics, both positively and negatively.</p>
<p>Not to mention, that the ever rising tuition costs are creating a generation of debt ridden, over qualified and unemployed college grads.</p>
<p>The money made by Div 1 football conferences on TV deals is the most publicized issue, but it isn’t the only piece to the puzzle.</p>
<p>^ It becomes an issue of credibility—are those football players qualified to be in the college…
If not, then they don’t belong there…they can go to a less rigorous school</p>
<p>It is an issue of values–do we really value an education and do we expect the athletes to value that education…? </p>
<p>Would it shake up the football teams at these schools --yes.
What is the reason they are in college?</p>
<p>Like I said–if it is just about football, then why not have “farm” teams or some junior league instead of pretending they are students</p>
<p>fogfog,</p>
<p>There are 85 football scholarships and 13 basketball scholarships in Div. 1, so you are talking about around 100 students out of thousands, sometimes 10s of thousands at a university. Most of them are qualified to do the work, some of them won’t care about the work, but it is really a relatively small number of students that fall into the “pretend” category you are talking about. It doesn’t seem worth unravelling the entire system over, imo.</p>
<p>I’m pretty much with fogfog on this. My kids were fortunate to be able to use their athletics to help gain admission to T10 colleges, but they were both fully qualified to be accepted to those schools without their athletics. Their sports allowed them the luxury of choosing and knowing early. No athletic scholarships. </p>
<p>Sure, we invested a lot of money in coaching, equipment, and travel for no direct financial benefit. Was it worth it? ABSOLUTELY.</p>
<p>But as it does fogfog, it bothers me when I see student/athletes who are academically clearly out of range for the school they attend.</p>
<p>It undermines the concept of “student/athlete”, and it gives real student/athletes a bad name.</p>
<p>Maybe this will make you feel better about it, sherpa: [Grad</a> rates hit high marks - NCAA.org](<a href=“http://www.ncaa.org/wps/wcm/connect/public/NCAA/Resources/Latest+News/2010+news+stories/October/Grad+rates+hit+high+marks]Grad”>http://www.ncaa.org/wps/wcm/connect/public/NCAA/Resources/Latest+News/2010+news+stories/October/Grad+rates+hit+high+marks)</p>
<p>Graduation rates for Division 1 athletes are higher than for non-athletes.</p>
<p>How does it benefit a college to invest money recruiting and training an athlete who is only going to flunk out after a semester or two? Let’s think about football players, who are the most maligned. They spend weeks on campus practicing before they even set foot in a classroom freshman year and ever summer thereafter, as well as during Thanksgiving and in some cases winter breaks at the school’s expense. Room and board costs alone for those times are pretty pricey, there’s equipment and gear of course, and don’t forget medical expenses for X-rays, MRI’s and the like which they will all need sooner or later. And we haven’t even mentioned scholarship money yet. If this is a profit-motivated business as you assert, you have to assume that any business will only take a certain amount of risk–especially in this age of tight budgets. They are looking for the surest bets they can find.</p>
<p>I agree with warrior1183 that the problem is complex. Typically with complex issues the best thing to do is follow the money (TV contracts) as stemit suggests. The root of the problem is the NCAA, College Presidents, College ADs who have let a system run amok for the last 30 years. Big Time Sports Colleges have turned their attention to making money in an ever escalating athletic and graduate research competition with other schools, and away from educating the undergraduate population. Until the NCAA is reformed, and the TV contracts are controlled will our college undergraduate education system have a chance to succeed once again. IMHO college sports and athletics in general is a national epidemic…people can’t get enough. As a society we are putting way too much emphasis on athletics and not enough on education to compete with other countries. This is not yet a national issue but I hope and pray it starts to get attention very soon. </p>
<p>I have some very strong feelings on this topic. Specifically on how thing are, and how they should be. If I was President for a day, big time college athletics would be forever changed. The first thing I would do after the TV contracts would be to change the amount of time a student can spend on their sport. There would be a dramtic change in the number of hours in a day spent on a sport (go down) versus the number of hours spent on education (go up). </p>
<p>Did you know the NCAA gets 90% of their revenue from the NCAA D1 basketball tourney? I say we start there! [Money</a> and March Madness - Video | FRONTLINE | PBS](<a href=“http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/money-and-march-madness/]Money”>http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/money-and-march-madness/)</p>
<p>This is one of the best articles I’ve read in a long time - [The</a> Shame of College Sports - Magazine - The Atlantic](<a href=“http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/10/the-shame-of-college-sports/8643/2/]The”>The Scandal of NCAA College Sports - The Atlantic)</p>
<p>How to Fix College Sports - [How</a> to Fix College Sports - The Atlantic](<a href=“http://www.theatlantic.com/debates/college-sports/]How”>http://www.theatlantic.com/debates/college-sports/)</p>
<p>“Beer and Circus” - Murray Sperber</p>
<p>Lots of really good points being made. College sports has gotten totally out of hand and, ideally, more college sports would follow the division 3 model of sport being an adjunct to a good education rather than the big time D1 model of school merely being a convenient vehicle for the athletic team. But, for every Alabama football or Kansas basketball squad there are many many gymnastics, track and field, tennis, soccer, wrestling, swimming, volleyball teams that give kids an opportunity to play their sport and go to school that otherwise wouldn’t exist without the money provided by the revenue generating sports. Lots of schools depend on that TV money to fund a broad array of activities. State schools funding is getting cut in the legislature in many places. </p>
<p>Many of us here on CC (self included) are fans of smallish, academically elite private schools with massive endowments where there exists a less mercenary, more pure version of sport. And though the conference shake ups and fraudulent “student athletes” that populate many football and basketball teams is really disheartening, I suspect that a lot of really deserving student athletes are benefitting from the trickle down effect of that TV money.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Did you have any particular “Big Time Sports Colleges” in mind when you made this statement?</p>
<p>When I think of Stanford, USC, UCLA, Cal, ND, UT, UNC, Duke, UW,…I see some of the top academic undergraduate institutions in the country and world. They are also the “Big Time Sports Colleges.”</p>
<p>One piece of this puzzle that you seem to be missing is that the revenue generating sports (Football, Basketball, etc.) fund the rest of the varsity sports. The vast majority of student athletes at these institutions actually do belong there. How do I know this? Because they are students first. They don’t have the luxury of “going pro” in their sport, so they actually have to get their degree and find a “real job.”</p>
<p>Lets do the math here, using Football. there are roughly 120 Div 1 programs, each with a graduating class around 20 seniors…that equates to 2,400 football players graduating from Div 1 programs each year. The number of Rookies that make NFL Rosters is somewhere around 300, including the draft and free agency, call it 400. That might even be generous. So only 16% of these football players make it to the NFL.</p>
<p>Are you suggesting that we take away the scholarships from the other 84% of those players, just so that other 16% go somewhere else? Or take away the opportunities for the hundreds of other student athletes (at each of these institutions) to play a sport they love, while getting an education?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I can only talk about mens tennis.</p>
<p>The player coming from Europe, South America is about 20-21.
They have been on the pro tour and are ranked about 300 in the world.
They are 4 years older than your average senior graduating.</p>
<p>My issue is many, many state schools (funded by the state’s taxpayer dollars) have tennis teams with NO AMERICANS ON IT.</p>
<p>So, maybe the foreigners were suppose to improve the team, boost up the playing level for the Americans on the team, uh… except there are no Americans on the team.</p>
<p>A team at a state school.</p>
<p>I understand your concern as a taxpayer, but are these players better than the available Americans? Isn’t it the role of the coach to notch some wins and thereby keep his job safe? Btw, I do have a problem with the age differential. I don’t think it’s truly head to head competition when age is not the same.</p>
<p>So do you ban BYU from sports? (Their players go on missions and are older then the players on opposing teams.)</p>
<p>Why do players who have played professionally get to play in the NCAA? I didn’t think they could.</p>
<p>Interestingly, the only tennis player I have personally communicated with was a foreign player who was recruited by an Ivy, played one season for the school, then turned pro, left school for 7 years, and has now returned as a regular student to complete her degree at the same school.</p>
<p>cbw123</p>
<p>In fencing more than a few coaches(mostly former Eastern Bloc types) go out of their way to import talent. It seems that instead of taking the time to learn the language and assimilate into America, they would start their own immigration offices, where they maintain absolute control over the athlete and once their eligibility is done,well they just cast them aside. Typical of what American coaches behavior with first/second/third generation black athletes. What gets me is that many of these schools that generate revenue via television,fees, competitive teams, bowl games and the US taxpayer really don’t have a mandate to field teams with citizens that generate the revenue,they don’t sell television rights to other countries? some fees are generated by ???,the teams don’t really compete outside of the US and they don’t generate revenue from those sources so why are we looking or willing to take talent from everywhere else?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I feel the same way about my D (she is only 14). I am not sure I want her to have to juggle both, frankly. I love that she is an athlete, for many reasons. But going off to college seems challenging enough without also committing to two-a-day practices and games and all that. I kind of feel like she’d do better playing her sports for fun, intramural or club.</p>
<p>Then again, if she loves it still, she’ll make time for it like she does now, and do well.</p>
<p>My plan is to follow her lead on this, completely.</p>