<p>This will just lead to athletes going to the Academies for the wrong reasons. You go to an Academy to serve and be a leader first. Being an Army Varsity athlete may carry along with it a great deal of pride, but it should be a DISTANT second. While I don’t know of a heavy degree of animosity between athletes and cadets, I know that athletes already get out of doing many mandatory duties and such due to their status. This will only encourage the belief that they are somehow better than those who go to USMA simply to serve and not to play a sport. Athletes who choose an Academy do so with the thought of serving their country foremost in their mind (or at least they should). If they have dreams of NFL or NBA glory, they should go to UNC or Notre Dame. I have 2 close friends who turned down offers from USAFA and USNA to play football at Princeton and a D-III school, respectively. This, in my mind, was the right thing to do, seeing as how they admittedly care about football first. There’s nothing wrong with this at all, its just not the type of attitude you want at the Academy.</p>