Big time athletics and its’ attendant influences are only growing, see; http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/01/opinion/joe-nocera-baylor-football-and-rape.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&_r=0
When does it become too much? As a point of transparency, I am a college parent and a former D1 scholarship athlete at one of the more prominent programs.
I think it’s clear that it became too much decades ago.
As much as I love sports, these purported “extracurricular activities” have become too tethered to leadership, and in some instances, dictate policy and decisions, that should be the sole domain of either the President and/or Chancellor. So, yes, I agree with you.
Do remember the illiterate basketball players at many schools in past decades?
Here is an excellent piece on the subject:
http://sports.espn.go.com/page2/tvlistings/show103transcript.html
I do not see why colleges have athletics at all. maybe not a popular position but, schools should be about learning,intellectual pursuits and research. any money spent on athletic endeavors or scholarships should be re directed towards scholarships for really smart students who can not afford college.
There are some schools which have no/few sports teams. You’ll find they are much smaller than those with sports. I think there is a correlation (and causation).
College sports don’t exist at Eurpoean universities. But they have been a fixture at American colleges for more than 150 years. They will never ever ever go away.
Sports have outsized influence at even the best schools. The school with the biggest number of sports and athletes is Harvard. While Harvard athletes are certainly well qualified, the investment that Harvard makes in its athletic program is huge. Most significantly, it relaxes its admissions requirements for athletes and sets aside a large number of its precious seats to fill out its rosters. A school like Williams has 30-40% of its students as varsity athletes. It is perhaps the biggest jock factory in American higher ed.
Look at Stanford. Huge athletic department and (unlike Harvard and Williams) they give out athletic scholarships. Why do they do that?
While athletics at Harvard and Williams and Stanford are a very different animal than at Oklahoma State, Harvard and Williams and Stanford show that sports are as deeply ingrained in American colleges as dorms and dining halls. It is just how it is.
^^^ How else would elite schools meet their URM quota if it weren’t for sports? In fact, it is increasingly even used to boost white enrollment over Asians. White males who are not legacy or development have virtually no chance of getting into these schools unless they excel in sports, because all the academic admits go to the Asians.
The NYT has published a number of articles about former college football stars from top schools who have gone on to live miserable lives, not making the pros, suffering from CTE as a result of repeat concussions, couldn’t hold down jobs etc. College varsity sports is the biggest sham and should be completely eliminated from our colleges. The biggest victims of this sham are blacks.
Where’s the “unlike” button?
The D1 dream. So sad to see neighbors spinning their wheels. My baby once asked “Is this one of those D1 showcases where everyone is two years older than me?” When the Penn State scandal broke, I suggested that they emulate the U of Chicago, the founder of the Big 10. No one understood me. D3 works for us.
I’ve only seen two posts from you and both of them have been dripping with racism.
It is a total sham for all blacks? I can only speak for myself–but a D1 athletic scholarship allowed me to obtain two bachelors degrees. It also sent the foundation for me obtaining two professional degrees (one from an Ivy, the other from a top 20 or so, law school). Many of my former teammates are principals, business owners, teachers and coaches. So, to say it was a total sham, well is too one sided.
I will confess that things have gotten way over-board and the proverbial tail is wagging the dog.
BoolaHI makes good points. I am from an urban public HS. Sports was a ticket for some. Hats off to them! Meanwhile down here at D3 … The athletes are acknowleded as the biggest donors at my son’s very liberal LAC.
And for you sports haters…please accept the testosterone-laden as part of the diversity equation.
@northwesty, as I suspect you know, sports are as important at some American elites as at European unis. Sports matter little at UChicago, MIT, Swarthmore, CMU, WashU, and Emory. They matter not at all at Caltech.
I think there’s a big difference between “sports are important” and schools hosting what amounts to a minor league team for a major professional sport that generates numbers like $150 million a year.
The former, especially at elite schools, are often supported by boosters and endowments, i.e. people who have a vested interest in the school and want to see an athletic component. The latter is just big business. Michigan’s football team generates something like $85 million just in TV rights.
While I agree with some of your sentiments, the fact is that sports programs are often self supporting, and in fact often bring in donations and support for schools that are, in fact used to support those needy smart students.
For example, each SEC school will receive $31.5 million this year as their share of media revenue. This money is being paid by the networks and isn’t coming out of education. The typical sports team will have anywhere from $50 to $150 million in revenue from ticket sales, media revenue and donations. The universities generally provide a very small subsidy, which they more than get back by having hundreds of thousands of alumni visit the campus, prospective students visit, national TV exposure, ect.
A few years ago we hosted a very bright Northern kid at our pre-game tent during a college visit. After taking in the spectacle of 150,000 people crammed onto 10 acres of land, all merrily visiting with each other he turned to his mother and said, “This is where I want to be.” And a year and a half later, he was. So these events really offer a time for people to visit and get a feel of the social life of a campus. They are a valuable recruiting tool.
I do think given the huge amounts of money that are being brought in that players ought to be given a little bit of spending money, but that’s another argument.
According to the NCAA, all but 20 schools lose money on athletics. Overall, football makes a ton of money at the D1 level (median profit among FBS schools - $3 million) and men’s basketball makes some (median profit $340,000). But this money pays for every other sport, all of which lose substantial amounts every year. According to the NCAA, the median loss is something like $11 million a year. The study is here http://www.ncaapublications.com/productdownloads/D1REVEXP2013.pdf
Now, a cynical person may suspect that the NCAA’s numbers are just maybe a bit understated, given the pendency of the O’Bannon case (the lawsuit about colleges selling jerseys in the bookstore and entering into contracts with video game makers while lecturing 18 year olds on the purity of amateur athletics) but I think that most people accept that in general most athletic departments lose money.
The question of course is do you amp up your football program to maximize the revenue available or do you cut crew, swimming, etc. etc.
@cmsjmt said
Don’t let facts get in the way of your opinion.
…or is it your position that this has changed appreciably in the 10 years since this article was published?
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2007/5/17/how-fair-is-fair-harvard-embrbefore/
“@northwesty, as I suspect you know, sports are as important at some American elites as at European unis. Sports matter little at UChicago, MIT, Swarthmore, CMU, WashU, and Emory. They matter not at all at Caltech.”
Swarthmore has an enrollment of 1500 and 450 varsity roster spots. In contrast, Florida has 30,000 enrollment and 600 roster spots.
That’s a LOT of seats being earmarked for jocks at Swarthmore. Pretty over the top on sports. No one makes any money on Swarthmore sports or cares if their Swarthmore teams win or lose. Yet they still do it, spend a lot of dough on it, and bend their admissions standards to field all those teams. Why? So they can say they beat Haverford in field hockey?
To me, Swarthmore’s emphasis on sports is a lot more inexplicably than Florida’s. It totally makes no sense.
The difference is that Florida cedes a certain number of admissions slots to its athletic department. Swarthmore does not. Yes, there are a number of kids at Swat who are athletes, and some percentage of those got in with a “push” from the coach. But admissions still made the decision to admit each kid, and the vast majority are going to have academic stats in range with the average Swat student. At Florida, for a certain number of recruits, all that is important is that they pass the NCAA eligibility threshold. Maybe more importantly, no one at Swat is “approving” student athlete academic schedules they way they are at Florida.