<p>I’d be all for allowing scholarship athletes to stay on for as long as the degree takes. But that doesn’t address the problem of kids who have no business being in college in the first place. It’s not for everyone. At least for pro baseball or golf or tennis, a kid who has what it takes can get there without college. That doesn’t happen in football. So we all pretend we don’t notice how many colleges make a mockery of the student-athlete model. I wish there were a farm league for pro football.</p>
<p>“I’d be all for allowing scholarship athletes to stay on for as long as the degree takes. But that doesn’t address the problem of kids who have no business being in college in the first place. It’s not for everyone.”</p>
<p>Says whom? The kid who drops out after two years, but whose lifetime income is now 60% higher than it would have been had he had no college at all, and stands a 30% likelihood of finishing a degree after age 25?</p>
<p>“Mini, you may be right because I should have discussed the numbers for Black males versus the undergraduate student body at large. But you acknowleged that the numbers are bad, nevertheless. And that’s the point.”</p>
<p>No, the point is that low-income minority students are leaving school in high numbers because they can’t afford to be there. It is the single most common reason why students leave. I’m all for paying the farm leaguers (who are already doing better that their non-athletic fellow students), but that is not going to help the latter one iota.</p>
<p>“But that doesn’t address the problem of kids who have no business being in college in the first place. It’s not for everyone.”</p>
<p>but, see… when you check the overall stats for sophomore year, roughly 50% of kids drop out…so there are alot of reasons even for smart kids not to be there. I agree with you in many ways, but I think maturity can change or lack of maturity can break a person in this opportunity and it is a crap shoot. </p>
<p>I agree about the abuse of college atheletics but I also understand that for many families, it’s the only way. Maybe that’s the first kid to even get a chance at college in a family. You do it because there not be a better way to leave the life your family in mired in. You become an indentured servant in so many ways. Is it wrong? yes. By eliminating it do we make it better? no. </p>
<p>Can we via NCAA sanctions ($$$) make a coach financially responsible for what he brings in the door (ex. bonus for graduation rates, payloss for reducing grad rates) Attach it to the coach, so he/she can’t damage a school and move on elsewhere. </p>
<p>I think the NCAA has looked at these situation and monitors it fairly closely. There is an ongoing effort to improve without harming the student athelete.</p>
<p>“Can we via NCAA sanctions ($$$) make a coach financially responsible for what he brings in the door (ex. bonus for graduation rates…”</p>
<p>Maybe we can give Professor Dowling a bonus/payloss for graduation rates - the coaches are already doing pretty darn well.</p>
<p>The NCAA has imposed grad rate standards and the school will lose scholarships if they don’t meet them. A good number of schools have already been sanctioned and it is on a sport by sport basis so the golf team can’t carry the basketball or hockey team.</p>
<p>"Maybe we can give Professor Dowling a bonus/payloss for graduation rates "</p>
<p>mini
The only thing is prof dow isn’t under immense pressure to win a national championship or the alumni will withold contributions.</p>
<p>Down the road or up the road in your case Coach Lambright was fired after a winning season partly because certain alumni threatened to withold around 72 million dollars in donations.</p>
<p>One of the things the NCAA reports don’t tell you is how many of the revenue sport kids -(men’s football, basketball and occassonally basball, hockey, and lacrosse) are in made for atheletes majors or the amount of special tutoring they get.</p>
<p>To be fair the amount of time these kids are expected to devote to the team and personal training is staggering and the travel interruptons incredible. It wasn’t that long ago that Notre Dame played a 10 game schedule and would not accept bowl bids (no risk of one thise year). Now the college football season is 13 games plus a possible bowl and the “reglar” season runs from August to December.</p>
<p>What has happened is the large diversified conglomerates we still call universities have added sports entertainment to the business model and it has become a lucrative revenue stream. The revenue is tax free and like other professional sports they have frequently found a way for the states taxpayers to foot all or most of the bill for facilities.</p>
<p>Another thing everyone is overlooking is that the NCAA doesn’t control DI football and couldn’t impose any rules the 66 university presidents from the BCS would not accept. The TV and bowl revenue generated by these power conference schools rules the roost and the NCAA knows that these schools would simply leave if anything threatened business as usual.</p>
<p>What these schools are interested is revenue, TV exposure, and a level competitive field amongst themselves. As a consequence there are a million rules on recruiting and virtually none on the quality of the education given to these kids. When you see serious sanctions leveled against a school by the NCAA it is way more likely because the coach bought some kid a hamburger at the airport on the way home to a family funeral than because they have 70 scholarship football players taking AIDS Awareness 101 and Golf 102. The hamburger could be a recruiting tool.</p>
<p>“mini
The only thing is prof dow isn’t under immense pressure to win a national championship or the alumni will withold contributions.”</p>
<p>That’s what’s so amazing! even under such intense pressure, the athletic coaches are STILL doing better with their charges academically than Professor Dowling (who, I am sure, and unlike the coaches, has tenure.)</p>
<p>Yes, there are some student-athletes who probably can’t handle the academic load on top of the two-a-day practices. And they may leave after two years, with their lifetime incomes substantially boosted, and the chances that they will finish a degree after age 25 (like THE MAJORITY of American students today) significantly enhanced. The value-added for these students is, and I am willing to say it, likely greater than many a middle-class kid who finishes a degree and has no idea where s/he is going.</p>
<p>*sigh .</p>
<p>I find it much more offensive when top Ivies accept " illiterate" rich kids who are not even interested in taking remedial classes because they get by on poise and travel knowlege! The eating clubs are loaded with them. The athletes bring in revenue through sports and the illiterate rich kids bring in revenue through mommy and daddy. Everyone talks about the athletes few discuss the trust fund kids. All those popped collars, name dropping their way through school far more annoying than the few athletes who can’t spell. You would be surprised how much better prepared the athletes are these days by the way!</p>