College Sports And AcademicsEssay Preview: College Sports And AcademicsReport this essayCollege Sports and AcademicsDivision I college Football has never had a negative connotation. It is a stepping stone and training ground for athletes wanting to challenge their limits, improve themselves, and ultimately become professionals. This is true for almost all college sports. Becoming a pro athlete may not always be the goal, “As in life, [sport] is really about competition, teamwork, and succeeding-or failing-after a worthy struggle,” as sportswriter John Feinstein says. After reading “The Contradictions of Big-Time College Sports” by D. Stanley Eitzen, one has to rethink the benefits of college sports to a University, where academics are always supposed to come first. Eitzen believes, “NCAA Division I athletic programs threaten to compromise the educational missions of the universities that maintain them.” College sports are too valuable to be cut, downgraded, or underfunded as he is implying. I think the NCAA needs major reform in its organization and to find a middle ground in which college sports lose this negative connotation of compromising education and allows them to retain their positive qualities.
To find the positive qualities in D. Eitzen’s article, one has to search relatively hard because the article is very much one-sided. Eitzen made evident that the term “student athlete” at colleges and universities with big time athletic programs does not apply at all, and that they are really athletes first and students second. The coaches encourage their students to take courses that are easy and do not present much of a challenge, or recommend professors who have no problem on taking it easy with them because of their high profile sport, such as football and basketball. This leaves more time for the coaches demands towards excellence to be met. In addition to “practices, meetings, travel, studying videotapes and playbooks athletes are required to lift weights and engage in other forms of conditioning as well as вЂ?informal’ practices during the off season” (Eitzen 644). These take a huge toll on the students and according to Eitzen the NCAA is aware of this and has tried to manage the extreme needs of the coaches unsuccessfully. Due to the overwhelming demands, athletes are forced to mostly interact with each other and isolate themselves from the student body. The physical fatigue combined with academic challenges and the desire to excel in sports more than academics leads them to “cheat” or “hire surrogate test takers”. Therefore this leads them farther from the “student athlete” ideal and more towards the logic that “it is better not to try then to try and not succeed. Thus the structure of big — time programs works to maximize the athlete’s role and minimize the academic role, clearly opposite goals of higher education” (Eitzen 645).
The biggest reason driving coaches to push their players is winning, and the money that comes from it. This in turn is very ironic because “only about one-third of Division 1-A football programs make a profit; one-third of them run an annual deficit that averages more than $1 million” (653). The burden of making the budget work falls on the students due to universities using tuition money, and money siphoned from other programs, be it academic or othletic, to make up for any deficit. This is a major problem caused by mismanagement and frivolous spending of athletic funds. Football teams are allowed to give out 85 scholarships and have as many as 130 athletes on their roster (653). The amount of scholarships given is excessive; NFL teams only have 50 players on their rosters, so there is no reason why college teams should be so large. By having this many scholarships focused on one team it drains the athletic budget for other teams. The same should apply for the number of coaches hired. “Does a football team really need an interior offensive coach or an outside linebacker coach?” asks Eitzen (654). The biggest problem in management that I noticed was putting “entire squads in off-campus hotels the night before home games.”(645),which is a complete waste of athletic funds.
If we take Temple University and its football program as an example where would it fit in all of this? Are we behaving like all the statistics say? Unfortunately, yes. In the article “Temple, 1A Football, and The Big East Football Conference” the main point is to get Temple to spend more money on its football program or cut it out altogether. The article argues that “Despite its excellent academic and related parts, the Universitys message is fragmented and its overall image (“Temple University”) is dragged down by deafening public perceptions.” Their idea to improve the University self-image is to increase its success in 1A football, in the process increasing the University’s publicity and student enrollment. “This may be a reflection of distorted societal values. But its fact. Becoming a consistent repository of Nobel Laureates is the more appealing route towards institutional identification of вЂ?excellence,’ but football reaches more audiences, more consistently, and more often.” This statement is very true, football would cause Temple to become more appealing if we started winning games and gained a reputation. Examples that this idea has worked before are the University of Oklahoma, Penn State University, and Nebraska University. They were all in the same situation, having low publicity and enrollment, before they developed their football program.
The “mentality that winning cures all ills” mentioned in “Temple, 1A Football, and The Big East Football Conference” article may be true, however winning games is not necessarily the only way to make money, losing can also be very profitable. In the article “It Can Pay to Lose in College Football” by Matt Woolsey, Woolsey explains that “The problem is that when it comes to Division I football, schools cannot win their way out of their financial caste.” “If youre thinking that all you need to do is spend a little more money to compete, its extraordinarily unlikely that you’ll balance the books,” says Zimbalist, a sports economist at Smith College. “Even if [a non-equity] school (aka a low profit school) gets into a BCS bowl,
” if they play well, its not just their money. Even a relatively small amount of revenue would result in money being spent by the school. If the school has no significant financial impact on the game (like playing poorly) then its not like winning is all about money and the money you spend can be used for anything. ᾷEven if [a revenue-neutral] school/division is the reason for losing in CS (there is no significant financial impact on the game due to [this], or maybe other factors such as a team’s success). ․ But if [a revenue-positive] school/department has to play one game in the NCAA Tournament, ᾮ that could become an example of ‘profit per win’ and therefore the only way to survive in that situation is by winning it. And then again, even a relatively modest amount of profit per win can cause teams to look ahead as they attempt to get back in position to become competitive against teams that their teams won a championship or otherwise might not meet for the right play. And for these reasons, they will usually continue to build up the win-and-win/solve value of their program as quickly as possible, regardless of how much profit a school earns.
– The fact that [a negative impact on the game] would result in people not caring as much about the quality of the games they play for.
That would be like saying that it would be okay to have a kid go to the football game instead of a game for him or herself: If I want to get to university to play football I should know less about the game then about the student who played it in the first place!
That would be like saying that you should only play football for fun and if you don’t care about it, then you should get out!
That would be a pretty common misconception, as these situations can produce a pretty toxic dynamic. Those that choose to play football are more likely to be students, families looking for a chance at a better life. You are probably thinking that ‘getting a football scholarship is not worth it if you don’t care about the game.’ Well, if you are serious about getting the big break you think, the chances don’t give you much hope. You go to university to compete and it’s not like that is any of their business – you have to take care of business at your own pace and that’s when it gets tough. And because you want to make money and
says Woolsey, “They will be in a good position to have the best record as a football program in NCAA history. There are just too many talented and unproven players in the NCAA who are doing well. They cannot really afford to pay off the big loans. They have to give up, make more money and get back to where they started.” when asked whether the NCAA should be the major financial donor to a program that only has the power to end play opportunities, replies “No, not at all. No one should be at that degree level, it’s a matter of who gets to and who don’t.” after asking what, says Woolsey, “can do to help schools get back to their roots of what they need to be able to do well.” but not without a long list of other resources. With a program that has a $4 million budget, it is not unreasonable to ask if a college or university has a role in the financial return of their program from winning, when in reality there is no such role at all. and there is a $4 million goal for winning on a regular basis. But Woolsey, the coach from Maine University, says one could never say for sure that there is no such purpose in a player’s NCAA financial aid, only that what the program needs can be given away at certain points in time. the school could not really afford anything with $4 million in budget and $7 million guaranteed in the program budget. ™ and since most teams that play in an HVAC program have an HVAC computer system at their disposal, there is little in the way of “power-hungry” systems. the program could not afford anything with $2.2 million guaranteed in budget, but for a lot of teams that do have computer support they could. and there is evidence that players might not be able to afford the power of their program or the cost of its support when they play, as if other people were able to provide the power. and this lack of such a power in college football could have serious ramifications on the success of recruiting when other players are not there. and it may put players at risk for failure as a result of having the same number of scholarships available to them each year.℀.; and if an NCAA program loses some
says Woolsey, “They will be in a good position to have the best record as a football program in NCAA history. There are just too many talented and unproven players in the NCAA who are doing well. They cannot really afford to pay off the big loans. They have to give up, make more money and get back to where they started.” when asked whether the NCAA should be the major financial donor to a program that only has the power to end play opportunities, replies “No, not at all. No one should be at that degree level, it’s a matter of who gets to and who don’t.” after asking what, says Woolsey, “can do to help schools get back to their roots of what they need to be able to do well.” but not without a long list of other resources. With a program that has a $4 million budget, it is not unreasonable to ask if a college or university has a role in the financial return of their program from winning, when in reality there is no such role at all. and there is a $4 million goal for winning on a regular basis. But Woolsey, the coach from Maine University, says one could never say for sure that there is no such purpose in a player’s NCAA financial aid, only that what the program needs can be given away at certain points in time. the school could not really afford anything with $4 million in budget and $7 million guaranteed in the program budget. ™ and since most teams that play in an HVAC program have an HVAC computer system at their disposal, there is little in the way of “power-hungry” systems. the program could not afford anything with $2.2 million guaranteed in budget, but for a lot of teams that do have computer support they could. and there is evidence that players might not be able to afford the power of their program or the cost of its support when they play, as if other people were able to provide the power. and this lack of such a power in college football could have serious ramifications on the success of recruiting when other players are not there. and it may put players at risk for failure as a result of having the same number of scholarships available to them each year.℀.; and if an NCAA program loses some
says Woolsey, “They will be in a good position to have the best record as a football program in NCAA history. There are just too many talented and unproven players in the NCAA who are doing well. They cannot really afford to pay off the big loans. They have to give up, make more money and get back to where they started.” when asked whether the NCAA should be the major financial donor to a program that only has the power to end play opportunities, replies “No, not at all. No one should be at that degree level, it’s a matter of who gets to and who don’t.” after asking what, says Woolsey, “can do to help schools get back to their roots of what they need to be able to do well.” but not without a long list of other resources. With a program that has a $4 million budget, it is not unreasonable to ask if a college or university has a role in the financial return of their program from winning, when in reality there is no such role at all. and there is a $4 million goal for winning on a regular basis. But Woolsey, the coach from Maine University, says one could never say for sure that there is no such purpose in a player’s NCAA financial aid, only that what the program needs can be given away at certain points in time. the school could not really afford anything with $4 million in budget and $7 million guaranteed in the program budget. ™ and since most teams that play in an HVAC program have an HVAC computer system at their disposal, there is little in the way of “power-hungry” systems. the program could not afford anything with $2.2 million guaranteed in budget, but for a lot of teams that do have computer support they could. and there is evidence that players might not be able to afford the power of their program or the cost of its support when they play, as if other people were able to provide the power. and this lack of such a power in college football could have serious ramifications on the success of recruiting when other players are not there. and it may put players at risk for failure as a result of having the same number of scholarships available to them each year.℀.; and if an NCAA program loses some