Many “students” are little more than cogs in the great NCAA money machine. Sure, they receive their scholarships, and some are serious about their studies, but how much time can they put it on classwork when they are expected to practice, travel across time zones and play at a quasi professional level in order to keep those scholarships?
And what happens to them when they get hurt? Or more often, flunk out? The answers often aren’t pretty.
College sports and the big-time dollars they produce have effects on the core educational mission. When Nike founder Phil Knight builds his alma mater, the University of Oregon, a $68-million “football performance facility,” it is money not spent on a new science or performing arts building. D-III athletes don’t “inadvertently” sell their autographs, like Texas A&M’s Johnny Manziel, to memorabilia collectors, nor do our alumni have reason to take the NCAA to court for compensation for use of their likenesses in sanctioned video games.
Attendance is tanking at lots of Division I football games, and UD wonders whether some part of that isn’t simply disgust, scandal fatigue. Americans expect the professional leagues to be disgusting, but there’s a vestigial sense that universities should be better. Amid all the theorizing about why people aren’t going to university football games, there’s maybe this, as the authors of the opinion piece suggest: Our tolerance for the Div I Big Lie is finally starting to weaken.
October 13th, 2013 at 12:00PM
If you listen to administrator bullshit, you would think that the student body/alumni/taxpayer can’t get enough of football, that there is no limit to the amount they’re willing to pay, not distance they won’t travel, no outrage they won’t tolerate, to fulfill their besotted infatuation with football.
But as you have pointed out, the admins are not going to admit that they lied, football isn’t the end all, be all, for every fucking USAAmercian. If, as they do at Oregon, they have to give out cheeseburgers, or pose the threat of punishing students who leave games early, then the great American distraction is losing steam. No, you can’t keep jacking up ticket prices, schedule clearly inferior opponents, pay hundreds of million for athlete only facilities, while students wallow in tens of thousands of dollars in debt, with dwindling career prospects. Last spring, I was at a college campus, and passed an announcement for Internship Fair. Found out, they don’t have Career Fairs, the best they can do is offer their students a chance at a chance for a job. And all the overpaid administrators can do is give a kid a cheeseburger if they sit through another blowout….
October 13th, 2013 at 12:39PM
The “too much money” thing is real and important, but in a sense overrated. A lot of problems in college athletics, including notably those around mistreatment of student-athletes, arise from efforts to control costs. This is why current suggestions that the elite (and financially secure) programs “secede” from D1/FBS may actually make sense.
October 13th, 2013 at 12:52PM
@ Mr. Punch, can you explain what you mean regarding mistreatment of athletes? Former Auburn quarterback Cam Newton father solicited money from universities in order to get his son to attend a program. Maurice Clarett was the subject of an SI article describing his playing days at Ohio State, where he rarely attended class and received both cars and money.
These guys may certainly be the singular, but I would like to read what you see as player mistreatment…