Dave Zirin, on big time university sports:
[The Education Department shouldn’t penalize] the players for basically doing what they have been told to do from the moment they step on to these factories, and that’s what a lot of them are.
When you talk about basketball and football, it’s not coincidence that those are the two sports that do the worst job in graduating players because those are the two revenue-producing sports. Those are the two sports where as soon as you go on campus, a message is sent to you right away. As one former player said to me, a former all-American said, we are not student athletes, we are athlete students. Because as soon as we walk onto campus, we are told what is our job on this campus.
… [P]eople from other countries look at the way we operate in terms of our football and our basketball minor leagues being our colleges, and they think we’re absolutely insane …
Think about it: Our colleges are the country’s football and basketball minor leagues. Now that these places are in terrible financial trouble, think about it again. Our colleges are our minor leagues.
March 19th, 2011 at 7:14PM
I think the hockey model in Canada has it right, or at least better; the kids are drafted while they are still in school, and even after they are drafted, they can still play at the “amateur” level, either college, or major junior league. The majority of the major-junior players attend high school or community college (CEGEP in Quebec). The players can go “pro” but still qualify for amateur international competitions. And most teams keep players in the major juniors instead of into the professional minors. There is an elaborate professional minor league system in hockey, much like baseball.
I think it is a travesty what they demand from these boys (because they are still boys in the majority of cases). But I also think that it is a travesty what happens to the rest of the student population who aren’t star athletes, or even athletes at all.
March 20th, 2011 at 1:31PM
I think it’s important to note that (1) football and basketball are the two major sports actually developed within the higher education system (and while colleges are “minor leagues” now, it used to be true that the pro leagues were formerly “exhibitions” featuring ex-college stars); and (2) that these are the two popular sports that place a huge premium on unusual physical size, and thus perhaps most at odds inherently with the student-athlete ideal.
March 6th, 2012 at 9:21AM
That’s kinda sad in fact because basically we can’t rely on anything in this life including sports. These kids don’t study properly cause they know that football or basketball are the first priorities. But what would they do in case of trauma or some other factors that can deprive them from doing sports??We should all think about it I think. Thanks for the post, Dave