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[jadedm17]

Sad and pathetic. You would think as much money as they make off these kids they would at least insure they are learning something other than just sports.

Especially considering how fickle sports can be : One bad injury can end it all.

My brother faced this harsh reality when he hurt his ankle in high school.
He ended up doing okay, but his path was professional sports; When that was changed he wasn't in as good a spot as he could have been if sports didn't take up all his time, or if anyone cared if he actually learned anything in school.

 

[Escape Goat]

send them to the derek zoolander school for kids who want to read good and do other things good too

 

[tiggerkiddo]

It's pretty sad but the athletes should really learn to read and write...shoot learn to do something other than sports. Only a small percentage get to the pro leagues and one big injury and you're done for good.

 

[SloaneRisette]

send them to the derek zoolander school for kids who want to read good and do other things good too

Lol

It might be too late for them though.

 

[Opiate]

It seems quite possible to me that the primary problem is high school, not college. It's difficult to control for variables here.

I can fabricate an argument for the continuation of college athletics (it brings in money, after all), but high school athletics are much harder to defend. It might make sense to decouple high schools from sports programs as is done in many other countries.

 

[Valhelm]

It seems quite possible to me that the primary problem is high school, not college. It's difficult to control for variables here.

I can fabricate an argument for the continuation of college athletics (it brings in money, after all), but high school athletics are much harder to defend. It might make sense to decouple high schools from sports programs as is done in many other countries.

Isn't high school sports the only reason why many students don't drop out, in very poor areas?

 

[Trojita]

Isn't high school sports the only reason why many students don't drop out, in very poor areas?

In a lot of rural and poor communities, school exists as some container for sports with a bunch of needless stuff like books and reading attached for some unneeded reason.

Go Panthers!

 

[televator]

keep lowerin dat bar 'merica

We do our best.

 

[Opiate]

Isn't high school sports the only reason why many students don't drop out, in very poor areas?

It's very difficult to control for variables here. It's also possible, for example, that high school sports are a contributing reason why many students care so little about school in the first place. Why try hard in classes when you can just wait until after classes and be a star?

 

[Im a Manatee]

I go to Penn State, which is a pretty decent school overall and the university prides itself on it's academics. Penn State's own statistics have alerted me to some pretty abysmal statistics nationally that I am sure are directly affected by players who cannot read and write. Let's not fool ourselves, not every university is going to spend the millions of dollars that football players make them on the football players. Alabama, which has a poster on it's campus showing the combined NFL paychecks of nine former players, is rapidly becoming a much higher ranked engineering school because of all of the football money. It's a ridiculous quandry to have. Alabama landed a smart 4 star recruit from the DC metro area who chose Alabama because its civil engineering program is now top notch. Alabama's growing engineering program, along with the economic impact it has brought, has attracted numerous defense contractors and Boeing to Alabama in the last few years. (yes, I know that red stone arsenal is in Alabama).

http://onwardstate.com/2013/10/24/penn-state-football-graduation-rates-soar-above-national-average/

All Students (four-year federal)

Penn State 86 percent, Division I average: 63 percent

Student-Athletes (four-year GSR)

Penn State 88 percent, Division I: 81 percent

Big Ten rankings: 1. Northwestern (97 percent), 4. Penn State (88 percent)

African-American Student-Athletes (four-year GSR)

Penn State 88 percent, Division I: 66 percent

Big Ten rankings: 1. Northwestern (92 percent), 2. Penn State (88 percent)

Female Student-Athletes (four-year GSR)

Penn State 94 percent, Division I: 88 percent

Big Ten rankings: 1. Northwestern (98 percent), 7. Penn State State (94 percent)

Female Student-Athletes (four-year federal)

Penn State 86 percent, Division I: 72 percent

Big Ten rankings: 1. Northwestern (89 percent), 2. Michigan (87 percent), 3. Penn State (86 percent)

Male Student-Athletes (four-year federal)

Penn State 73 percent, Division I: 58 percent

Big Ten rankings: 1. Northwestern (88 percent), 2. Penn State (73 percent)

Football Student-Athletes (four-year GSR)

Penn State 85 percent, Div. I and FBS: 70 percent

Big Ten rankings: 1. Northwestern (97 percent), 2. Penn State (85 percent)

Football Student-Athletes (four-year federal)

Penn State 72 percent, Div. I and FBS: 58 percent

Big Ten rankings: 1. Northwestern (92 percent), 2. Penn State (72 percent)

This article has more dirt on the poor environment that is created for athletes at Divison I universities. Florida State, this seasons National Champions in Football, has particularly awful graduation rates.

....Some schools, like Florida State — with a 37 percent graduation rate among its black football players, according to the study — have decided to act on the new data. They’ve hired tutors and academic advisors for athletes while doubling the amount of money in academic support programs, said Florida State President Eric Barron.

 

[stormplyr]

I played baseball at the Division II level for four years, and I can say a third of our team had GPA's above a 3.0 Obviously I wasn't playing a big cash sport like football or basketball at a division I school like Alabama or Duke. I think a lot has to do with how much revenue your sport brings in, and puts pressure on the coaches and athletic department to keep the team at a top level to keep the revenue flow. It's totally backwards. Anecdotal but, I've had many classes with football players at my school and some of the stuff they'd say I'd just have to smh at.

 

[Hachimaki]

Curious if someone can shed some light on this but don't athletes need to read like playbooks and need to know different schemes that, for example, certain football defenses run. I am no expert on this but I think to read an offense or whatever you have to be smart on some level. They may not be able to read or write at a high level but are "smart" at some level.

 

[Piecake]

It's very difficult to control for variables here. It's also possible, for example, that high school sports are a contributing reason why many students care so little about school in the first place. Why try hard in classes when you can just wait until after classes and be a star?

Yup, social prestige is a pretty strong motivating factor for everyone, but especially for teenagers.

The article that was posted above on whether high school sports are worth it or not gives a very good example. They stopped sports and basically the school atmosphere improved as well as educational achievement. Not saying that that will be true everywhere, but we shouldnt be spending as much money on high school sports as we do for what educational benefit we get out of it.

As for literacy and educational achievement and, well, solving this problem, I think the best way to go about it is pre-k education. A lot of these kids were probably behind before they even entered kindergarten or the first grade and maybe had family issues at home. What probably happened was that they realized that they were behind, thought they were dumb, stupid, and inferior, and just gave up trying. Best way to fix that is to ensure that we try to eliminate the gap before it starts

 

[Mr. Patch]

Curious if someone can shed some light on this but don't athletes need to read like playbooks and need to know different schemes that, for example, certain football defenses run. I am no expert on this but I think to read an offense or whatever you have to be smart on some level. They may not be able to read or write at a high level but are "smart" at some level.

That's because they spend their time actually learning that stuff.

A lot of the best D1 athletes are only in college because they can't go pro yet.

 

[hoos30]

Curious if someone can shed some light on this but don't athletes need to read like playbooks and need to know different schemes that, for example, certain football defenses run. I am no expert on this but I think to read an offense or whatever you have to be smart on some level. They may not be able to read or write at a high level but are "smart" at some level.

There is a distinct difference between academic and athletic intelligence. Playbooks are not Shakespeare, they are about learning and executing patterns, which someone could be a genius at and still not know how to read or write English.

 

[Squirrel Killer]

There are 125 FBS football programs which can each award 85 scholarships, that's 10,625 athletes. There's another 122 in the FCS that award 63 "full equivalent" scholarships, that another 7,686 athletes.Throw in another 4,550 for the 13 scholarships on the 350 DI basketball programs, and that's 22,861 athletes in revenue sports, of which, maybe 284 (NFL + NBA drafts, not including FA or minor leagues) go pro a year.

The other ~95% will have to use their education. Due to Title IX, that means there's at least 22,861 female athletes getting (way more than that since I didn't factor in the male non-reveune athletes.)

In any population of ~50,000 you're going to find examples of abuse, favoritism, etc... but that doesn't mean you damn the whole population. College sports is a ~$4 billion/yr industry, which sounds impressive until you realize higher education is a ~$500 billion/yr industry. If sports are what's wrong with college these days, college is doing pretty well.

 

[hoos30]

American college athletes are a joke and should all be kicked out...

Wow, thanks for getting the thread off to a roaring start. I am a former high D1 basketball player and I attended a certain elite level basketball camp as a rising HS senior. They had two Nike sponsored speakers come talk to us, Dick Vitale and Spike Lee. If you ever saw the movie Hoop Dreams you saw a clip of it (and a one second blip of me in the audience!) Anyways, both of them had the same message: Use the basketball, don't let the basketball use you. They meant for us to take advantage of the opportunities that we were about to be given and not let the temptations and realities of the system distract us. It is VERY easy to get caught up in the dreams and the hype about getting a scholarship and possibly moving on to a pro career; EVERYONE around you tells you to focus on just that. It takes unbelievable discipline to block that out and still get your academics in. Some people can while others can't. Just like the rest of the world.

That camp was unique in that in addition to basketball, they made us take a standardized test and attend a "college prep" class every day. Of course I scored in the top group but what was interesting is that four of the top five players in that year's class also scored above 90% on the academic test, including Chris Webber, Alan Henderson and Cherokee Parks. I have a picture of that class, I'll see if I can find it. Our teacher told us about the classes on the lower end and yes, several of those kids could not read or write at a HS level.

 

[Valhelm]

It's very difficult to control for variables here. It's also possible, for example, that high school sports are a contributing reason why many students care so little about school in the first place. Why try hard in classes when you can just wait until after classes and be a star?

Maybe. But illiterate athletes are very rare. I think athletics might push some students to do better than their peers, because they need a certain GPA to be accepted into a certain university.

 

[ThatGayWolf]

The same could be said about the denizens of this board.

Sad and pathetic. You would think as much money as they make off these kids they would at least insure they are learning something other than just sports.

*ensure

 

[Elwood Blues]

what they make on the wonderlic is all I care about.

 

[GillianSeed79]

It's very difficult to control for variables here. It's also possible, for example, that high school sports are a contributing reason why many students care so little about school in the first place. Why try hard in classes when you can just wait until after classes and be a star?

It would be very hard to do that in the U.S., especially with football. There was a school that did that recently that basically cut the football program and sports and saved a shitload of money for, you know, school stuff. But they got a lot of flak.

I'd be OK with the NFL having like farm leagues or something. I don't think all student athletes are dumb jocks or anything. There's a lot of other sports that don't get national TV coverage at colleges. I just think it's kind of sad that universities use stuff like football programs or basketball programs as revenue streams for their particular institutions. One nationally televised football game is probably worth more to them than an entire freshmen class of students.

 

[Miletius]

Sad. Ultimately it's doing a lot of those kids a disservice. Many will go on to have bright careers in athletics, but just as many will have to find something else to do after college ends. Employers may have sympathy but they will never hire somebody who doesn't have basic reading and writing skills over somebody who does.

 

[Skellig Gra]

Curious if someone can shed some light on this but don't athletes need to read like playbooks and need to know different schemes that, for example, certain football defenses run. I am no expert on this but I think to read an offense or whatever you have to be smart on some level. They may not be able to read or write at a high level but are "smart" at some level.

Typically the really dumb ones don't succeed on the highest levels.

 

[GaimeGuy]

There are 125 FBS football programs which can each award 85 scholarships, that's 10,625 athletes. There's another 122 in the FCS that award 63 "full equivalent" scholarships, that another 7,686 athletes.Throw in another 4,550 for the 13 scholarships on the 350 DI basketball programs, and that's 22,861 athletes in revenue sports, of which, maybe 284 (NFL + NBA drafts, not including FA or minor leagues) go pro a year.

The other ~95% will have to use their education. Due to Title IX, that means there's at least 22,861 female athletes getting (way more than that since I didn't factor in the male non-reveune athletes.)

In any population of ~50,000 you're going to find examples of abuse, favoritism, etc... but that doesn't mean you damn the whole population. College sports is a ~$4 billion/yr industry, which sounds impressive until you realize higher education is a ~$500 billion/yr industry. If sports are what's wrong with college these days, college is doing pretty well.

What?


In the NBA, players receive 50% of all revenue, and in the NFL players receive 46.5% of all revenue.

If you used that revenue-sharing model in college sports, the male college football and basketball players would collectively receive $6.2 billion.

Athletics have been increasingly subsidized by tuition. One in eight of the 202 Division 1 colleges actually netted more money than they spent on athletics between the years 2005 and 2010. At the few money making schools, football and sometimes basketball sales support the school's other athletic programs. Athletes, on average, cost six times more than it cost to educate the non-athlete. Spending per student varied from $10,012 to $19,225; cost per athlete varied from $41,796 to $163,931.

In 2010, there were 20.3 million students in higher education, roughly 5.7% of the total population About 14.6 million of these students were enrolled full-time

Total expenditures on all public 2 and 4 year institutions was $281B in 2009-2010, of which $76B was on instruction.

 

[Squirrel Killer]

What?

I'm not sure what you're "What?"ing about, but my point is this:

• Higher education in the US is a $531 billion/yr industry.
• College athletics is a fraction of that, at just $7.4 billion/yr.
• College athletics help >50,000 athletes get an education.
• In any population that size, you'll have a portion (likely disproportionally in the vanishingly small percentage likely to go pro) that don't value what they're given or abuse the system.
• You shouldn't throw out a program that does so much based on such a small abuse rate.

 

[DeaconKnowledge]

By college it's too late.

These kids have been groomed to play basketball and football from a young age. They are pampered and pushed through school. Lots of these kids started in their chosen sport in primary school!

By the time they get to college it's too late to change anything, and the colleges don't care because like that tweet said, they aren't there for an education, they're there to put asses in the bleachers. Any learning they do outside of that is cake.

 

[Urban Scholar]

Like the post above points out it happens

Excuse my naivete but I wonder about the % that doesn't make to the pros and where they go.

This reminds of how my local sports talk show. The host had a rant how he loathes interviews with most athletes because they aren't very articulate or something.

I'm saddened more than anything really. It sucks

 

[Squirrel Killer]

Excuse my naivete but I wonder about the % that doesn't make to the pros and where they go.

The vast majority of them are fine. Men cross-country runners and women rowers know they're not going pro in their sport and actually care about their education. Some of them know they're not going pro and still slack off their education, just like many other college students. Some of them use their connections made while playing sports to work in a bank.

 

[I_D]

The only surprise here is that they're college students.

If you look at non-college-goers, tons of people can't read or write.