What does the Army-Navy Game Mean in Black-Run America?
11th December 2011
The only honest discussion of race and education in America that you’ll see this decade.
And I’d still shoot Roger Staubach on sight, given the opportunity.
11th December 2011
The only honest discussion of race and education in America that you’ll see this decade.
And I’d still shoot Roger Staubach on sight, given the opportunity.
December 11th, 2011 at 13:26
The solution to college athletics and all the hypocrisy, injustice, cheating, and scandal which accompanies them is simple: just pay ’em. Pay them and remove the requirement that they actually be enrolled.
Pay them the equivalent of the school’s tuition, and sign them to a 4-year contract. If they wish to apply their salary against the tuition to attend the school–assuming they can meet the same entry requirements as all other students–fine and good. If not, they can just play and, four years hence, apply to and attend some other school (assuming they’re interested in going to school, which is by no means a given). By that time they should have accumulated enough money to afford it.
It would remove all the hypocrisy, the cheating, and finally put paid to the myth of the “student athlete” who is, in reality, an “athlete student”.
December 11th, 2011 at 14:59
Why would universities have professional teams? What would be the point? We’re talking games here. Games are for young folk to learn useful stuff. So adults playing games is problematic already. What adults should be doing is putting to use those skills acquired during game play. Say, in the military.
December 12th, 2011 at 11:51
@ Lowly: Adults are putting their skills to use–in entertainment. If someone can sing like Luciano Pavorotti, nobody thinks twice about his making a living by entertaining people with his voice. When someone can catch a football like Jerry Rice, and folks are willing to watch it for entertainment–and pay for the privilege–why look down on him for making his living that way?
Universities already have professional teams. What is an athletic scholarship, if not payment in kind for being able to play a game? A game which many are willing to pay to watch, thereby enhancing the coffers of the institution.
If you think sports teams on campus are for teaching the students something, you are sadly mistaken. The primary function of the big sports teams–football, basketball, and to a lesser extent hockey–is to market and promote the institution. And it works. Ask yourself: Had it not been for Knute Rockne, who would have ever heard of a small, Catholic liberal-arts college in the middle of Muddy-West-Overshoe, Indiana? By rights, the athletic department at most Class 1 universities should be under the advertising and marketing budget.
What paying the athletes instead of giving them ‘sholarships’ would do would be remove the fiction for many of these young men that they are attending school to get an education. Perhaps playing the sport in order to go to school was the original intent, but today attending school is often the price one has to pay in order to play the sport. The tricks, chicanery, and dishonesty involved in making–and keepin–these young men ‘academically eligible’ so they can continue to play is the acid which corrodes the standards and morals of the school.