The up side is fewer resources devoted to things an institution of higher learning shouldn’t be devoting resources to in the first place. The down side is fewer folks on athletic scholarships, who might not otherwise be able to go to college. That, however, is a problem only because of other things about higher ed (and the cost thereof) that desperately need to be corrected.
Speaking as a college prof this whole system has always bugged the crap out of me. I have had a number of genuinely academically gifted student athletes who were on athletic scholarship and, essentially, the effect is that they’re required to regularly miss class to maintain their ability to attend school. It’s ludicrous.
Why would the system change at Grand Canyon University? I assume they don’t get a ton of licensing revenue as it stands, but they’re still competitive enough to get into the NCAA basketball tournament.
Yes, as I said earlier, a lot of these college athletic programs would really love to get rid of all the unnecessary ‘college stuff’ and just stick to the important work of winning football games.
There are only so many spots on a team. So yes, the big/rich schools with big brands will attract the best players. Again, who cares?
I’m not going to lament the fact that Grand Canyon University might not be able to field a basketball team. To whom is this important enough to suggest that continuing to exploit all college athletes is worth it?
I don’t have the stats handy, but go through a list of the high schools that these athletes are coming from - especially the high end talent. They’re not going to a random podunk school for the most part. These are kids that are recruited to academies or other high schools with good athletic programs and given advantages and exposure that others may not get.
Like I said, you must live in a well off area, given all the public parks and facilities you have available. Athletic departments aren’t going to budget for college-level facilities if it’s a huge budget suck that will maybe be used for some intramural leagues.
Great, then you’re perfectly fine with paying them!
Yeah, I was kind of dancing around the edge of this without really wanting to get into it because as you said, that’s a whole other problem getting into racism and classism.
This sounds ideal, though I’m skeptical it wouldn’t build right back up again as networks search for live content and athletic departments get creative with how they 100% don’t offer scholarships (my undergrad was a D3 school which ostensibly means no scholarships and… yeah.).
This pretty much the situation Canada. Athletic scholarships are limited and the university level sports aren’t really viewed as a stepping stone to professional level sports.
As they shouldn’t be. Part of this needs to be brow-beating the professional leagues to set up genuine farm leagues. If those farm teams happen to adopt the mascots and colors and etc. of colleges, fine, they can pay licensing money to the colleges for the privilege, and the schools should farm that money into reducing the cost for the students.
I know, I’m a dreamer!
Well, to be clear, I think that universities — at least the public ones — have gotten away with profiting off of unpaid student-athletes for far too long, and either they ought to stop or they ought to be required pay the athletes. I guess private ones can do what they like, but they ought to lose any federal or state funding if they continue running professional sports franchises while refusing to pay their labor force.
Some schools already charge students a fee for athletics, either directly or for facilities. If athletes are paid, will this have the net effect of raising tuition costs for non athletes? Definitely one of those downstream effects I have a lot of concern about.
Maybe, but let the market decide. If students don’t feel that paying the money to have a prestigious athletic program is worth it, they can attend a different college.
Isn’t he NCAA the group that just tried to do that weird thing where the men’s group got a whole gym and a buffet catered lunch, and the women’s got a handful of dumbbells and a sack lunch.
I say raze organization and start a new. I doubt something that bad can be fixed.
I just feel so bad for them. They work so hard to overcome the obstacles their own program is putting in front of them. I’ve never had anything but sympathy for the kids, but their coaches can go straight to hell by and large.
You are overthinking this. To have a college athletic program, you mostly need a gymnasium/exercise facility and a field. You don’t need a stadium, a jumbo TV, or anything like that.
Colleges already have fields, which are used for intramural sports. So that leaves a gymnasium, which I know colleges would be happy to provide.
How am I so sure? Because there are already plenty of academic programs with zero interest in intercollegiate sports, namely graduate/nursing/medical/law schools. And they generally provide a gymnasium for their students, because it is an important factor for their applicants. And graduate students have even less time to work out than undergrads.
I have no doubt that a college with no exercise facilities would lose applicants to a competitor that offered them. They could even make a profit by imposing some annoying fee that overcharges compared to the local health club. It would be a drop in the bucket compared to tuition rate.
