Calling Out College Sports

I read a very interesting article yesterday from an issue of Sports Illustrated about the plight of the student-athlete in college sports.  I appreciate that there have been hundreds, if not thousands, of articles written about how colleges and universities take advantage of their student-athletes by making millions of dollars off of their success, only to restrict them in the classroom so that they can dedicate more time to sports, but this article was different.

Coaches are often accused of funneling kids into easier classes, or classes that barely even exist, just so that they can keep their minimum GPAs up to remain eligible for play.  There have been stories of players being paid under the table for their commitment to certain schools, or scoring jobs and houses for their families close to campus.  Even high school coaches are part of the mix, joining college coaching staffs only because they are the representative for a big time athlete on their high school team.

Here are some key quotes from the article:

“It is different because in the last 20 years colleges have allowed their ‘money’ sports – football and basketball – to become farm systems for the professional leagues, and in so doing have permitted their athletes to embrace a terrible myth: that attending college with the sole aim of making the pros is compatible with the academic environment, even at the expense of scholarship.  Scholastically handicapped players are thus invited into college to pursue an impossible dream: to become one of the small number of college players (less than 2%) who make it into the NFL and NBA.”

Sure sounds familiar, doesn’t it?  How often do we picture college coaches visiting recruits and showing them how many players they have turned into professional athletes?  Ever hear of one that goes onto say that even if they don’t make it, their education will carry them through to a different lucrative career?  I didn’t think so.

Going into the actual cost of these programs, the article touches on the dollars that are spent in scholarships for 95 football players, plus the salaries of the head coach and ten assistants, all of which must be paid even “before the first pair of sweat socks is handed out.”  Going further into the point:

“What fans do understand is that they don’t have to spend Saturday afternoon watching ol’ State lose, no matter what the school’s team has cost.  And they don’t.  Which means that if a university is going to get even financially, not to mention tap in on the huge profits earned by the most successful football schools, those 95 scholarships had better go to athletes who can deliver: fill those stands, get the team nationally ranked and on TV – and let’s not hear about a star running back losing his eligibility because he cannot conjugate the verb ‘to run.’”

The act of getting these kids through their classes just so they can play is hardly a new story.  The article touches on the point that these kids are losing a tremendous opportunity in school by not taking classes that prepare them for life after their college careers are over, since such a large percentage don’t end up playing sports for a living anyway (and even if they do make it, the average career in basketball and football is less than five years).

“Since television got its thumb on the windpipe, there is so much money to be made in big-time sports that everybody cooperates….The colleges know they cannot justify their sellout by saying they’ll use the loot to give athletes better academic training, so they try to justify it with dream talk.  School publicists send out press releases bragging about their ability to place players in pro ball and decorate the pages of their sports brochures with photographs of those who have ‘graduated’ to the pros.  Last year the University of Miami shamelessly produced a four-color recruiting poster, captioned A PIPELINE TO THE PROS, that included pictures of those Hurricane players who had ‘made it.’”

The points made in the article are hardly shocking.  The purity of college sports was lost years ago.  Arguments about paying players are constantly being brought up, not because we think they need a little extra income while they dedicate so much of their time to their respective school teams but because there are BILLIONS OF DOLLARS being made on their backs.

What’s the real reason this article was so shocking to me and I felt I needed to share it on this blog?  Because it was published by Sports Illustrated in their May 19th, 1980 issue.  That’s right, John Underwood’s article, which I quote extensively above, was written almost 30 years ago and absolutely nothing has changed…in fact, it may even be worse today.