College Sports

Being that I always get way too into college sports this time of year (until my team lets me down--I'm looking at you, Georgetown), I've been thinking about the phenomenon in our country that is college athletics. If you think about it it's quite strange. Originally (I'm sure) the point of going to college was to, you know, go to college, and sports were, as they still are by definition, extracurricular. It is of course still this way at many schools (I'm looking at you, Chicago), but for a large number of universities I feel like sports are almost as big as academics, to the point where I feel like they are almost a separate entity. Of course college athletes are still required to be enrolled as students in the schools they attend, but please who are we kidding? Athletes are recruited rigorously not for their minds but for their physical abilities, and this likely gets many in where they otherwise would not have a chance. Now I'm not going to get into that, and it's not even necessarily a bad thing, but it seems that many of the athletes don't really care about the education aspect at all...which leads to the "separate entity" of sports and academics.

Which leads me to ponder, why the pretense? Why don't universities just abolish the student requirement altogether and just have athletic teams associated by name only? They could still recruit in the same manner, and this would not preclude the bright students who happen to also have athletic talent from competing. Heck, maybe just make academics optional for the athletes, and those who recognize the opportunity of piggybacking a college degree onto their sporting endeavors could do so.

I wonder if this would fundamentally affect the way in which college sports are viewed. My guess is that it would, but I'm not really sure why. I think people like the notion of the "student athlete," and would react negatively if that were taken away. I think there is definitely value in providing education to athletes, and if a gifted athlete is able to pay for a great education because of his/her sporting ability, all the better. It just seems to me that college sports has become in a lot of ways a "junior" professional league, and as a result many of its more traditional (dare I say old-fashioned?) conventions are at odds with these seeming aspirations.

Somewhat unrelated and regardless of what I said above, I think college sports are very central to the overall "success" of any school. I have always felt that the University of Chicago was infinitely boneheaded in its decision to give up its spot in the Big 10 and do away with sports back in the day. This is something we could not bring back to the level we forfeited now even if we wanted to. The benefits of a big-name athletic program are as varied as they are numerous, probably the biggest of which are advertising and brand recognition (although not to be forgotten are that intangible "school spirit," and oh what's that other one, hmm, oh yeah, $$$$$$$$$$$). The fact is that this is the kind of thing which will factor into any prospective students decision, and I would be willing to bet that for the most part students desire this kind of amenity at their school. Its often suggested that Chicago caters to a different crowd, and maybe so. But it seems to me that they are trending more mainstream, and I bet you anything they wish they didn't have to live with the decisions of their predecessors.