First and 6 Million
I dread this season’s impending doom, time-and energy-consuming distractions, threat to health and well-being. No, not hurricanes. Football. Specifically, college or (ha ha!) “amateur” football. This little note caught my eye:
The University of Florida’s athletic department is spreading around some [$6 Million in] extra cash to help out the academic side of the school, mostly to cover scholarships for students who are the first in their families to attend college.
UF is the rare university that produces a surplus from television money, donations, ticket sales and licensing from its football and basketball programs. Even successful programs like the University of Miami’s say they have to subsidize the athletic department, covering the cost of scholarships for athletes with academic money. Miami Hurled
I’m constantly arguing with people that universities waste precious resources and distract themselves with their insane focus on brainless athletic competitions, most notably football. In fact, a few of us just rehearsed this line of thought last week at the LRB (Liquor and Rubber Balls) Sports Emporium, a discussion lubricated by the House Special ($2 pints of Bass on draft. Can you beat it?). One argument: it’s financially necessary: universities not
only support their athletic programs with generated revenue, they make a profit which goes towards keeping tuition down, recruiting talented faculty, research and capital, etc.
Paragraph 2 contradicts that contention, or at least suggests that the circumstance is rare. Those millions of dollars that make fat drawling football coaches in funny hats the highest paid members of the faculty come right out of state budgets, parents’ tuition, and white-belted boosters’ checkbooks.
Then there’s the ever-popular argument that without these athletic programs, hordes of illiterate morons would never have a shot at a college education, and end up in state penitentiaries where their upkeep would be even more expensive. How anybody fails to spot the embarrassing premise implicit in this approach is beyond me. But they do. Must be the House Special at work.
I say close ‘em down. Send the sports faculty out to pasture, or wherever ancient jocks and wannabes waddle off to when they’re through. We should be spending our money to send kids to school to learn. They can play football (and drink, fuck, and party) on their own time and their own dime. And I’m sure they will.
August 17th, 2007 at 9:30 am
In an ideal world, I might be inclined to agree with you about college athletics, but in Florida, and presumably much of the south, if you take them away, you’d lose most of your student body, faculty, and donors. It’s too vital to the life of the institution. Perhaps, in your view, that makes them corrupt morons unworthy of carrying out higher education, but in fact that’s the realty of the thing.
August 17th, 2007 at 9:57 am
As an LRB regular, may I respectfully submit that you’re full of gas? And not just from the keg of Bass you sucked down.
There’s a lot wrong with college sports, alright, and there’s a lot wrong with professional sports, too, and yeah, it’s all about the money. ALL about the money.
But it’s worth keeping for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that if it’s done right, above board, and kept clean, it means a lot to the life of the campus and development of complete persons at the time of graduation. College should be a well-rounded experience, and sports helps.
Most people would point to Penn State’s program as a good example, and there’s others. You get the wrong idea if all you look at is Florida and Texas and other deep south football farms.
See you at the bar. And bring your wife. She makes you behave. Sometimes.
August 17th, 2007 at 2:41 pm
Lu Senz: But it’s worth keeping for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that if it’s done right, above board, and kept clean, it means a lot to the life of the campus and development of complete persons at the time of graduation. College should be a well-rounded experience, and sports helps.
While that’s nicely phrased, it’s a load of crap. College sports NEVER addressed any of that to the student body. Historically, it provided cheap thrills and wagering opportunities for well-heeled donors and would-be donors to the college. Then it became big business, which it remains today.
Doesn’t bother me–I like it. It’s a chance to party and look at girls.
August 17th, 2007 at 3:30 pm
Most universities subsidize sports (almost all), but for most sports there is a complicated relationship between the number and quality of applicants and the sports programs they can offer that is usually ignored while people focus on football and basketball. For most intercollegiate sports academic standards can be maintained and the athletes can get a good education with minimal subsidies (actually some sports would cost money to drop). This is not the case for Football and Basketball, however.
I have worked at two Universities. Back in the late 1990s I worked, taught briefly, at a Pac-10 school. The football and basketball players were the worst students, by far, that I have ever seen. I don’t know why this was the case, whether it was a cause or an effect.
Now I work at a university without an intercollegiate football team. It has a basketball team that is Division II. The Athletic Director has stressed academics among all of the athletes here. And, statistically speaking, they do significantly better than the rest of the student population. I have met many of them and their social skills tend to be better as well. If we didn’t have athletics these students would be going to some other school that did.
I don’t know if it is possible to maintain those sorts of academic standards for Division I football and basketball players. They are celebrities, and were in high school. They expect celebrity treatment, and many professors simply assume that bad things will happen if they play hardball with these students.
August 17th, 2007 at 5:06 pm
My experience as a university professor is similar to cavebloggem’s, as described above. Generally, schools that regard their athletic programs seriously do so at the expense of their academics. There is also resentment that scholarships that might support an artist, scientist, or intellectual are paying for uniformed pituitary freaks to take basket weaving classes.
While I believe space exists for athletics in a university setting, I am certain that our current system, emphasizing its money and show business aspects, is counterproductive.