Colleges should restore balance to athletics program: Players must be given opportunity to be students (kentucky.com)
The following editorial by Centre College President John Roush appeared in the March 31, 2007, Lexington Herald-Leader.
As a former football coach and an English major, permit me a literary sports metaphor: Two roads diverge in a yellow wood. At the end of one is an aging campus library; at the end of the other, a plush new arena.
While both paths are well worn, the sports road is getting more and more traffic, and the academic road is becoming increasingly littered by hot-dog wrappers, popcorn bags and beer cups thoughtlessly tossed down by people on their way to the game.
March Madness notwithstanding, we now have convincing evidence that two of the often-cited benefits of big-time college sports — enhanced alumni giving and a huge return on investment from increased sports expenditures — are largely imaginary.
A recent National Collegiate Athletic Association study finds no proven link between athletic success and alumni giving and that increased spending on sports over a period of 10 years is not associated with changes in net operating revenue.
Respected researchers have now confirmed what many of us have long suspected: Most athletic programs, high-profile and otherwise, lose money.
But the most damaging aspects of professionalized college sports can be seen in the lives of the student-athletes who are no longer permitted to be students first. The educational and life experiences of young people in the system are impoverished by our year-round focus on athletic performance.
To begin with the obvious, the vast majority fail to graduate in four years. Too many never graduate at all.
But even those athletes who do graduate miss out on key developmental experiences. They have no time for student-faculty research, internships, study abroad, summer jobs or other activities that add richness and depth to academic learning.
I am a lifelong supporter of athletics and continue to believe that properly managed, competitive sports provide many good things. The solution is not to throw the radio out the window, but, in the words of NCAA president Myles Brand, to “turn down the volume.”
To that end, I offer five recommendations:
• Shorten the practice and playing season. Nature’s seasons come at traditional times. The same should be true of college sport seasons. “Season creep” has expanded the time that an intercollegiate athlete must devote to his or her specialty.
• Eliminate optional summer conditioning, which is no longer optional at too many Division I schools. Summer should be a time for broadening students’ experiences.
• Drive a stake in the heart of the idea of “pay for play.” To provide additional stipends for athletic accomplishments — at the expense of academic accomplishments — sends exactly the wrong message.
• Eliminate “full-ride” athletic scholarships. Colleges should provide only tuition. Room, board and books could be covered by need-based financial aid where appropriate. The remainder should be paid by the student-athlete’s family or from his or her earnings from campus or summer jobs. This would reduce the sense of entitlement from which some highly recruited athletes suffer and restore a sense of balance in the lives of these young men and women at the same time.
• Reduce the pay of coaches to levels that are proportionate to the other salaries on campus. I know this is a tall order. Legendary football coach Bear Bryant once said, “50,000 people don’t come into a football stadium to watch an English class,” which is true enough. But playing a football game never taught anyone to read with comprehension and insight or to write with clarity and grace.
Our primary purpose is education, not entertainment. The grotesque salaries — such as the $4 million-plus bonuses that Alabama recently bestowed on Nick Saban — convey a sense of distorted institution values.
None of these recommendations will be easy. But if a sizeable group of college presidents and their boards call for these reforms, they can be enacted. Decades of abuse and an emerging consensus has set the stage for action.
The tipping point may have come recently when the House Ways and Means Committee sent a letter to the NCAA strongly implying that many big-time athletic programs were causing their institutions to lose touch with their educational missions.
The threat of government intervention may provide the final push needed to launch true reform.
In the Robert Frost poem I echoed in my opening, the speaker chooses the less-traveled way, knowing that he will probably never return to the road not taken. But we do have a choice.
Though we have proceeded far down the road toward professional college athletics, we can and should return to the one where academics come first. To do so will be a great step for good in the lives of the young men and women colleges exist to serve. For many, it will make all the difference.
