Big-Time Intercollegiate Sports: Education’s Entertainment
"Fielding high quality athletic teams that generate substantial revenues for colleges and universities by competing against rival universities is a peculiarly American phenomenon. Unlike many American innovations, virtually no other country in the world has copied it. Such uniqueness ought to provoke reflection about the role of big-time sports in the American academy" (Clotfelter, Chapter 1, 2010).
Being able to attend colleges and play ball for them seems idealistic, right? " It sounds like a good deal. As millions of students struggle to pay for higher education, hundreds of universities offer full scholarships to the lucky few applicants who are talented enough to compete in intercollegiate sports. Yet a growing number of critics decry this arrangement as exploitative. And on August 8th a federal court agreed, ruling that the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), a club of schools that sets the rules governing college sports, has violated antitrust law" (Economist, 2014). |
College sports is an entertainment industry that continues to grow every year. It is becoming just as popular as the National and American leagues of sports. College sports draws just as many, if not more fans from all over the country. How does this hurt or help our colleges? It definitely helps our college because it brings in money that the colleges can use. The colleges sell their sport items and make money that helps the sports teams as well as helping the entire school. Although it does help our college in many ways, it can also cause harm to our colleges. When a college puts more effort into their sport teams than in their academic studies, this can pose serious issues. Some colleges place too much emphases upon their sport teams and not enough on their academic outcomes. Why? because the sports teams bring in much more money than the academic portion of the colleges funding.
As college sports teams win games and become popular, they also bring in the sales of their team items such as t-shirts, cups, hats, banners and other items that fans purchase. This is one reason that colleges place such huge emphases on these sports teams. The better the team is, the better they will do for their college's funding. "The players are students at the university, and the university directly gives money and resources to the athletic departments. In this way, the success of a football or basketball team could have immediate impact of the number of applications, the quality of students, a school's retention rate, or even the amount of donations the school receive" (Keene, 2011). Early American sports teams were very similar to today's sports teams because they all were bringing entertainment to the fans and money to the colleges. It is no different today; the colleges are now paying full scholarships to students who they feel can help their sports teams, where as before, they only paid partial scholarships to students. |