Student Athlete or Athletic Student?

[RavenScallywag]

Since it's the offseason anyway, thought I might kick around a topic which has been around for years, but is gaining some traction in recent news...

Rashad McCants, a former NBA and UNC basketball player, came out recently with allegations that while at UNC, he was in danger of being academically ineligible, at which point Roy Williams "advised" him to switch his major to African American studies. He then tells about how the only requirement in many of those classes was an end-of-year paper. He further tells that he NEVER wrote a paper, instead a tutor would write them for him and let him hand it in. He alleges that the coach, Roy Williams, had to have been aware of this, seeing as he suddenly went from a mostly D and F student to THE DEAN'S LIST. All the way from nearly Academically Suspended to DEAN'S LIST.

With some exceptions (Our new OL John Urschel for one), many of these athletes in the major sports (and I will preface by saying the major sports, the ones like Field Hockey, Lacrosse, etc may not operate this way) at these major universities seem to end up graduating with a very "paper like" degree or major.

The question is how do we fix this? On the one hand, we could admit what no one ever wants to say, which is that these kids are only going to school to line them up for professional sports anyway. Maybe we could focus on switching our focus from making them attend school, to having a true Developmental League instead, alike baseball. In Baseball, a kid can be drafted out of high school, and take 4-5 years to get to the point of threatening for a major league spot. Maybe the way we should do it is do away with the requirement to have kids go to college first, and instead admit them into a developmental league. They can work on their sports skills, and much like a lot of NFL teams do, they can go through targeted seminars/classes in soft skills like money management, how to act on social media, etc. Things that will still give them the life skills they need alongside their sports skills, but not go through a sham of getting them a practically meaningless college degree.

Or, do we go the other way, and tighten the screws on the academic requirements? Make them earn degrees just like any other college student? I mean, I don't want to generalize and say all college athletes get "paper degrees", but there are a lot of the superstar players who major in things like "Letters" or "Liberal Studies", things that are very obviously simple majors designed to satisfy their academic requirements while not distracting from their sport.

Just curious of people's opinions here.

[Sarcasticfury]

The thought of an NFL D-League has been gaining momentum and it's certainly a better idea then sending them off to school to learn nothing for a few years.

[The Excellector]

So, are you advocating a sort of Single A/Double A combo to place underneath of the D-League, which would essentially be Triple-A in this case?

[RavenScallywag]

So, are you advocating a sort of Single A/Double A combo to place underneath of the D-League, which would essentially be Triple-A in this case?

Well, each sport would handle it differently. Perhaps with the NBA, the D-League is sufficient, or maybe they'd need one more level. But, I think in any of these cases, the developmental program should be enhances to make it almost like going to school. Instead of classes which are mostly irrelevant to their athletic career though, they could have classes/courses in more appropriate topics like money management, sports conditioning, etc. Things that a college normally wouldn't offer, but an athlete would benefit from.

For MLB, they already have a well built out structure.

For NFL, obviously we'd need a full on league. Given the sheer number of college football players though, I would think that we'd need maybe a 2nd as well. I found this article estimating the number of college football players per year...

The exact number of players who are eligible to be drafted every year is not readily available, but with some basic math skills, we should be able to come up with a rough estimate. There are 115 colleges with NCAA Division I football programs, give or take half a dozen in any given year. These colleges can offer up to 85 scholarships per year, but every team has some non-scholarship players, so let’s estimate that there are an average of 110 players on a Division I team. A quick check of the rosters shows that each team has between 10 and 20 seniors. So let’s say that each team has an average of 15 seniors. That makes for a total of 12,650 players, with 1,725 seniors. But that doesn’t count Division II, which has roughly the same number of teams, so double those numbers to 25,300 players and 3,450 seniors. So the first lesson that our foray into math offers is that not every college football player makes it to his senior year, and being offered a scholarship out of high school is no guarantee of eventually entering the NFL draft.

25k PLUS players in a developmental league would be ABSOLUTE CHAOS. That is practically the size of a large university's enrollment alone. If you had 85 players on a team, that'd be over 290 teams. Not possible. And then does that mean you get rid of college football? Because for a lot of schools, that is a MAJOR source of income.

Tough calls.

[The Excellector]

One negative that immediately comes to mind with this idea for the NBA is that it sets up for too many youths to try and strike gold, while also missing out on the college opportunity. I'd be in favor of intensifying the academic requirements. However, with all of the money that NCAA makes from College Hoops, I'm not sure they truly be all in on such an idea.

It's just a tough situation where parenting around these kids is not up to par and they've thus devalued education altogether.

[HoustonRaven]

The overwhelming majority of student athletes go to school to get an education.

Only a minute fraction have a chance on the pro level, let alone are actually planning on it.

Overhauling the system to accommodate such a small percentage of student athletes would be counter productive and damaging to those athletes who are doing it right.

Schools need to be held accountable for situations like UNC. Much harsher penalties need to be imposed on schools that pull crap like that.

Secondly, I'd like to see pro sports leagues impose some sort of college requirement. Highly unlikely and difficult to impose, I know, but not an impossible endeavor.

Lastly, allow the athletes to earn money on their likeness by putting that money in a trust that's available to them once they graduate. Kind of like a carrot / stick approach.

[RavenScallywag]

One negative that immediately comes to mind with this idea for the NBA is that it sets up for too many youths to try and strike gold, while also missing out on the college opportunity. I'd be in favor of intensifying the academic requirements. However, with all of the money that NCAA makes from College Hoops, I'm not sure they truly be all in on such an idea.

It's just a tough situation where parenting around these kids is not up to par and they've thus devalued education altogether.

The problem, to me, is that these colleges make a lot of money from these programs doing well. So it becomes a commodity. If your star player is academically ineligible, your program loses money. Thus, they enable the athlete to get by with easy classes and grades. Thus diluting their college education that we want them to have.

[mmi16]

The D1 schools that are always competing to be #1 have been recruiting athletic 'class attenders' for years, some coaches even berate players that actually take a class load that requires actual academic effort, feeling that it detracts from their athletic performance.

Those recruited are too young to really understand the academic opportunity they are being presented - especially those that don't have strong family role models to show the potential of academic achievement.

[NC Raven]

Agree with HR in part. The schools should incur real penalties for this type of institutionalized cheating. UNC is not alone, but should be made an example, given that the scandal went as high as the Athletic Director and Board of Trustees there. The only reason that's not "lack of institutional control" is because it was all done TOTALLY under institutional control. Which you would think is worse.......

Obviously, when a blowhard, self righteous, academically pretentious, stuffed shirt school like Carolina doesn't give a shit about academic fraud to the point where it actually codifies it and institutionalizes it, then the standard "two year bowl ban, take away 5 scholarships" penalty isn't getting the job done. Nobody fears that.

[Of course greater penalties simply aren't possible. The real reason there is no true punishment is that TV contracts are so lucrative and game schedules are worked out so far in advance; you can't have a death penalty for example, because it would leave the rest of the ACC out a member, and would play havoc with everyone else's schedule. The TV people would immediately throw a fit and want to re-do their March Madness deals and their football deals. So nothing bad will ever really happen to any school ever again, no matter how badly it cheats. This is the reality. Unless the bottom drops out of the TV money, it will remain so]

OTOH, I think if you're good enough, you're old enough. Let kids enter the draft whenever they want. It's their choice. We force feed a lot of kids through a "show trial" at college when they don't belong. Even by today's horribly watered down "standards", there are still people who aren't college material. Some of them happen to also be elite athletes. Why not let them do what they do? We do it in golf, tennis, baseball, soccer, all the Olympic sports, without a second thought.

[alien bird]

Agree with HR in part.

OTOH, I think if you're good enough, you're old enough. Let kids enter the draft whenever they want. It's their choice. We force feed a lot of kids through a "show trial" at college when they don't belong. Even by today's horribly watered down "standards", there are still people who aren't college material. Some of them happen to also be elite athletes. Why not let them do what they do? We do it in golf, tennis, baseball, soccer, all the Olympic sports, without a second thought.

The biggest fraud the educational system has placed on the American public is that everyone needs to go to college and get some sort of 4-year liberal arts education. We have designed our educational system to cater to this. While there are some Vo-Tech schools, most 9th graders are pushed into a college prepatory program for which they have little interest or acumen.

There are a whole lot of kids who would be better off learning a trade, and sports is a trade. Professional leagues need to stop putting academic requirements on these elite athletes, but the AAU/Club youth leagues also need to stop blowing smoke up these kids' asses - most of them are not going to be professional athletes; at the same time, a lot of those kids are not suited for a liberal arts education. They need to be trained in a skill. Not everyone can spend $300,000 to become an unemployed white collar worker. The world doesn't operate without the electricians, plumbers and auto mehcanics. I know crap about those things, but I'm glad someone does - otherwise it would be a dark, dry backed-up world.

[JAB1985]

I had a friend that was a starter at PSU. He had one of those majors you kind of said "what the heck can you do with that?". I dont remember him telling me specifically that he didnt go to class but I do remember him saying that he had all the answers for the tests given to him prior to taking them.

The thing is that a lot of these kids need the scholarship to get the degree. some clearly dont care and dont go to school for that but not all. My co-worker also went to PSU and was on the team, but focused on his education and is an engineer. NFL was never a thought in his mind. football was just a means to get his education. I think a developmental league would hurt the ability for alot of people to go to college at all, as we all know how expensive it is. you take away the great players that make up college football and realistically are going to the next level, than college football would die altogether.

[Ngata_Ate_My_Lunch]

Obviously the school is at fault for breaking the rules, but for the most part these kids are only screwing themselves over. Why should we care what sort of fluff degree they go for in school? As far as tutor-written work, who cares about something athletes and rich kids have been doing for generations? It's their decision, and it only effects their futures post-football.

There's a lot of kids in collegiate sports who academically have no business stepping foot on a college campus, and if they want to major in basket weaving in order to focus on coming out of school a professional athlete instead of an educated graduate then who are we to interfere with that? Is their presence going to disrupt the learning potential of more academically inclined students? Richard Sherman didn't major in fluff classes. Steve Young finished his law degree while a pro player. The availability is there for these kids to learn if they want, but motivating them to do so is not the business of anyone but themselves. Can you tell my ex-wife was a teacher?

I don't mean to come off as condescending or dismissive about an African American Studies degree. Obviously it is important as an individual to connect with their roots to better understand the world and their place in it. I just don't necessarily see how this correlates with a career, though.