Friday, November 28, 2008

What is wrong with College Football

Over at CNNSI, Andy Staples discusses how Notre Dame can fix its program. The first solution is for the school to drop its academic standards "at least occasionally." This is not the first time Staples wrote about the conflict between sports and academics.

But, I guess, college only describes football. It certainly has no relationship to academic standards. Maybe it should be renamed to exploitation football. That phrase provides a must better description to reality than college football.

2 comments:

M said...

Before you describe all college football programs as exploitative (and, in most cases, I would agree with you), I think you should recognize Myron Rolle and FSU's program. Rolle is FSU's top-rated safety, and he was recently named a Rhodes Scholar. From everything I've read about Rolle, he is a model athlete and student, and FSU football program, especially the head coach, has supported Rolle's academic success (3.75 GPA, pre-med, and graduated in 2 1/2 years). In fact, the day of his interview, which was in Birmingham, FSU was playing a pivotal game against Maryland. Rolle chose, with his coach's support, to skip the game and attend the interview. Since I don't want to suggest that FSU doesn't primarily value Rolle for his athletic talent, the Athletic association paid to charter a plane to fly Rolle to Maryland after his interview was over. But he missed the first 3 quarters of the game. Rolle has the talent to go pro, but he has said he's going to Oxford in the fall.

We spend so much time, myself included, pointing out the flaws in college football--and there are many. I think we also need to recognize that there are students and programs who value education over the game.

Oxymoron said...

2 1/2 years. How is this even possible?