Out of the top 10 colleges in the US according to this particular
review, only two even participate in Division 1. And one of them had a very marginal football team until this year.
You're kidding yourself if you think Duke's basketball tradition doesn't attract any applicants. The Ivy League essentially started college football. Stanford has been a top-5 college football team the last few years. And besides, top-tier private schools like the ones you listed don't have to rely on football teams to drive donations and applicants, because they are already so academically well-respected that they get way more applicants than they could possibly accept (and plenty of money, to boot). I'd bet a lot of the students applying to MIT or Cal Tech don't really care about sports, and Ivy League schools have been around for so long and have been so well-funded that, again, they don't need a boost from athletics for money or applicants.
On the other hand, look at the
top public universities in the nation, and notice how many of them have strong athletic traditions (a good amount). For example, UT Austin has arguably the strongest athletic program in the country, and they're top 5 or top 10 among all universities, private or public, in plenty of categories, beating the ten schools you listed in a number of categories. UNC Chapel Hill and UCLA have a long history of basketball excellence, and they're excellent academic institutions. Recent scandal aside, how long was Penn State a football power under Joe Paterno? And so on.
And I completely agree that big time college athletics is a farce which does a great disservice to the institution it is ostensibly aiding.
Why, exactly? Why is it an inherently bad thing for those with athletic ability to gain an opportunity to receive an education, when they otherwise would likely not have that opportunity? Big time college athletics drive alumni donations, increase the number of applicants to the school, provide funding for other athletic sports, provide better education opportunities for some who would otherwise have settle for something much less, increase student happiness and contentment, and so on, and that's not even mentioning the fact that some schools make a profit from athletics, which can be used to improve the institution in other ways.
Why is it "a farce which does a great disservice to the institution"? Because it annoys you that instead of being smart and not-so-athletic, some people are not-so-smart and athletic? Because you think they aren't as deserving of an education as you are?
And even if a lot of athletes don't fully utilize the academic opportunity they're being given, some do! There are football players in my engineering and computer science classes, and they seem to be doing just fine.
So you're going to need to do more for your argument. And despite the unfortunately low reading levels of UNC athletes, it's still a very well-respected school academically. It still has a smart and qualified student base. It's still a great value for in-state students. It's still a great school. And as downtown already pointed out, there are plenty of schools with respectable football and basketball teams that still graduate their players and maintain strong academics. Hell, two of the schools in your list are perennial top-5 teams in football (Stanford) or basketball (Duke).
So you need to do more to back your assertion that "big time college athletics is a farce which does a great disservice to the institution it is ostensibly aiding." The poor academic performance of athletes at one school does not implicate all of college athletics as a disservice.
Cheating to keep athletes academically eligible is deplorable, no doubt. We should be focusing on legitimately getting those struggling athletes up to par academically, rather than casually dismissing college athletics and athletes as trash.
