How Many College Athletes Can't Read Beyond A Grade School Level?

That is an excellent point. It usually takes numerous violations and scandals before the athletic department, board of regents, and the chancellor get the hang of engaging in illicit activities without getting caught.
 
The money all still exists, just spin off all the schools' sports program to independent entities, tax them an amount equal to whatever the schools lose, and give all the money to the schools.

Nobody would watch it. Universities are undoubtedly getting more money (and more exposure) under the current system than they could possibly get in a taxed, "independent" model.

I found an article from Forbes from last year that also pretty much concurs with what Zack and I have been saying...this model is not perfect by any means (in some cases it is legitimately harmful), but simply saying "get rid of it all", isn't in the best interest of schools or students.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/chrissm...ing-college-football-actually-help-academics/
 
The "that's your opinion, man" facts? Those "facts"?
Is that what you were referring to with your rant instead of the rest of the lengthy post? Your inane strawman that I stated or insinuated that college sports are "SOLELY for entertainment purposes"?

That big-time collegiate sports is not primarily where it is today due to being entertainment is obviously your personal opinion. But go right ahead. What "facts" do you have that support the notion that many people don't watch televised sports as a form of entertainment? That it is this very aspect which has twisted collegiate athletics from being an activity solely for legitimately enrolled students to what it is today?

It used to be that all this big-time college football and basketball was rationalized on the basis of generating millions for the universities and actually reducing the costs to attend. But that is no longer the case with the vast majority of the schools, as I already showed. Only 22 of the 227 Division 1 colleges now have athletic programs that break even.

Now it is rationalized and defended on the basis of PR. That a number of "smart students" will stay away from all but the handful of colleges that have a chance at a post-season bowl. But most of those "smart students" are actually incensed that they are paying so much in student fees themselves to subsidize this madness:

College Sports Spending: The Real March Madness?

Spoiler :
Who pays the bills for college sports? At most public institutions, it’s students and taxpayers. And in an era of rising tuition costs, and economic uncertainty, it’s starting to tick them off.

In the March 25 issue of TIME magazine, we explore rising spending levels in college sports. For most schools, the revenues don’t keep pace with the expenses for coaching and administrative salaries, facilities, scholarships, and other sports costs. According to USA Today, of 227 public institutions playing Division 1 sports, just 22 have self-sufficient athletic departments.

So schools are subsidizing athletic departments, at ever-increasing levels. According to a January report from the American Institutes for Research, athletic subsidies per athlete at public schools with Football Bowl Subdivision (the former Division 1A) teams spiked 61% from 2005 to 2010. Meanwhile, per-student academic spending rose just 23%.

. David Ridpath, a professor of sports administration at Ohio University and former president of the Drake Group — a college-sports watchdog organization — just finished polling 4,000 students from schools in the Mid-American Conference (MAC), a group of a dozen public institutions mostly in Ohio and Michigan (Ridpath also polled students from UMass, which plays football in the MAC). He asked them if they knew that a significant chunk of their annual student fees — payments on top of tuition that fund various student services — helped fund their school’s intercollegiate athletic departments. For example, at Miami of Ohio, $950 of a student’s annual $1,796 annual fee goes towards sports. (Sports budgets in the MAC average $23.2 million and rose 29% from 2006 to 2011, according to USA Today; they are 75% funded through subsidies).

Ridpath invited students to make comments in the survey, and shared the responses with TIME. They’re striking. Many students did not know their fees paid for sports. When they found out, most weren’t pleased.

See the sampling below. Most respondents don’t support student fees for sports, others do. This mix is fairly consistent with the overall results. (Responses are reprinted verbatim, grammatical warts and all, except for expletives). This research goes inside the mind of today’s cost-conscious college student. Ridpath’s survey gives a rare voice to the students who actually bear the cost of college sports. Not everyone cheers for March Madness.
Well now I’m sad I’ve been wasting my money on events I haven’t gone to.

Let’s put this money towards buying the books I can barely afford for engineering instead of towards sports that not even half of this campus cares enough to watch..

Athletics are disruptive to education and creates a conflict of interest (or the perception of a COA) because non-athletes feel that they are held to a higher academic standard than student athletes.

Ridiculous

I totally support the fact that all students have to do their part by paying their fees to support their sports teams. We’re all in it together:)

The devotion my school and others have towards athletics over research or improving campus/student life is infuriating. I protested last year when my school moved to increase budget allocations to sports while decreasing student jobs and funding for other parts of the school.

This is an idiotic way to spend MY money. I did not come to college for sports. I came to further my education. ACADEMICS>athletics

I am ok with the use of my university’s general fee.

I’m shocked at this! I can’t believe it. I didn’t know that there was a general fee that great or what it went to. This is upsetting to say the least.

Athletics are extremely unimportant to me as I am here for academics. It is very disappointing to learn that I am paying so much money each year to support athletics when I have to work so hard just to pay my rent.

My feelings with this news stretch no shorter than outrage

I think it is completely blind siding students by having us pay a fee for the athletes.

<there are many more similar responses>

Athletics cost colleges, students millions

Spoiler :
CINCINNATI -- College sports create undeniable campus pride and identity, but spending has increased so fast it's taking money from academics and student services.

The University of Cincinnati and Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, for example, added $6 million and $1.2 million, respectively, this year to prop up their already heavily subsidized sports programs and keep up in the national arms race.

"There's always a ripple effect. They say, 'We've got to keep up to be competitive,'" said Brit Kirwan, chancellor of the University System of Maryland and co-chairman of the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics. "When we reach the breaking point, I don't know."

The Knight Commission says Division I schools with football spent $91,936 per athlete in 2010, seven times the spending per student of $13,628. Division I universities without football spent $39,201 per athlete, more than triple the average student spending.

Nearly every university loses money on sports. Even after private donations and ticket sales, they fill the gap by tapping students paying tuition or state taxpayers.

Athletics is among the biggest examples of the eruption in spending by universities that has experts concerned about whether higher education can sustain itself.

The lethal combination of exploding spending, tuition and student debt could lead to a wider financial crisis, reminiscent of the Internet bubble of the late 1990s or the housing bubble in the late 2000s.

Consider:

&#8226; The University of Cincinnati froze tuition this year, but it will pay more than $80 million &#8211; much of it borrowed &#8211; to expand its football stadium by 2015. Donors and those buying expensive tickets will pay the bill.

&#8226; Miami has cut hundreds of jobs during the last several years and taken $50 million out of its overall budget. But Sayler wants to raise $80 million from private donors. Half of the money would go for sports scholarships, with a new multisport practice facility also on the drawing board.

&#8226; Northern Kentucky University can't afford a new center to house nursing and other growing programs, but it can expand to Division I sports. Students and taxpayers pick up $8.5 million of the school's $10 million athletic budget.

Greg Christopher, Xavier's new athletic director, acknowledges that there's too much supply of college sports for every program to thrive.

"Institutions use athletics as a lever to scratch and claw and fight for visibility," he said.

The casualty in the arms race is spending on academics and student services.

"It's very alarming to see how intercollegiate athletics is distorting expenditures and value in higher education," the Knight Commission's Kirwan said. "It has so much potential for good, but I think we're on a trajectory now that in my opinion is doing more harm than good."
 
I think a few of those MAC schools should probably drop FBS football. It's structurally impossible for a few to achieve even modest success, and it's expensive. The fact that Northern Illinois has managed to do so well is really perhaps the most impressive football miracle of the last decade, even more than Boise State.
 
Thanks for the link DT.

I'll move my comments here because they don't have anything to do with unionizing.


There are about 350 schools in Division 1. That ranges from massive flagship public universities to poor HBCUs to tiny private schools. There are a fair numbers of D1 schools with enrollment around 5, 6k. I believe in the last 7 years or so, about 10 schools have joined D1, while 1 is in the process of leaving.

The full list is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NCAA_Division_I_institutions

I think the bulk of my posts that would be useful for you are here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=519449&page=4
Ok so 350 D1 schools out of how many thousands of schools with athletic programs? And only a fraction of the D1 schools (or any schools with programs) actually make money on their programs...

You have raised some really good points, namely that the brand recognition that big athletic programs bring can't be bought and that alumni will tend to dote more donations on 'winning' schools.

Still - how may thousands of schools are chasing that kind of success futilely? As you mentioned before, there have been botched transitions to D1. I take it that those cases are probably outliers not indicative of the trend for D1 success. However, I take it virtually every school has athletics of some kind and while most won't aspire to D1 status, they will all spend lots of money on their programs.

My concern is not that athletics should go away or that they are pointless, rather that we (as a society) are coming to a place where we value athletics so much that there is a perception every school must have a competitive athletic program in whatever division they are in and should spend even more to 'keep up with the jone's'. Similarly, I am not at all against dorms, or nicer student services, but when colleges throw up multi-million dollar dorms that border on luxury apartments because other schools are doing so, the enterprise becomes counter-productive at some point.

Instead of spending money on athletic programs or new dorms* with very limited returns to the school educationally, they could (and should, IMO) spend that money on new facilities for better instruction or paying more for higher-caliber professors. While having a D1 football program can bring in more higher-caliber students, so too can being a higher-ranked university in various academic disciplines.

For non-profits and state institutions in particular, they should focus more on providing the best education they can manage and not even on necessarily attracting the best students in the first place. Don't get me wrong, I understand why it's important to have good students. But if you are a non-profit or a state run school, your #1 priority should be providing the best education you can to everyone as cheaply as you can. I believe that providing a better education will itself attract better students and can also lead to higher alumni donations.

And of course, I'm not saying that even D1 schools with massively expensive programs don't focus on education. However, where an institution spends it's resources are indicative of that institutions priorities. While I'm sure that those schools still spend the majority of their resources on education, my worry is that we're heading to a place where the share that goes over to athletics or fancy dorms will increase untenable levels. Tuition is already in record territory and I'm opposed to any trends that continue that.

When I was on the board at my community college, that was something I always had to fight for - to fight against the urge to spend on things that would have marginal returns to the educational value. I was lucky in that my particular board was weary of spending money but that isn't the case everywhere and even at my school the urge was there to buy new things that weren't necessary. Another thing that I found out rather quickly was how terrible (at least state-funded schools) were at saving for a rainy day. I understand that a lot of the funding they got from the state was earmarked for certain projects, but tuition dollars and local taxes were not. (some taxes were levies for specific projects, however) Despite being in Illinois with a dysfunctional state government and imploding budgets, schools simply weren't saving their cash. It seemed to burn a hole in their pockets such that when I heard some community colleges were building dorms, I thought, WTF, and so on. The urge to compete athletically to attract 'better students' certainly played a part there and was regrettable.

*I'm using 'dorms' to mean all the kinds of things (like new swimming pools, better gyms, etc) that schools tend to lavish money on. Sure, most of them are necessary but it seems to be the trend that schools spend more to have nicer things to compete with other schools who are also building nicer things.
 
As an online discussion involving Formaldehyde grows longer, the probability of a the word "strawman" appearing approaches 1.
Then try not concocting sheer nonsense imbued with obvious hyperbole in place of my clearly stated opinions. :crazyeye:

But go right ahead. Just try to defend your statement that I stated or even insinuated that college football was "SOLELY for entertainment purposes". :popcorn:
 
Is the word "solely" there? :crazyeye:

Do you deny that college football is perceived by many as a form of entertainment?
 
I was just going to ask you that. But I imagine the coaches primarily do it because they want more fame and money. The university presidents go along because they want the prestige, and they rationalize it by thinking everybody else does it. It quite likely isn't "solely" due to entertainment purposes for them.

Why are you overreacting so much to me apparently merely disagreeing with your own personal opinion regarding what I consider to be clear exploitation? Why did you feel the need to embellish my statement with hyperbole instead of just disagreeing with it?
 
I don't know what you're so worked up about. This is what I said that got you so riled up:

And it's already been explained by me and downtown a dozen times, but college sports are NOT solely for "entertainment purposes."

Where is the embellishment and hyperbole? How is this not "merely disagreeing" with you? You said colleges "ruthlessly exploit disadvantaged athletes for entertainment purposes," and I said college sports aren't only for entertainment purposes (and I also said that it's not exploitation, but that's not in that line I quoed). I don't know if you're trying to bait me into an inane argument over semantics or what, but I'm not indulging you. You're being ridiculous.
 
Again, the word "solely" is not there. Now is it? :crazyeye:

Furthermore, you seem to think your own personal opinion in this matter is far more than that. Otherwise you wouldn't couch it in such terms as "explaining" it, while using even more hyperbole by claiming you and downtown have done so "a dozen times". :lol:

But at you finally touched on the gist of it. You don't personally think these athletes who have no chance at all to get a diploma, and who are pretending to be college students when they can't even read at a 4th grade level, isn't exploitation. Well guess what? A number of people disagree with that personal opinion, including me.
 
Okay. Congratulations. Is that your grand point? That I shouldn't voice my opinion if it conflicts with yours? And that rhetorical devices don't belong in arguments?
 
I have to say this - but what other purpose do college sports have than entertainment? Money, PR and attracting students are ancillary benefits at best and really only apply to top schools. Any sense of discipline instilled in the athletes really only applies to athletes - a small fraction of the student body and that kind of discipline could be had with cheaper intramurals.
 
Okay. Congratulations. Is that your grand point? That I shouldn't voice my opinion if it conflicts with yours? And that rhetorical devices don't belong in arguments?
No, that's apparently your opinion because you and downtown "explained" my own opinion is supposedly false "a dozen times".

And now, misrepresenting someone's opinions while continuing to use hyperbole is a "rhetorical device"?
 
Ok so 350 D1 schools out of how many thousands of schools with athletic programs? And only a fraction of the D1 schools (or any schools with programs) actually make money on their programs...

You have raised some really good points, namely that the brand recognition that big athletic programs bring can't be bought and that alumni will tend to dote more donations on 'winning' schools.

Still - how may thousands of schools are chasing that kind of success futilely? As you mentioned before, there have been botched transitions to D1. I take it that those cases are probably outliers not indicative of the trend for D1 success. However, I take it virtually every school has athletics of some kind and while most won't aspire to D1 status, they will all spend lots of money on their programs.
Thousands? No.

First, the difference between D1 and say, D3, in terms of athletic spending is HUGE. D3 (where the vast majority of NCAA schools who are not D1 reside) schools *can't give athletic scholarships*. Without access to TV money, nobody wants to spend nearly as much on elaborate facilities. I've been to several D3 locker rooms and football stadiums, and even at established universities, their football stuff is typically worse than that of a nice high school.

How many schools who do not currently compete in D1 hold realistic aspirations to get there? I'd guess maybe two dozen, not thousands. How many schools hold realistic aspirations to play FBS football? To my knowledge, about six.

I'd have to look at budget sheets to know for certain, but I don't know of any strong evidence that college sports in general are a systemic and problematic resource drain for smaller colleges. The calculus once you get beyond D1 is *very very* different.



Instead of spending money on athletic programs or new dorms* with very limited returns to the school educationally, they could (and should, IMO) spend that money on new facilities for better instruction or paying more for higher-caliber professors. While having a D1 football program can bring in more higher-caliber students, so too can being a higher-ranked university in various academic disciplines.
They can, but there is diminishing returns there as well. What's the difference between the 4th best English department in the region, and the 9th best? Or the 11th best? And how will a prospective student get the information to make that decision? How will he even know who to look up?

I agree with the general principle of what you're saying, but I think it's naive to think that students can, or even should, make their college decision 100% on only which program has a "better" academic discipline.
 
I have to say this - but what other purpose do college sports have than entertainment? Money, PR and attracting students are ancillary benefits at best and really only apply to top schools. Any sense of discipline instilled in the athletes really only applies to athletes - a small fraction of the student body and that kind of discipline could be had with cheaper intramurals.

Lots. I mean, let's remember, only football and men's hoops really attract a ton of spectators anyway. Athletic programs provide academic opportunities for those who might not otherwise have them (and I'm not just talking about the athletes). They provide opportunities for community and alumni engagement. They provide PR even for schools who aren't winning championships, thanks to TV exposure.

Yeah, BIG MONEY college sports is just about entertainment and money, but that isn't the same thing as college sports in general.
 
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