Are you mad???
Posted on 05/04/2012 4:02:16 PM PDT by Theoria
In more than 20 years I've spent studying the issue, I have yet to hear a convincing argument that college football has anything do with what is presumably the primary purpose of higher education: academics.
That's because college football has no academic purpose. Which is why it needs to be banned. A radical solution, yes. But necessary in today's times.
Football only provides the thickest layer of distraction in an atmosphere in which colleges and universities these days are all about distraction, nursing an obsession with the social well-being of students as opposed to the obsession that they are there for the vital and single purpose of learning as much as they can to compete in the brutal realities of the global economy.
Who truly benefits from college football? Alumni who absurdly judge the quality of their alma mater based on the quality of the football team. Coaches such as Nick Saban of the University of Alabama and Bob Stoops of Oklahoma University who make obscene millions. The players themselves don't benefit, exploited by a system in which they don't receive a dime of compensation. The average student doesn't benefit, particularly when football programs remain sacrosanct while tuition costs show no signs of abating as many governors are slashing budgets to the bone.
If the vast majority of major college football programs made money, the argument to ban football might be a more precarious one. But too many of them don't—to the detriment of academic budgets at all too many schools. According to the NCAA, 43% of the 120 schools in the Football Bowl Subdivision lost money on their programs. This is the tier of schools that includes such examples as that great titan of football excellence, the University of Alabama at Birmingham Blazers, who went 3-and-9 last season.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
You are exactly right...college should prepare you for life, career, your future...football certainly can be a big part of that...
I played Pop Warner up though high school...I certainly learned many of my life lessons on the gridiron...
Nothing that you will learn in the course of your studies will be of the slightest possible use to you in after life - save only this - if you work hard and diligently you should be able to detect when a man is talking rot, and that, in my view, is the main, if not the sole, purpose of education.
I'd much rather abolish majors that have ceased in any way to teach student how to detect when men are talking rot than abolish those that don't contribute global economic competitiveness.
He echoed what I’ve always said, the purpose of education is for you to develop a “BS Detector.”
Please don’t read the articles posted, so you can write your own stupidities contradicting what’s stated there in. Yes sir, college athletics bring money to the universities. Here’s what the article stated:
“According to the NCAA, 43% of the 120 schools in the Football Bowl Subdivision lost money on their programs.”
Nick Saban makes obscene money and the players don’t benefit??? This guy didn’t watch the draft or watch the guys who signed with teams after draft day.
Cheers!
Moving the boundary markers established by one’s ancestors is not a conservative thing to advocate. Tenure is the guardian of the first freedom of expression Western Civilization ever recognized: academic freedom, the right to speculate within the confines of the university without being charged with heresy, which predates any generally accepted idea of freedom of speech or freedom of the press by a good half a millenium.
Abolish it, and it will be Lindzen and Choi who have no jobs, not the anthropogenic global warming crowd, Christian professors will be sacked simply for their religious beliefs, free market economists will get the axe at most universities, . . . The long march of the left through the academy would be complete.
Tenure protects the established scholar’s right to study what is unpopular in his discipline and come to unpopular conclusions, and at present in most disciplines bearing on society and politic that means conservative conclusions. (Why tenure exists in institutions where the duties of the faculty are solely teaching and not research or scholarship is another question, a such schools or colleges, you could persuade me that abolishing tenure is a good thing, but not at a university which retains anything of the classical character of a university.)
Are you mad???
Look at the other Divisions, 1, 2, etc. Some how they can successfully mix athletics and academics. Just my pov that ‘student athlete’s’[FBS] tend to get more chances than the commons.
University of Maryland (my alma mater) has a fantastic woman’s basketball program. Yes... we have attended games. However, many people simply prefer to spend their money watching a sport like football or men’s basketball. (to be completely fair, IMHO women’s basketball is cleaner and has more traditional plays/skill vs the mens. That is just from my eyes). It is a lot of fun!
Publishing articles about what should be but never realistically will should be banned!
If schools went by strict academic utility, half their departments and majors would be instantly wiped away. Thousands of faculty would have to go out and try to find real jobs. Why, it would be a nightmare, I tell ya.
I’m not so impressed with the universities themselves. I’d vote to keep the football and ban the universities.
Or, I suppose Buzz could start his own college and then he can ban anything he wants.
I’m never surprised at the people who think they should have the authority to ban whatever it is you’re doing. But I like to keep them as far from the levers of power as I possibly can.
Vagina Studies and other crap should be done away with, anyone majoring in crap should be denied student loans.
“... little of that money actually makes it into what should be the core brands of a university...”
Wow! Let me get this straight. A football team brings in a lot of money and you think it should be “shared” with other programs like research, extension programs etc? Do you think a person earning over $150,000 should be taxed at a higher level than someone working at a car wash? Should the high income earner then have to donate their money to the car wash guy so he can “improve his life”?
When a student is looking into a college, many of those potential incoming Freshman want a University that has athletics. If they don’t play, then they want to watch. It is part of becoming “part” of the University. Watching a game brings students together at times and they become proud of their school. I’m not saying that is the only requirement for a college selection. If you want a business degree, you want to go to a school with a strong business department. However, attending some games brings out school spirit and a bit of fun in the student’s life. IMHO.
Keep the Coaches' and the Writers' Polls. Shit-can all the BCS crap completely. Let the fans argue about who is "Number One" for the next year. That's what makes it interesting.
For all the myriad of minor bowls, let them play during the December Christmas break and let their chips fall where they may. Scratch the Senior Bowl--let the NFL pay for holding its own tryouts.
I know these halcyon days won't return, because the sh*tty little moneygrubbers who have seized control of big college football won't allow for it. Sad.
LOL! I think every engineer I've ever met would agree with your son--even if they never hoisted anything heavier than a slide rule.
Fergiddit. That'd be like throwing Br'er Rabbit in de briar patch.
Why you sexist yew. Anyway what's so bad about studying vaginas?
Of course, seriously, half a university is absorbed in these meaningless "Studies" endeavors. At least a starting football player has a shot at some serious money if he's drafted.
I finished my undergrad studies at UCSD: NO intercollegiate sports, NO fraternities or sororities. The institution grew out of the Scripps Research Institute, and it was almost entirely concerned with the hard sciences.
Despite the overall liberal bent it had then and has even more of now, I could not have been happier to have studied at a true institute of higher learning. You can take all the intercollegiate sports and other crap that corrupts an academic atmosphere and flush it all down the toilet as far as I’m concerned.
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