Do College Sports Benefit The Students Analysis

Do College Sports Benefit the Students? In this essay, I will be comparing the rhetorical analysis of 2 articles that discuss if college sports are good or bad for students. Some background on this subject, college sports have been one of the deciding factors for students to choose what university they are going to attend. Especially for athletes, during the recruiting process for student-athletes, one thing they look at is which university will suit them the best and will help them become the best person they can be. In the first article written by Laura Pappano, she discusses why college sports have been hurting the college education system. This is because the school spends too much of its resources on sports and not enough on

In this article, the author is arguing that college life is focused too much on the sports aspect of the school and not the academic aspect of school. For example, “For good or for ill, big-time sports has become the public face of the university, the brand that admissions offices sell, a public-relations machine thanks to ESPN exposure” (Pappano). In this quote, the author is talking about the fact that ESPN is ruining college education. This is because they are giving the sports too much exposure and that all people focus on. She then uses a quote by a local professor that states "Last month, Ohio State hired Urban Meyer to coach football for $4 million a year plus bonuses (playing in the B.C.S. National Championship game nets him an extra $250,000; a graduation rate over 80 percent would be worth $150,000). He has personal use of a private jet."(Pappano). The argument that the writer is trying to use this quote for is that the universities are paying the football coaches millions of dollars while the physics department doesn’t even have enough money to put together a conference. " Big Ten colleges, including Penn State, spent a median of $111,620 per athlete on athletics and $18,406 per student on academics"(Pappano). In this quote, the author is trying to get the point across that universities are spending a ton of money but are not even close to normal students. While most athletes are going for free, the regular student is having to pay a lot of money. The question that the essay is trying to answer is why universities are spending all their time and money on sports programs and not on academics. The common purpose of this article is to persuade readers into thinking that universities are not doing the best for students. The evidence that author is using quotes from professors that help show that sports are too much of the focus for the universities.