The Pros And Cons Of College Athletes

College football is a billion dollar industry and second only to the NFL as the highest grossing television events each year. The idea of institutions of higher learning could be a thing of the past. Schools all over the country whether it be high schools or universities have to deal with budgets between academics and athletics. In recent years the media has uncovered scandals at the collegiate level where current and former student-athletes read at level well below what is academically expected. There have also been scandals where professors passed athletes or fixed test scores in order for star athletes to be eligible to compete in regular season and bowl games. Teachers and administrators must be conscious of the outside pressures that face

The conference has no special admissions, no special financial aid, and no special treatment for athletes. As a result, there is no significant academic underperformance by any group of athletes at these schools. The member schools include Brandeis, Carnegie-Mellon, Case Western Reserve, Emory and New York universities, Washington University in St. Louis, and the universities of Chicago and Rochester (Dolan 2005). While many these schools are well-known for their academic prowess, the regular person has no clue they exist because they are relatively unknown in the sports world. In fact, the University of Chicago has 75 alumni that are Nobel Prize winners, but many people have no clue there is a large (15,000 students), very highly academic university in Chicago. Dolan doesn’t believe that big schools lowering their academic standards are as big of a deal as some might think. Division I schools recruit athletes to compete in athletics, not academics. While the fact that schools do not push their athletes to excel in the classroom as well as on the field is sad in ways, it does not appear to be a big issue (Dolan, 2005). According to Dolan (2005), Michael Cross, the senior director of athletics at Princeton, feels that sports can actually boost enrollment for poor academic schools. Athletics are offered for many reasons outside of financial gain and professional athletic aspirations. Schools administrators

School systems around the nation have to deal with the issue of academic eligibility and recruiting practices because athletics plays such an important part in school choice and overall support from the community. Parents in the Ashland school district in eastern Massachusetts complained that the academic requirements for student athletes were too high. Superintendent Richard Hoffmann did not think the issue to be an issue for public contention. The district required athletes to maintain a 70 average for athletes, which was higher than that of the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association (MIAA) standard many of the state's schools follow. The MIAA standard provides no minimum GPA and just require that student do not fail more than one core subject during a given quarter or semester (Riede 2006). In fact, Riede (2006), found that issues regarding academic eligibility and recruiting practices, including schools providing athletes extra benefits, went largely unnoted during a commission on high school athletics in