SCANDAL
So has anyone heard about the UNC Student-Athletes that read at a 3rd grade level? This story was on the TV yesterday as I was working out and I just had to watch. I wanted to scream at the TV’s as I ran on the treadmill!
Let me clarify here, I am not upset about the fact that collegiate athletes out there can’t read, I know that. In fact we’ve all know this since the 80’s, so it shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. I played college football and I know the inner-workings of college athletics, as well as the price that some programs will pay to win.
Fortunately, I didn’t go to a school where money grows on trees and professors were not willing to ‘bend the rules’ for student-athletes. A small, private Christian university doesn’t typically have the desire to lower it’s standards by compromising it’s academic policies.
I am upset with the fact that we (as a country) glorify, through every media outlet available, professional athletes like they are Gods among men. We praise their every move, they can do no harm, and they are the our childhood heroes.
We preach to kids that play sports from a young age that, “If you’re not smart, just be good at sports. Sports will take you places in life, don’t worry about academics.” In some ways this is true, sports can take you places you’ve never dreamed. But the sickening part is that we back this idea up and never challenge these kids to do better.
REALITY CHECK
I hate to break it to the academic counselors at UNC, but the problem is much larger than college sports. How do you think that 7-8% of student athletes made it to college reading at a 3rd grade level? Is there that much of a difference from high school senior courses to college freshmen courses? They’re still well above a 3rd grade reading level.
We cripple them from an early age. We tell them they don’t need to know how to read. As long as they can dunk, people will pass them. We don’t want to hurt the school’s chances of winning a championship now do we?
CHEAPENED DEGREES
I know there a number of people saw this and were upset by the fact that professors were promoting people that haven’t earned their grades. As they should be, why should some get a free ride and others don’t? And granted, the ratio of student-athletes compared to the total number of undergraduates in the country is small. But the fact remains that this further cheapens the degrees of everyone that has to earn their grades. Now, more people than ever have a degree and some didn’t even earn it.
The sad part is that the administrators and professors that do this are only setting the athletes up for failure. The average career of a NFL players is 3.5 years and the average career for an NBA players is 4.8 years. So what are these incredibly gifted athletes going to do with their lives when they can’t hack it in The League? Or what if they get hurt? What do they have to fall back on? A degree that’s not worth the paper it was written on because the athlete that owns it can’t even read what is says.
I guess that this ‘looking the other way’ may happen for many reasons, but here are a few of my theories:
We’re too nice – “He’s had it rough it rough in life, let me help him out and just bump is grade up one letter.” In reality, it’s not helping them, it’s hindering them. What are they going to do when they can’t read a college textbook? Oh, wait…
Everyone gets a Trophy – “Well he tried as hard as he could, he doesn’t deserve to fail.” Yet another example of giving everyone a trophy for participating. THE REAL WORLD IS NOT LIKE THIS. When we don’t do our jobs we get fired. When we try really hard and still suck at things, we don’t succeed. And when people encourage this kind of behavior, they are setting others up for failure.
Someone Else Will – “Well if I can’t pass here, I’ll just transfer. Someone else will take me.” Even more disturbing is the fact that if you don’t pass this gifted athlete at your school with sub-par grades, someone else will. So many times the athletes will transfer schools until they find someone that WILL give them the grade. We perpetuate this system, we encourage kids to do this. We all want to win games, right?
So why are we just now reprimanding them for not learning? Why are we ONLY requiring these physically talented people to perform when they enter college or the work world? It’s not their fault, this is what they’ve been brought up with. It’s what we’ve allowed to happen.
AN ALTERNATE UNIVERSE
What if we praised our teachers like we praise our athletes? What if we didn’t compromise our standards? How would our country look today?
I graduated college in 3.5 years, nobody put me on the national news for that accomplishment. Johnny Manziel just quit school after 2 seasons to become a top 3 draft pick and we’ll be talking about him until the draft in April. I’m a huge Johnny Football fan and an even bigger college football fan, but think about the message this sends kids. Which accomplishment do we value more?
A fraction of 1% of kids that play high school football will make it to the NFL. Less than 6% even make it to the college level, much less a top Division 1 program. This means that of the 1,000,000+ high school football players’ dreams are to make it to the NFL, than OVER 99% of them will fail to reach that goal. That’s a lot of trophies to give out to the kids that didn’t win.
PROOF
This is the same reason NFL and NBA players wind up broke. We’ve let our young athletes believe that all they have to do is be really good at sports and they’ll be taken care of for the rest of their lives. Even if they do make it to the pinnacle of their sport, it’s often short-lived and they have to figure out what to do with the remaining 50+ years of their lives.
If you don’t believe me, just go find a Florida State Fan and ask them about players not being able to read. You’ll get an answer similar to this, “Yeah, maybe… But we just won a National Championship! F-L-O-R-I-D-A-S-T-A-T-E Florida State! Florida State! Florida State! Wooooo!!!” I’m not knocking FSU or their fans (congrats Noles), it’s like that everywhere in the country. It’s not a college sports problem, it’s an American problem.
—
If you would like to debate this with me, feel free to chat with me on Twitter or leave me a comment below. Thanks for reading, it felt good to rant about this 🙂
