Admitting Superstars

How colleges suffer from a conflict of interest between sports and education.

This past football season saw the highest paid college football coach in the nation, Nick Saban, lead Alabama, a land-grant institution with an enrollment slightly below 20,000 students, to a 7–6 record.

In 2007, Saban was granted a $32 million dollar contract to coach the Crimson Tide, a historic program in the college football world. Saban, coming from a star-studded coaching career and a dismal half-season as head coach of the Miami Dolphins, required big money to take the step back to the college level. Saban’s $3.2 million per year salary represented a 100% increase over former Coach Mike Shula’s $1.55 million per year stipend. Evidently, the UA Athletic Department is doing very well.

Why, then, is the University of Alabama ignoring its faculty salaries, which have seen only a 27% growth rate over the last three years? What is the purpose of the university? As most major Division I-A schools continue to pay their head football coaches more than their presidents, has the great American public institution of higher learning become a great American pre-professional athletic club?

It is worthy to note that at universities like U of A and other major contenders in the college athletics realm, the coaching salary comes from an entirely different fund than the salary of the president. However, the two funds are inevitably and inextricably connected. For one, all the athletes are students at the university, and second, the athletic department and the president are both subordinates of the Board of Governors, Fellows, etc. But the most telling connection is the term “student-athlete” and its applicability to amateurism and education.

Sport has been tied to education since classical times, but only recently have university athletic departments become giant corporations with the radio and TV deals, sponsors, and massive merchandizing that are associated with professional sports. Where professional sports teams have owners that control the direction of the team, college programs have donors that buy power within the decision-making structure of the athletic departments.

College scouting and recruiting networks are as large, if not larger, than those of every professional sport. The telling difference lies in the heart of any athletic venture: the athlete. Professional athletes are paid. College athletes receive no compensation for their travails.
Of course, there are scholarships that most Division I schools give to incoming athletes (with the exception of the Ivies), but exactly what interest does the school have in giving free education to a man who can throw a football better than any other? Often, the point is raised that the athletic scholarship helps low-income, inner city youth to free education.

It is true that no amount of poor education can be the bane of exulted athletic ability. But once again, what is the purpose of universities? It would be much more beneficial to the university to give free education to the poor, young student who has the potential to work at the JPL, rather than the poor, young athlete who has the potential to play in the NFL.
The professional sports establishment, though, wants athletes who are educated, because with education comes sophistication, classiness, and most importantly, a lower crime rate. Not to falsely allocate causality, but an athlete who has completed three years of college education is much more likely to be able to assemble a complete sentence while at a press conference podium than one who has not.

As a sports fan, though, one must wonder exactly how much of Randy Moss’s years at Marshall University affected his ability to render, “I mean hell, I’m Randy Moss. What do you expect?” when asked about how he felt about the double and triple coverage he was receiving all season. Admittedly, there was a certain moral appeal when Shaquille O’Neal completed his college degree many years after entering the NBA; but then again, Michael Vick spent several years at Virginia Tech.

Many big name college athletic programs would accept nearly anyone who can pitch, block, or shoot without abandon if not for the NCAA’s somewhat noble limitations on high school GPA and standardized test scores. Of course, there are excellent athletes who fail to meet these basement-level criteria, and for those, there are myriad preparatory schools to meet their needs.

Harvard does an excellent job in mediating this matter. The Athletic Department does not award special money to student-athletes, but rather gives assistance to them based on the same criteria that they use for every other student. Athletic prowess is only considered in conjunction with academic promise, ensuring that no athlete can undeservedly replace another applicant who is more apt to succeed in college.

But the fact of the matter is few Harvard athletes in the big market sports (i.e. football, baseball, basketball, and soccer) pursue a career in athletics. The ones who do are the most noble and apt of all the nation’s athletes, for they have spent four years preparing not just for a professional athletic career, but preparing — or in the passive case, being prepared — for a career outside of athletics.

Outside the Ivies, things are exactly the opposite of how they should be. Student-athletes get a passing grade simply for being student-athletes. Athletes often must maintain the training and travel schedule of a professional athlete while keeping up with the minimum course load of the university. This saps the university’s resources because they must lower their grading standards and hire tutors to compensate for the lower level of scholarship submitted by the student-athlete.

The marriage between college and pre-professional athletics is long past expired. The question of what is to happen to the aspiring professional athlete should the divorce of college and pre-professional athletics occur remains. Professional clubs have no room for a player who has not been subjected to the rigors of college athletic training. Perhaps a club, entirely separate from the university, could fill the gap. Of course, in this instance, the athlete would make less than the professional counterpart and perhaps work a bit less. Major league baseball and other sports have done something in between the two from the beginning, and the result is the minor leagues and a largely unwatched college baseball system.

There is, of course, a need for some sort of physical and athletic exercise for the college student, and for this, a largely diminished and less star-studded approach to athletics is appropriate. A return to the days when a college football player had just as much a chance at becoming president as the member of the mock trial team would be entirely sufficient.

Branden Adams ’11 (badams@fas) is an excellent athlete, but he has a great GPA, too.