College Football

New Year's Day is a day when there are many big football games for college teams. It seems like watching them is the pastime for many people around the country. As I watched a bit of the Rose Bowl (one of the games), I wondered to myself how many of those players are bonafide students as well. I really believe that most collegiate football players in the big name universities are not and believing that they are is just a form of self-deception.

Football programs help maintain alumni ties to the universities and encourage donations to the school. The same goes for basketball and a few other sports. It is sad that people are more willing to donate money because of a sport than to maintain academic standards and facilities. That is the reality of the culture we live in, though. Given this fact, it is highly unlikely that football will be divorced from universities. However, I do believe that the myth behind the scholar athlete at these schools needs to be addressed. Football programs need to be divorced from academics. Let the athletic programs be associated with the university, but don't call the players students. Allow the players to pursue an education following their participation in the sports program should they fail to make a career in a professional league afterward. Or even allow them to enroll after their professional careers. That way they can focus on the sport (as they already do), and they are not left high and dry should their sports careers not work out.

The way things are now, the players are not really being educated and there is a facade that real students and professors need to maintain that they really are. I have heard of countless accounts of professors being pressured into passing students and of players having other people write their term papers. In the end, this system hurts the players and is detrimental to the educational mission of universities.