I think it all depends on the university and the individual students.
Cal State Long Beach has been recognized for the basketball, baseball and volleyball teams. (They dumped the winning football program in the early 90s). Other teams like soccer and golf are highly regarded as well.
It always bothered me that the student athletes got extra special treatment. They get excused from class, they get special tutoring, they get nearly exclusive use of the exercise facilities etc.
This was especially bothersome to me since I participated in the extremely arduous and challenging "club sport" of crew/rowing which isn't exceedingly well-funded by the university. We had crazy work-outs every morning from 6am-8am and *still* had to dash off for class at 8am. We never got the extra special privledges. The same went for when I was on the university archery team.
It's as if they only cared about the "money sports" or the ones which would bring them TV coverage or national recognition. Never mind that my archery team went to the national championships and that most of us were state medalists and regional champions.
Sour grapes? Yeah, a little bit.
HOWEVER, as the years went by, I didn't feel as bad about the "special" student athletes. My freshman year, there was one woman in one of my classes who was on the high-achieving women's golf team. It seemed like she was always missing class and always had a note from the athletics department which excused her from everything.
Though, in later years, I had classes with two girls on the women's basketball team, one on the NCAA women's volleyball championship team, and also had a roommate on the more recent women's golf team. All of these ladies did the same amount of work as the others. As a matter of fact, they hardly ever drew attention to themselves as being more important than anyone else. They were gracious and studied hard.
It's all a matter of getting the balance right. The university asks a lot of these athletes; it's ok to offer them exclusive tutoring. Though, I draw the line at covering up for them by altering grades so they can play and nonsense like that.
.....Kelly
