"Student Athletes" -- a contridiction of terms?

[DeltAlum]

Well, I'll tell you what. I've televised D-1 sports for about 35 years, and some of the kids I've met are dumber than a brick. And some are a whole lot smarter than I am.

It's the fact that the first group is in college at all that I take issue with.

When I taught college level courses, I was a notroiously easy grader -- because I was teaching TV Sports Production -- not brain surgery by any means. While this is a totally personal and unscientific survey, by far the worst students I had in terms of grades and attitude were the football players. On the other hand, the couple of cheerleaders and women's basketball players who took the class did very well.

One season I directed ten service academy football games, and, frankly, those were the only programs I really had total respect for.

Now, I'm not angry at the athletes. They're taking advantage of opportunities. It's the AD's and coachs and university administrators that allow their academic standards to be trampled, and rules to be broken who I think should be taken to task.

The attitude that "Winning is everything" is destructive. Winning is important -- but it isn't worth cheating and special academic considerations, etc.

Maybe they don't happen at "your" school (the royal "your" -- meaning any school), but if you don't think it's fairly rampant in many of the "big time" programs -- you're naive.

I'd love to see programs run more like the lower divisions. Turn it back into sports -- not business.

Enough ranting for this evening.