Keep Division 1 Sports (with proviso)

[johnb]

Players: Each year, 10,000 young men play division 1 college football, most on scholarship. Many of these would not attend college without a scholarship. Virtually no one on the Duke team, for example, would be at Duke without football. They are good for the campus, and the experience is good for them. They all graduate. On a smaller scale, ditto for basketball. NCAA eligibility rules contributed, imho, to nationwide high school improvement--many disenfranchised athletes were essentially illiterate 30 years ago. Listen to them now...

Publicity: Emory, Hopkins, Wash U, etc are good examples why unilateral disarmament will never be a Board of Trustee strategy: not playing Big Sports guarantees the public will forget about you. Incidentally, Hopkins has been #1 in federal research for 37 straight years--half of their annual research is devoted to a single off campus physics site (1.3 billion in 2016). Without that site, JHU would be ranked below Duke (#7), down with no-name schools like Stanford, UCLA, and Harvard. https://hub.jhu.edu/2016/12/07/research-spending-hopkins-nsf/

Money: Quite a lot of cash, both directly and indirectly. Many schools now depend on it. Other schools lose lots of money trying to play catch up. It's the American way, such as it is.

2nd tier sports (ie, all the others): Athletic scholarships are moderately expensive and sometimes fill up slots that could go to more academically qualified students (many athletes are just as academic as the average Duke student, but there are only 24 hrs/day, and if you're a nationally ranked athlete, it's unlikely you're also a nationally elite mathematician). Are they value added? For one, they are a way for Admissions to diversify the campus beyond a GPA/SAT game show. Is it fair to average American student-athletes to bring in hyperfocused athletes who generally attend online schools or sports-focused schools or international schools? Duke doesn't care. We like winning, or haven't you read our t-shirts?

Attitude: Sports are a concrete, visual reminder of the importance of dedication, effort, and sportsmanship. Watching sports chews up America's time, but it also lights a fire under many an armchair athlete (at work and at the gym). While I would probably watch intramural athletes wearing a Duke uniform, that novelty would wear off quickly. I want to watch people do what I am unable to do, and that requires recruiting.

Intersectional rivalry: Better to cheer and learn to lose/win than to kill perceived enemies. Perhaps it's simplistic, but a few generations of intersectional soccer games in the middle east wouldn't be a bad thing..

Proviso: Some injuries are unavoidable, and I'm sure there are plenty of knee injuries in flag football. But, still, simple rule changes could eliminate many of the most serious acute and chronic injuries. My hunch is that most fans have a peculiarly magical view towards structural change, that they believe that eliminating punts, KO's, head to head contact, reduction in contact practice time, etc, would make America weak. Or maybe the blood lust is addictive. Or maybe the changes are slow because football is still riding high and people don't make big changes until they have to (counterexample: the Patriots, who make changes a year before they have to, which --while I hate them--is wise). Regardless, if Kodak can go bankrupt, so can the NFL and NCAA football. Rules changes are crucial, and with all the evidence that is mounting up, to not make changes is gradually becoming a moral failure. As an aside, football has been compared to rugby, but it's not a great comparison. Rugby has lots of concussions, and there are currently 137 people in Britain who are paralyzed while playing the sport (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/film/concussion/is-rugby-or-american-football-more-dangerous/).

[Duke95]

LOL @ this.

"It's the 'Murrican way!" has to be the worst argument I've seen so far. Chapeau.

As for soccer, let me remind you of the 1969 Soccer War between El Salvador and Honduras that erupted after a WC qualifier.

[Mal]

You know, when it's laid out like this, I find myself falling even more towards "Maybe we should just scrap all this."


Each year, 10,000 young men play division 1 college football, most on scholarship. Many of these would not attend college without a scholarship.
So approximately 2,500 freshmen per year - let's grant that half of them wouldn't attend college were it not for college football. Let's also note, however, that a significant number won't graduate, a significant number will end up with bogus degrees in Sports Management or UNC diplomas, and all of them essentially spend their college years with a full time, unpaid job. I think we could find better, much more efficient, ways of expanding access to higher education.


Virtually no one on the Duke team, for example, would be at Duke without football.

So?

They are good for the campus, and the experience is good for them.

Conclusory - on what are you basing this assertion?


NCAA eligibility rules contributed, imho, to nationwide high school improvement--many disenfranchised athletes were essentially illiterate 30 years ago. Listen to them now...

This is laughable. I'll need some studies that show that high school educational standards and achievement have increased and that NCAA standards are a measurable factor in that before we even start to consider this assertion.


Emory, Hopkins, Wash U, etc are good examples why unilateral disarmament will never be a Board of Trustee strategy: not playing Big Sports guarantees the public will forget about you.

Incorrect. The non-college educated sports fan portion of the public, sure. but I think the tale of the tape doesn't lie - the USNews top 25 for this year had 18 schools that either are Ivies and don't fully scholarship their student athletes, or don't have D-I sports. The rest of the world DOES NOT CARE that Carnegie Mellon and Wash U. and Hopkins don't have football teams.


Incidentally, Hopkins has been #1 in federal research for 37 straight years--half of their annual research is devoted to a single off campus physics site (1.3 billion in 2016). Without that site, JHU would be ranked below Duke (#7), down with no-name schools like Stanford, UCLA, and Harvard.

Your point being?


Quite a lot of cash, both directly and indirectly. Many schools now depend on it. Other schools lose lots of money trying to play catch up.

This is simply not true when compared to other sources of revenue, and as has been extensively pointed out in the sister thread to this one, the vast bulk of collegiate sports program revenue and costs are siloed off and don't impact the school's bottom line much at all, especially when endowments are taken into account.


Sports are a concrete, visual reminder of the importance of dedication, effort, and sportsmanship. Watching sports chews up America's time, but it also lights a fire under many an armchair athlete (at work and at the gym). While I would probably watch intramural athletes wearing a Duke uniform, that novelty would wear off quickly. I want to watch people do what I am unable to do, and that requires recruiting.

This is...unconvincing. First of all, you can watch professional sports 24/7 if you're after the best quality of athletic achievement. I don't know why you'd bother with the minors. Also, do you have evidence that the consumption of sports on television has had a positive net impact on the fitness of Americans? My anecdotal evidence tells me quite the opposite.


Better to cheer and learn to lose/win than to kill perceived enemies. Perhaps it's simplistic, but a few generations of intersectional soccer games in the middle east wouldn't be a bad thing..

??? At best, this is an argument in favor of sports generally, or international competition specifically. Not sure what this has to do with college sports, unless you're literally afraid that Duke and UNC students might go around murdering each other were it not for our friendly hoops rivalry.