Shane Le Master
College football has gotten to the point where nobody even questions its invasive presence on campus. Everyone discusses every aspect of the football team except for the most fundamental question of all: Is it really THAT important? Whenever I have brought up the question in the past, I am usually confronted by many offended people who always end up naming off the benefits of football, the ever most common one being that it generates a lot of revenue for the school. While there is truth in that, does that still justify an academic institution focusing so much attention and resources on an activity that does not relate in the least to its true focus of educating students and undertaking research? Colleges should consider the toning down, disenfranchisement, or elimination of their NCAA athletic teams in favor of a return to a focus on academic purposes.
There is no doubt that college football, with all of its commercialism and hype, has been blown way out of proportions by colleges. However, so ingrained is its benefits in the minds of the students and administration that even writer Robert Zemsky had to say in an article about higher education reform that one thing that reformists should not touch is college athletics. The monetary benefits are to great in the minds of the school board that Zemsky even goes on to say that the elimination of college football is probably impossible. But, if the financial gains of football are so important to the school that they are willing to let it take up so much of their attention, why not do other money-making activities like opening up factories and industrial sweatshops? Those, too, will make money for the school and they probably have more to do with education than football does. In no way am I saying that the school should open up factories. It is another way of representing the principles of big-time college football: a distracting and totally un-school-related ploy to earn the institution money.
People need to look beyond the current norms of their campus life and question college football and what it has to do with their education and the direction that the school is taking. While football does have its benefits, are those benefits, such as money and publicity, really what the school wants? Colleges are for learning and for research and is dubious just how football and its associated activities fit into that picture.
College football has gotten to the point where nobody even questions its invasive presence on campus. Everyone discusses every aspect of the football team except for the most fundamental question of all: Is it really THAT important? Whenever I have brought up the question in the past, I am usually confronted by many offended people who always end up naming off the benefits of football, the ever most common one being that it generates a lot of revenue for the school. While there is truth in that, does that still justify an academic institution focusing so much attention and resources on an activity that does not relate in the least to its true focus of educating students and undertaking research? Colleges should consider the toning down, disenfranchisement, or elimination of their NCAA athletic teams in favor of a return to a focus on academic purposes.
There is no doubt that college football, with all of its commercialism and hype, has been blown way out of proportions by colleges. However, so ingrained is its benefits in the minds of the students and administration that even writer Robert Zemsky had to say in an article about higher education reform that one thing that reformists should not touch is college athletics. The monetary benefits are to great in the minds of the school board that Zemsky even goes on to say that the elimination of college football is probably impossible. But, if the financial gains of football are so important to the school that they are willing to let it take up so much of their attention, why not do other money-making activities like opening up factories and industrial sweatshops? Those, too, will make money for the school and they probably have more to do with education than football does. In no way am I saying that the school should open up factories. It is another way of representing the principles of big-time college football: a distracting and totally un-school-related ploy to earn the institution money.
People need to look beyond the current norms of their campus life and question college football and what it has to do with their education and the direction that the school is taking. While football does have its benefits, are those benefits, such as money and publicity, really what the school wants? Colleges are for learning and for research and is dubious just how football and its associated activities fit into that picture.
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