What makes you think I meant just one. I meant the majority of people in most major sports programs. Just listen the incoherent interviews given by most "coaches," "players" or others directly or indirectly connected to major college sports programs. I do not even think the minor sports belong in colleges but they at least have the advantage of not offering a future in their sport thereby forcing the students to actually learn something in college.
I understand what they're saying. I don't know why you don't understand what they're saying. Perhaps the occasional slip into dialect leaves you wondering? No, they have the disadvantage of not offering future employment. I mean, you're getting paid for the time you spent there, but you want some of the actual employers to get out of college while the kewl hipster sports nobody can earn a living at are preserved. ??? I mean, I'd rather see all engineering and tech/science undergrad work done at places specifically created for those fields (kind of like an associates' degree), and the rest of us can study humanities and athletics and arts and the things that make us better people. Of course, unis would go under because everybody's all about job training...
I am through with this argument with you as you choose to read meaning into my words that was never there and I agree with Mark Twain: "Never argue with a stupid person. They will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience."
I am Mark Twain ignoring my own advice, and my posts simply reveal that you had nothing to offer in the first place. Typical. Enjoy your evening.
Eh, I think humans will do sports regardless. It's exercise, which all young persons should do. Team-building is a valid endeavor. Logistics is useful training, too. We're in a relatively weird era of human history in which most of us spend most of our lifetimes not hunting for food, nor fighting wars for land. Young humans must burn their energy somehow. We advocate that our pets get exercise, and that applies to us, too (ergo the two often go well together). In grad school, I was on the mvb club team, completely self-run with paid weekend tournaments organized through USA VB (now USAV, the nat'l governing body for volleyball). USAV cares because weekend warriors play regardless, and USAV provides medical insurance (ding!), trained officials for the playoff rounds, and a real-life national championships, disjoint from any institutions. Age-group brackets go up to 65-and-over. Anyways, I take as given that college-age students will exercise and play sports, and they should. Then competitions will happen, and somebody should oversee that. That's how NCAA and similar institutions took over the role of organizing inter-university sports in the first place. Relatively recently, certainly in the last ~20 years, everything took off (or went through the boom phase of a boom-bust cycle). Not coincidentally, this seems to be right around the time broadband Internet made it feasible to "simultaneously" stream all 32 R1 games in a 64-team bracket. I remember in Barcelona '92 when NBC tried its TripleCast: $100 for 3 cable channels of 24/7 coverage. I paid, and thought it a great bargain. Others thought it was a sign of the apocalypse. Today, the world scoffs at only 3 channels: every nation offers 5-10 channels of any major tourney, and today's NCAA can (collectively) support simultaneous streams of dozens of its championships ... including D1 woso. I think most of this was inevitable technological progress, as marketing caught up to the capabilities of IPv4. That surely pumped more $$ into the entire pipeline. Of course, the big sports were big long before this. I don't think big sports are an inherent ill, although I agree that their economies are weird compared to the rest of a university. I don't necessarily agree that we'd be better off separating science instruction from music from arts from sports: most students do balance these things. If you made an all-STEM university for only the STEM students, they'd just form their own squash teams and chamber music groups, and then they'd have to arrange their own travel, too. Humans cannot be pigeonholed that easily. To me, the best feature of high-level sports is that there indeed are some young persons who can play at those levels, and open competition is a legitimate way to attain growth. And for that tier of athlete, maybe nothing less strenuous is worth their time. You could force those kids into a trade school or big PE class that must target the average, but their talent would be wasted. Remember that the vast majority of university "jocks" have no real shot at the next level, either, and most of them know it. Some large fraction of them are, indeed, at a big university (say, Power 5) solely because athletics opened that door, and many of them do make use of that and earn their degrees. I would be reluctant to throw out that entire framework just because a small fraction of them abuse it.
Many of them are, yes, and it's precisely because they're big that the economies are "weird". CFB was big before the NFL got big. I'd really be surprised if I were to discover that the bigger programs are lacking something academically (or lacking for something) because there isn't enough money. Now, if smaller schools try to emulate that level of investment, they're gonna lose money. Most programs don't turn a profit, but plenty of people choose a school because they want to be part of the big-picture environment that a great team can help create. There's no reason for most folks to choose Bama over UAB, but many do if they can. And the biggest thing anyone who doesn't actually work at Bama knows about Bama is football. I just didn't understand the reasoning behind labeling someone a moron because their knowledge base is in another field, especially considering that the language they use reflects their upbringing and surroundings, not their intellect. The moron in that big beautiful fraternity house isn't earning the school any money, but if those gridiron morons win a natty, alums will donate more. If Ed Orgeron is as successful as humanly possible at his job, LSU will profit more than they will if any other employee at the school is that successful. Nor do I, truth told. I just didn't get why the big sports appreciated by the common man would fall under the knife while small, elite sports would not. I can't imagine they'd form much of anything, but maybe I'm being harsh. This, all day. Of course there was less money in all of it pre-cable, and then pre-Internet, and then... if there's money out there, businesses will find their way to it if they can. I omitted men's college soccer because it seems to my limited viewing to be more diverse racially than the women's college game. And because it can't do a lot to prepare its players for pro ball in a century-old category, everybody already knows it's just for gits and shiggles. OTOH, a top-level college gridiron or bball player in his senior season at a top-level program is one of the best few dozen athletes on earth at his position. You're just seeing him before he can get his money. Again, the NFL is an employer. If college can prepare me for a career playing Beethoven, or dancing to Swan Lake, they should be allowed to prepare me for a career as an NFL coach or player. Europe's "fine arts" coding is and was always intended to group like things (extracurriculars) into separate categories arbitrarily. Beautiful.
I just saw this. My high school, about 10-12 miles north of where I assume puttputtfc is talking about, was also a football factory (turns out, it was a minor soccer factory, too). While it is true that many of them were pretty dumb, I'd say a good half were ABOVE average in intelligence (no reverse Carlin jokes!). The soccer team was well above that. The University of Akron Men's Soccer team has been routinely among the leaders nationally in both on-field performance and classroom performance. The presence years ago of Sinisa Ubiparapovic probably dragged down the average for a decade. I hear similar things about a lot of the bigger soccer schools. UC, I'm not sure, but I'm almost certain their non-revenue sports were suffering already. New Mexico suspended their program, and they've been easily in the top 25 for more than a decade.
It just occurred to me that the start of today's Challenge Cup makes the NWSL the first professional team sports league in America to resume play in any form. That's not nothing.
True. It only means that at least some of the folks in charge of the NWSL are willing to risk safety of the players and staff to make a money grab. That "might" be understandable if the money was significant but I do not believe it is at all. This is only sports and not worth the increased risk of infection not to mention the greater risk of injury from inadequate training time. No amount of precautions makes this stupid move safe. To use a rather famous quote(paraphrased): "Life finds a way. Life breaks through, sometimes violently." Without a viable vaccine there is no safety in this opening. Testing is now even proven to be unreliable and people can transmit the virus without any symptoms or testing positive. The US just set a record for new infections and we are opening up sports. It just is not that important.