Sports are profitable for Universities.
"You’re talking about 95 percent of colleges that probably spend somewhere between … $40 million and $5 million on college sports, and they lose money,” Baker said
Which I can’t really understand at all as an Englishman. A lot of universities here do have sports teams but they’re mostly amateur. The only major event really is the Oxford vs Cambridge boat race which does get sponsorship.
Yeah but imagine that secondary schools and 6th forms were doing grass roots, then unis were scooping up the best players for their own uni teams.
Fully anecdotal, but one of my 6th form rugby teammates went to watch a high school american football game, and said they were comparably as good as we were. Only difference is they filled a stadium and we’d get 3 dads on the sideline.
Junior teams for professional clubs do very much pay attention to school leagues and youth club rugby for players to ‘scoop up’.
Seems like a purely cultural difference around going to watch lower level matches to me, rather than the player skill and career trajectory being different.
That’s the problem. They shouldn’t be worried about profit. The fact that education and health are completely focused on profit in the US really demonstrates how far we’ve gone down a wrong path. (I’m not a talkie or even a leftist for the record, just hate unfettered capitalism)
Yes there was a lawsuit about colleges not treating players like employees. They should be employees.
Some sports are profitable. A lot of sports aren’t.
A lot of the sports programs go back to a time when universities acted more like finishing schools for the wealthy and intelligent. It was thought that sports, especially team sports, were a good way to teach the soft skills of being a leader.
Give the ones most likely to get brain damage a shot to higher education.
The perfect ruse
But no time to be educated. Also the education is the only form of compensation they’re allowed.
Seriously we need to end athletic scholarships and replace them with minor leagues for non baseball sports and need based scholarships.
24k tuition? Are we living in 2015?
I know this is a meme, but I do think it’s worth mentioning most D1 popular sports costs like, coach’s salaries, scholarships, facilities, equipment, and travel, aren’t funded through the university.
https://www.upua.org/presidential-blog/university-budgeting-and-finances-what-about-athletics
It’s still a pretty messed up system, don’t get me wrong. Just pointing out the universities aren’t giving scholarships to athletes instead of students… at least not directly.
There’s like three hundred million Americans, and I feel like nowhere near enough of them are passionate about how higher education and unpaid athletes performing for the commercial benefit of rich people should have absolutely nothing to do with each other.
I would be passionate about it if anybody would listen to me decrying how ridiculous the entire shenanigan is. But I have a feeling nobody would ever listen to me.
If Elon musk or Bill Gates or Steve Jobs…sry dead or President Biden or John Cena were passionate about how higher education and unpaid athletes performing for the commercial benefit of rich people should have absolutely nothing to do with each other… then I think people would listen.
