re: Wall Street Journal: Why College Football should be banned

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He's writing a piece for the New Yorker, not for a peer-reviewed medical imaging technical journal. He has to craft a narrative.

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but he always crafts that narrative, even if he's writing a serious piece. his story is more important than debating the truth

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Do you think those kids are experiencing college in a meaningful way?

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yes

if anything, they get to be around more intellectual and intelligent people and a superior culture to inner city black culture

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Let's subsidize a sports program

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not all are subsidized. i've already said i understand THAT argument

but sports do provide non-academic lures to the university

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A student shouldn't be choosing an ACADEMIC institution for its ATHLETIC program

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why not? much of college is about the overall experience and not the academics

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but he always crafts that narrative, even if he's writing a serious piece. his story is more important than debating the truth

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If nothing else, it the pieces interesting enough to grab your attention so that you read the whole thing.

And then if you want a completely even-handed analysis with no spin or angles, you know exactly what you're looking for.

To be clear, I'm not trying to fellate the guy or anything, I think he has written some weak articles. I thought his article on the full-court press was badly premised and thus had gaping holes in it (he presented the full-court press as a "David" strategy, when in fact it is probably best used as a "Goliath" strategy).

But I had never heard of CTE before I read his article. And the same can probably be said for lots of other people.

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The ones that can't support themselves with their own funds probably aren't doing a fantastic job of advertising the school.

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I'm not sure I would go that far. I would say certain smaller schools that don't necessarily win probably benefit by their name being heard of outside the state, if that makes sense. They may not get a bunch of air time on ABC, but simply playing some good schools or other out of state teams probably helps get their name out there.

We are on a message board talking his WSJ article. That was kind of the point of his "radical" solution to sell papers and get attention. Mission accomplished by him.

I'm surprised amateur leagues haven't caught on. Why do you need the NFL to entertain yourself?

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What if major colleges glorified academics (you know, stuff like math & science) rather than sports?


What if ghetto kids tried as hard to become Neil Tyson as do to become Michael Jordan or Barry Sanders?


Neither of these phenomena will ever happen until colleges rid themselves of televised sports (which means not in our lifetimes).

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This is kind of how I feel. I am by no means agreeing with the idea of getting rid of college football but I am very aware of how screwed up our entire country's ideals are. The fact of the matter is kids dont choose a school bc of its academics, they choose it based on its football team. I dont necessarily think this is a terrible thing and worthy of eliminating an entire program but I would like to see more stats on just how these athletic programs are funded and if/how many actually make money for the school.

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Schools should be about academics, first and foremost. Sports whould be something done for fun, and not made into a big business, and not used to coddle and promote semi-pro athletes.

If student athletes in a particular sports program aren't being educated (i.e., aren't making grades, aren't graduating, etc.), the entire program should be cut, or at least suspended for full season(s) of competition.

Right now, the NCAA will ban a team from postseason if benchmarks aren't met, like they did to UConn, but if I were in charge, they would be banned from playing ANY games.

Maybe then, schools will recruit students who want to play sports rather than professional athletes in training.

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I understand and agree with the basic principle that schools should be about academics first and foremost. However, I've never understood the argument that because a handful of football players may not be taking their college academic career seriously enough it means that the entire sport should be scrapped. It's an even crazier idea when you consider that football makes well over a hundred other scholarships available to serious students in a wide range of other sports available at each school. I assume the author realizes those opportunities go bye bye with college football's elimination. The benchmarks are a good idea because despite the veiled racist overtones of the author's article, a significant majority of these college football players actually graduate and become functioning members of society.

What's with the sudden righteous indignation over college football anyway? Heck, if the idea is meaningless entertainment that is a distraction to secondary education then why limit it to college sports? If escalating coaching salaries are so evil then why not attack professional sports that benefit from the free athletic training that colleges provide in football, basketball, and baseball? You have single MLB players making annual salaries that equal the entire combined coaching salaries of entire BCS conferences and it's college football that is out of control? The author would probably lose his s### if you suggested New Yorkers had screwed up priorities following a team that had players making over 20 million dollars a season playing baseball. College football should be banned the same day MLB teams agree to lower their salaries in line with normal working people.

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What if major colleges glorified academics (you know, stuff like math & science) rather than sports?


What if ghetto kids tried as hard to become Neil Tyson as do to become Michael Jordan or Barry Sanders?


Neither of these phenomena will ever happen until colleges rid themselves of televised sports (which means not in our lifetimes).

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You do realize that people will still watch and idolize pro athletes, right?