Robert Hutchins is spinning in his grave.

While I suppose I could admire this article for its attempt to recast the discussion -- by claiming entertainment is a core function of university life -- it doesn' t do so with sufficient honesty. There's lots of baiting and switching. At the beginning we are told that athletics make "breathtaking" amounts of money,but in the end it turns out that they are mostly net financial losers for the university, and thus (and rather lamely) their support should be measured in terms of how "evidence" (I'd give my students an F for the unsupported claim of evidence) "suggests" (!?) that "big-time" (??) programs "help attract applicants and raise contributions". Is that really the best you can do? Why not drop that fig leaf at all, if so?

What the author fails to spell out, but is actually quite clear, is that if "breathtaking" amounts of money are being made, they're being made by sporting manufacturers, promoters, consultants, radio and TV networks, etc., everything but the University.

In short, if you want to make an argument that universities are entertainers, go ahead and try, but it's probably time to give up on the financial thing.

One of the underappreciated benefits of college sports is its capacity for community building. In an increasingly fragmented society, it joins together individuals of many cultures and backgrounds into a coherent whole of enthusiasm and enjoyment.

"For many Americans, sports represent by far a university's most significant activity."

Really?

No doubt the larger society would acknowledge how much the value of research & development outstrips sports, e.g., agriculture, defense, health care, technology? Let alone teacher education/training (K-PhD). Hard to stop giving examples of how the gifts of colleges & universities, if received by our society, serve the larger society/culture.

How do we embrace the value of higher education in breaking the issues/concerns which tear at our society, through the embracing of more sports entertainment (through campus spirit, TV viewership, life aspirations of our youth)?

Maybe Dr. Benjamin Carson, http://carsonscholars.org/, could help draw 91,000+ out for a pre-college reading event to compete with the fans of pre-season college football practices. What a story he has to share about the importance of overcoming entertainment and sports cultures to the benefit of one's family, neighbor, nation, and world. But maybe it's not about the big events, but the reading rooms, the decisions which I make with my family and friends, even in making this comment ...

Branding is another role college athletics serve. Would many people know of Duke, Notre Dame, Gonzaga, or Bulter without the NCAA? Probably, they are good schools, but would Duke be Duke without the recent success on the basketball court?

Another point that is often overlooked is that the athletic news from schools with well run programs is predominantly good news. 'My Favorite University makes run to NCAAs' or 'MFU students make olympic team.' Woohoo. I went there, and people remember those stories when they see me wearing my school colors.

So in my great southern university town, generally the university is despised and faculty treated as though they are on welfare. Sorry, but the only thing that big time football seems to do here is generate more bit time football. I work all over the state of Georgia and generally if the people of this state could ditch the university and keep the football team they would be happy.

Well, it was only a matter of time. When you think about recent scandals like the one going down at UNC Chapel Hill, or the track player who died at NC A&T, and add on that some universities are cutting back on Division I sports because of the costs, it was inevitable that someone would pop up to write an apologia for college football.

Lost in the shuffle: the true purpose of higher ed.

I must agree that collegiate sports are entertainment and part of that industry, but it is a travesty to say that it is important to the core purpose of college.

That travesty continues in the obscene payroll of the atheletic departments, while academic departments suffer from cut-backs and down-sizing. The point that sport departments do not pay their own way, as has been noted in the comments, is a readily available fact, but obviously unappreciated by Clotfelter.

The pursuit of 'happiness', while certainly fundamentally American, should be the aim of post-collegiate life. The aim of college should be increasing one's understanding of the world, not the instant gratification of fans nor the granfalloon feel-good comraderie of graduates. The point of college is NOT entertainment nor it it to provide the farm teams for the NFL and NBA, but to obtain an education.

I think much of what the author says is true - college sports are a major part of the entertainment industry. While there may be some benefits to college sports - branding, building alumni loyalty, creating community among students - no one, including Clotfelter, has ever been able to offer me a satisfactory reason why college sports (beyond club or intramural) even exist. I cannot think of a college which includes athletic excellence as part of its mission statement. Students cannot major in sports, sports are not part the intellectual journey that college is supposed to comprise, sports do not seem to bear any relation to any other part of the university's purpose - I understand why college sports do exist, but I cannot understand why they should. The culture of college sports, particularly football and baseball, does not square with the intellectual and academic aims of the university.

And I disagree with Clotfelter that college sports teach meritocracy - student athletes get scholarships and special favors when, for the most part(at least at the campuses I have attended and taught at), they are nowhere near as academically qualified as the rest of the student body who aren't getting scholarships, not to mention those students who weren't admitted despite being more academically qualified. This wouldn't be a problem except that college admissions are supposed to be primarily based on academic qualifications. A student who slacked off in school and got a minimal score on the SAT but can run a 100 yard dash like nobody's business taking not only an admissions slot but a scholarship away from a kid who busted her butt in school doesn't demonstrate anything about meritocracy.

Football and basketball players are also shamefully used by many of these big time football programs, as seen by their low graduation rates. The players are admitted to the university even though they lack the grades and ACT scores to ensure academic success at that institution. Even the university's center for academic success for athelets cannot undo 12 years of bad elementary and secondary education. If these players become too injured to play, they are cut from the team and lose their scholarship. Because they lack the academic credentials to get some other sort of scholarship, they usually drop out of college. Or alternately, these students merely flunk out, never getting a degree at all, and worse still, believing that they are not sufficiently intelligent to earn any sort of college degree. We would be better served as a society if we either did away with college sports and let athletically talented high school students enter pro leagues immediately upon graduation or if we required that universities seriously pay these athletes for their talents that the athletic is making a pretty penny off of rather than merely giving these students a full ride scholarship.

Who's "operating in a parallel universe?" Obviously, this guy. He hasn't been listening. Reality check: It's not that faculty members are "blind to the significance of big-time sports." It's that many of us are outraged by it. I live in the state of New Mexico, where hundreds of young people are scratching their way out of poverty into the middle class through our state universities. The thought of big sports providing entertainment to the upper middle class and draining university budgets, thereby depriving our students of the opportunity to socially climb, is really an outrage.

Meant to say "Football and basketball players are also shamefully used by many of these big time athletic programs."

Did I miss any mention of the "student-athletes" responsible for the revenue, yet banned from any earnings? A few UNC-CH athletes have just been kicked off their team for accepting $5000, yet the coach has the highest publicly paid salary in the entire state. Further, at private universities, this abusive employment practice has a tax-free, not-for-profit status.

Let's broaden the scope of this employment practice -- student-house cleaners, student-landscapers, student-plumbers, and student-electricians. Though we won't pay them any hourly wages, we can have emotional peace because we'll give them tuition waivers.

Also, when broadening the scope of this employment practice, we'll need to ban entry into the fields of house-cleaning, landscaping, plumbing, and electrical work without first having gone through the university system, just like the agreement universities have with professional sports teams. I forget; there's a word for that, no?

Clotfelter, our commenters don't get tongue-in-cheek. Regardless, well done and quite entertaining.

I know of no one who is unaware of the gross distrotion of academic value by semi-commercial athlect programs. At no university I got a letter from the Admin asking that I go home early so the fans would be able to park. They could have at least invited me to attend the game!

I have a proposal: Just like university players have no rights to negotiate individual salaries, institute a rule that ALL coaches of ALL sports at ALL NCAA universities earn equal salaries, say a generous $500,000, and that all sports-related income goes into a national NCAA pot, divided equally amongst all universities. Let universities live by the rules they enforce on the players.

Let's see if I've got this right.

Colleges and universities are in the entertainment business, in the form of football, basketball, etc. The colleges and universities get to stand out on the sidewalk, talking things over with prospective customers who pull up. When the price is agreed upon, the colleges and universities get to hop in the car and deliver on the entertainment.

Meanwhile, the sports department is driving a Caddy, dressing real sharp, and living large, financed by whatever's going on the front seat. . . .

Is that what we're talking about here really?

It's astonishing that this commentary wasn't written by an athletic director or someone in senior administration.

College sports are entertaining for many. However, entertainment does not require massive spending such as that done at major football powers in Division I.

The link below will take you an article, circa 2007, from the Austin-American Statesman web site. It details athletic spending at the University of Texas at Austin. The budget for athletics was $100M in 2007. It is now $138M. VERY little of the athletics revenue makes its way into the university's budget. Athletics spends what it earns.

http://www.statesman.com/sports/content/sports/stories/longhorns/09/30/0930utsportsmain.html

While the numbers are smaller, significantly smaller, at other schools, the percentage of budget that goes to athletics is unconscionable.

Lastly, it's the TV networks that fuel the expensive expansion as much as anything else. They want a sophisticated, exciting product to broadcast.

"My fellow faculty members would no doubt shrink from that view, for few of us relish the thought that we work in the entertainment business"

I can only chuckle when reading that statement. Our teaching is classified as good or bad based on student evaluations. Many of those who criticize athletics also view themselves as good teachers, based on good student evaluations, and when I visit their classrooms the only thing that stands out is that they have put together a good show. Everything we do in the university is entertainment. That includes research, which we do as a way to entertain ourselves, independent of whether the research has any actual value.

Big time college athletics (so called "revenue sports" anyway)are indeed part of a clear-eyed rational analysis on the part of administrators. I suggest you bring a post-industrial Marxist lens to what is a puzzling situation to those who cannot understand the commitment by universities to the athletic enterprise. The current capitlatist imperative is to produce consumers, because what is produced is unnecessary; hence the huge investments into marketing and advertising. Sports produce consumers of education, a not very useful, over-valued, over-priced commodity in the current economic landscape. Less controversially, sports give alumni reasons to donate. Less controversially still, college sports attract applicants (which can be turned away to raise rankings). It's not a big leap from these uncontested claims to say that sports create a market for the colleges that sponsor them. This analysis has the advantage of explaining a true paradox in higher ed and the social fact that in the current informational environment the knowledge disseminated through universities has never been of such low value by virtue of its accessibility. Yet, costs (to students) rise--at an equivalent rate to healthcare in the past decade--and our society has never had so many clamoring for a degree. Value must be added somehow, and keeping students atttention on sports rather than the poor quality of their education is a useful side benefit.

Ask the Ivy League institutions, or the University of Chicago, if big-time college sports attract more applications and raise contributions. If you try to find Ivy league football on TV, you'll have a hard time. I don't see these universities suffering from their avoidance of athletic scholarships and all the problems that come with running an entertainment business. Sure, the Ivies have their athletic teams, too, and they may even give some preference to top athletes in admission, but overall they seem capable of keeping the place of sports in the university more in proper perspective. Duke might be better off to follow the example of the Ivies. --- Sandy Thatcher

More like "Colleges are good for Sports" because of an environement of energetic young people.

The tail is now wagging the dog, sports are supposed to be an extracurricular activity, but come to dominate the mindspace of anyone that thinks about college in general.

This article takes note of all the positives, but really this is more like the coliseums in ancient rome: full of gladiators and spectacles to amuse the masses, meanwhile the economy is sputtering.

How about some factors that attribute to the added cost of college, but do not produce real benefits to most students: Here is an article about college costs http://j.mp/cizIMC

Cambridge is publishing a book by this guy? Seriously?

Not sure if Clodfelter is kidding or not. I mean this entire column is simply a tired run through of the same old arguments such as the "happiness factor" "the money factor" and the rise in "applications and fundraising factor"-- all which have been disproved by research (Knight Commission and NCAA)and even in cases that might be cited where these factors existed, it is nothing more than an extrememly short spike that doesn't generate the ROI to offset the money spent. Even more amazing, when most students list athletics as less important than other factors when choosing an institution-Clodfelter is making us think that all they want is whistles and gongs. Is it any wonder we are falling behind the rest of the world in higher education. I

f we are about entertainment or as Murray Sperber calls is "Beer and Circus," let's just get out of the academic business and provide entertainment. How much fun would it be if we didn't have these pesky academic things to deal with. Oh wait that would not work-right? This is not a chicken and egg argument. The ICA enterprise cannot survive without the academic institution-Period, but the institution can survive without athletics, yet somehow it has become second fiddle with psuedo scholars like Clodfelter trying to perpetuate the myths that have long been disproven. Athletics can be a great part of an institution, but it needs to be done in more rational way that is less expensive. Frankly it is easy to do, we just have to want to do it. And guess what--people will still be happy and maybe, just maybe we won't spend ourselves into oblivion. That day of reckoning is fast approaching for some institutions.What will happen then? Let's see how far they go with just the ancillary entertainment options available.

Sadly most of the public is behind him--especially those fans who never attended a school they proudly wear colors for. Come to think of it, as much as we don't want to be in the entertainment business, this silly column of his just may become reality. That is most unhappy feeling of all because we will all be losers.

When commenting on the sad state of affairs in big-time college football, Frank Cagle of the Knoxville News said: "We keep seeing the tips of icebergs out there. Agents. Under the table money. Big-money shoe contracts. Coaches cheating. Boosters cheating. Programs reek of corruption. Coaches move on to further millions and fans and left-behind players pay the price."

The grim reality is that the American public has no interest in
Cagle's icebergs. For all intents and purposes, the American public values college sports entertainment over education,
accepts the institutionalized corruption that enables schools supporting big-time football and men's basketball programs to
field professionalized athletic teams, remains oblivious to the
long-term negative consequences of the "rise of the rest" in a post-American world (described by Fareed Zakaria); worse yet, a dysfunctional government all bu guarantees that its officials will remain under the political influence of the NCAA and its member institutions no matter what. For more, go to
http://the drakegroup.org/splittessays.html.

Frank G. Splitt

I must agree with the articals perspective on athletics. I do not have all of the statistics everyone claims to have that support the dissmissal of the articals credibility, i feel most statistics are manipulated to portray the intent of the researcher anyway. I believe if you gave the happiness survey to the people of Pittsburgh on a Steeler victory or loss it would reflect that the theory is very real. I also realize they are not a collegiate team but feel it is a well represented example of the theory. I would guess the 100 thousand fans that pack Beaver stadium in Happy Valley would agree. The impact sports has on our society is inescapeable. I believe it should be embraced and cultivated instead of bashed. Sports not only impacts the greatest athletes but all who participate and are taught the life lessons they provide. A work ethic, and the will to strive for excellence doesnt always equate to everyone being an ivy league scholor. Who would sell cars and provide other services. Excellence in anything you do is the message of sport no matter what your role. On the field or in life. Pride is then cultivated. Its not the fault of the athletic departmants that peopl value sports. Maybe this sense of caring for sports was initiated because people in the world of athletics cared for those people no matter what their grades were. Maybe the intelectuals of the academic world should spend more time with those who struggle with an atta boy or an atta girl rather than judging them by an SAT score. Then maybe people would care more about academics then sports. Sports gives people an identity. An identity with a group. We are a social animal and need to be a part of something. When we are a part of something it fosters the sense of worth and caring. What do academics do to accomplish this? I believe academics are extreemly important, and would never downplay their importance but believe sports is an essential element in the development of a person socially, mentally, and physically. Get rid of athletics? Athletics trickles down into every element of our existance. It impacts the lives of people who are not even involved directly. We have to make the choice of how it impacts us. Some choose the negative,(coruption) some choose the positve.(life lessons)