The only problem with this argument is that the majority of athletes in sports like football are not really interested or qualified to be in college. They are lured there by the opportunity to be big men on campus and maintained there by the opportunity to take mickey-mouse courses, kindly assisted by the athletic departments.

What 11159786 says of the majority is subject to additional scrutiny. Though it is undoubtedly true of some athletes, it is in my personal experience not true of all. The time and effort many athletes must spend in practice in cases I am personally aware of detracts from the time they can spend in academic pursuits, and Bruce Smith's proposal is one modest and sensible step in the direction of reducing the exploitation of young men and women in revenue-generating sports by compensating them for their contributions to the generation of this revenue.

This is going in exactly the wrong direction. Instead of requiring schools to treat football as a student activity, rather than a minor league for the NFL, we're asked to treat other college sports as minor leagues for every obscure professional sport in the world. In times when we're firing professors and secretaries because we don't have enough money, we're asked to pay room, board, and expenses for students to be full-time field hockey players. I'm sorry, but this is nuts.

I think the pro leagues ought to subsidize college athletics and the education of the student-athletes.

This is a joke, right? Is the next step just to say that university athletics are farm teams, and allow trades, promotions and demotions, etc.?

I see a couple of practical problems with this proposal. First, how long would the "athlete" play on the school team? Four years? Five years? If they start at 18 and end five years later (there are red shirt freshman, so five seems reasonable)they will not begin their undergraduate career until the age of 23, delaying many aspects of their lives. Not sure it would work for most people. I think there needs to be a change in attitude - college is for education, not sports. I realize there is a "snowballs change in hell" that this change will happen,but nevertheless it needs to be said.

Would you extend the same kind of privileges to, say, theater students who have to be in the theater 40/wk during rehearsal and production? They too are honing career skills for a one-in-a-million shot at becoming fabulously wealthy.

Student-athletes already get a lot of slack. I personally have seen a professor give an extension to one student who said she had a game and deny one to the very next student (a more conscientious student overall) who was working on a show. And I'll bet that happens often.

Sorry, my heart does not bleed for the student-athlete any more than for anyone else. And as boiler (#3) says, taking on additional financial burdens during a time of severe underfunding in the university just so these kids can train??...that's just nuts.

Silly idea meant to pander to the worship of all things athletics. I agree with the others posting here that many, if not most, of the athletes in the money sports are not qualified to be "students." I do have a problem with coaches, who are often the highest paid state employees, recruiting unqualifed athletes while telling them they will get a degree. Most of the athletes think they will go pro and do not have the skills to assess their real prospects.

The author is out of touch with many sports fans. "I think most Americans, even rabid fans of college sports, are interested in how sports fit into our conception of the university as a place of learning ..." I cannot identify a rabid fan, outside of the few in academics, who even think about the educational side of the university. For the rabid fans, the university begins and ends at the stadium.

The fact that many athletes don't really want to be students is the point. Get them out of the classroom, end the charade that they are anything other than NFL hopefuls. Later, if they realize the value of an education (rather than a diploma), they may return to university and actually be involved in their coursework.

I disagree, however, with the idea that any athletic endeavor should be recognized in this way. Seems to me the point is recognition of the de facto exchange that already occurs. Filling a Buckeye stadium or Rupp arena certainly brings in more cash than the bleachers at field hockey games. If a theater or music program is equally lucrative for a school, then of course its participants should have the same opportunity, but the water ballet team probably doesn't meet that bar.

Aren't you tired of filling out forms for athletic departments desperate to have their players pass?

I immediately recognize my alma mater when I see it. Davidson = WWII barracks at the flagship of a major university.

Another technical factor that would come into play with this system is whether there is a limit to the number of outstanding chits there could be at any pint in time. Without one, there could be an even greater push to admit students to the school who are academically underprepared but who excel athletically. But now, there is nothing holding them to ever attend a class in the future. Sure, they have the incentive of five years of free schooling, but there's no reason to believe they would take advantage of said incentive. And now you set up a system that incentivizes the schools to recruit even more ringers for their teams. If only the NCAA grad rate metrics had any teeth at all, this might be less of an issue.

This is a brilliant idea for cash sport (primarily football & men's basketball) athletes. For too long colleges have treated these men as "free meat" to be exploited in their prime and then quickly disgarded once their eligibility and health has expired.

The guarantee of lifetime access to education is a nice start. It finally gives the athletes a small claim to a piece of the "vig."

Gregg Easterbrook made a similar proposal back in 2000: that for every year an athlete played or was red-shirted, he or she would get an additional year of scholarship support to be used later: http://www.slate.com/id/95622/

I have been on the faculty at Auburn University for over 30 years, and while the recent highly publicized incidents here have regrettable aspects, they have at least raised once again a set of issues regarding compensation for athletes. Some of these young men and women (including notably, those playing football later today for Auburn University and the University of Oregon) help generate untold sums of revenue not only for their universities, but also for many other allied organizations, municipalities, mega-corporations and small businesses. The idea of giving a voucher to athletes for their use whenever they truly wish postsecondary education is one I came to independently some time ago, but never expressed except to friends. I am delighted to know that Bruce Smith has made this proposal in a public form and has shared the idea with the NCAA. One extension of that idea I favor is to create a clearinghouse of institutions that would honor the vouchers. That way the ex-athlete would be able to use it regardless of where he/she lives. I fully admit that my idea has to this juncture been "half-baked" and I have neither the interest nor expertise to work out more of the details, some of which have been mentioned by the commenters.

Some institutions already follow that practice. The University of Tennessee at Knoxville has been doing that for a number of years and has had some football players come back and complete degrees after careers.

I am faculty representative on the Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletics for the University of Texas at Austin. I have followed closely and written and spoken about NCAA athletics for eleven years.
The NCAA operation here generates more revenues than any other progarm in the country. They are known locally as Longhorns Inc. They are the self-declared and widely acknowledged Joneses of big-time NCAA Bowl Championship Series athletics. The Chief Financial Officer of this highly commericialized,independently functioning operation, Ed Goble, has declared that Longhorns Inc "eats what we kill," i.e., any revenues they get their hands on they spend on luxury facilities, high coaches' salaries and even a mascot museum. The wasteful sybaritism has been exposed on the front pages of the Austin American Statement (Sept. 2007) and in The Texas Observer (Jan. and March 2010). The program now has suspended a highly paid right hand man to head coach Mack Brown and rumors swirl of recruiting scandals and NCAA sanctions.
Annually the football team is at the bottom of the Top 25 in its minority graduation rates. The SAT profiles of both the men's football and basketball teams are hundreds of points below the normal student profiles. These 'students' are not subject to the same admissions standards as normal students.
From my point of view, the answer here is not to adjust to the modus operandi of the current corrupt NCAA sports business with this lifetime chit nonsense. It is (1) to return intercollegiate athletics to a true extracurricular (2) requiring no more than 20 hours per week of students (3) admitted according to the admission standards that apply to all students at their institutions (4) on the basis of undoctored or uncompromised assessments of their K-12 educational achievements. These students (5) should then not be given special tutors, study facilities or instructors.
A lifetime chit for many of our current student athletes is not an oxymoron, but it would be a sad and painful commentary on practicing what the NCAA stands for: the National Committee to Aid and Abet. It would be another sham.

Tom Palaima, Dickson Centennial Professor, MacArthur fellow, COIA representative of University of Texas at Austin and Big XII steering committee reprsentative of COIA. tpalaima@mail.utexas.edu

The comments in response to this article remind me of why I guard the fact that I was a scholarship athlete during my undergraduate years with the same enthusiasm with which I guard the fact that I'm not a heterosexual.

Students in class with me assumed that I was stupid when I showed up straight from practice in the sweats issued by the athletic department - even though I was in the honors program (as was roughly a quarter of my team). When the first round of tests or papers came back, invariably, their jaws would drop when they saw my A.

In response to CleverClogs - the difference is that theater is a recognized part of the curriculum. To cut slack for theater is akin to cutting slack in an English class simply because the student is enrolled in a math class in which he/she is struggling. The student may choose when to study, and it doesn't have to conflict with other class commitments. Athletes, on the other hand, have no control over when games are scheduled. The university I played for would have required - by policy - that exact response.

I think this is a great idea. If y'all are seriously concerned that the student-athletes at your institutions aren't "smart enough" to be there, I'd suggest addressing that from an admissions standpoint, rather than institutionalizing bias against an entire group of students, most of whom do meet the requirements and have the capability to succeed.

To kgodwin

What gets mixed up here is the fact that the pool of student athletes includes students who are true students and who are at an institution that is suited to their interests, capabilities and goals. You are also right to express concern that there is a prejudice against students who are athletes.

Prejudice arises from human ignorance, human fear and human hatred. In most cases it is difficult to do anything about people who want to deal in stereotypes. But at least one improvement would be to see to it that the stuent athletes at institution X really should be at institution X and have not been admitted solely or virtually solely because of athletic skills.

At UT Austin, student athletes are not subject to the Top Ten Percent Rule that affects all other students. For some their academic records and profiles are well outside the range of special presidential admits in other fields (e.g., performance artists). And their numbers dwarf other categories of special admits.

I know this is a complicated question because of the K-12 environments of many prospective college student-athletes.

Nonetheless, permitting special admits of student athelets who are drastically below the academic performance levels and standardized test grades of other students does nothing to put pressure to improve their experinces in our K-12 systems.

Chits may work for some chosen few, but they will also be viewed as a panacea for a current broken system.

Therefore, on balance, they are a terrible idea. They would aid and abet.

The author is pretty obviously retired. It's a questionable idea, very far from the fiscal realities of today's university. I'm also a bit unclear as to what the athlete who had graduated with a bachelors degree would do in his or her 5 years of free room and board education.

Would it be for any subject at any academic level? Would it pay for an MBA, or a JD? Could it pay for an MD or an RN perhaps? Or would it only apply to a second bachelor's degree? I could see enterprising lawyers, MBAs and med students getting into obscure sports like badminton or wrestling in order to get free education.

And what PI would turn down 5 years of a free grad student in the lab? I sure wouldn't.

Tom, I am impressed with your degree of involvement at Texas. I have had virtually no such involvement, but I have shared your views about the corrupting nature of athletics as they have evolved at many universities including yours and mine. I am grateful to have this forum to hear the views of others. I come to my view about voucher reluctantly, but in the spirit of improving rather than dismantling the current system. Maybe athletics was a "true extracurricular" at some point in the very distant past, but that horse has been out of the barn for decades. We in the professoriat can bemoan the attention and money devoted to athletics all we wish. One of my favorite Arabic quotes applies here: "The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on." The caravan of college athletics is enormous and has a vast constituency of people who pay for it and a considerable constituency who profit from it. The voucher idea is not a panacea for all the ills of the system, but it will afford a greater degree of honesty and integrity in terms of what is expected of contemporary athletes and the benefits they are due.

"From my point of view, the answer here is not to adjust to the modus operandi of the current corrupt NCAA sports business with this lifetime chit nonsense. It is (1) to return intercollegiate athletics to a true extracurricular (2) requiring no more than 20 hours per week of students (3) admitted according to the admission standards that apply to all students at their institutions (4) on the basis of undoctored or uncompromised assessments of their K-12 educational achievements. These students (5) should then not be given special tutors, study facilities or instructors." - Tom Palaima

This. College athletics should be no different from any other club or organization on campus. Actually, this goes for student newspapers, who work their staff to death, and the Greek system also. Extracurricular activities should be extracurricular activities that require a small time commitment and provide a healthy life balance that gets the student out of the library from time to time. Recreational sport should be the goal and not pre-professional training. College athletes should be normal students who happen to spend some extra time outside the classroom training for a weekend football game that should be nothing more than a minor skirmish appreciated by alumni for the tailgating opportunities and the chance to sing the fight song if somebody happens to get lucky enough to score. High school athletes who want to be professional athletes should go that route instead of going to college. The professionalization of college athletics is idiotic, plain and simple. Totally idiotic.

It think the idea of atthletes having a chance to get a free college education is a positive attraction for colleges. Many colleges are in competition with other universities to seek the best of the best high school students in athletics, which makes their school look good. I feel all students work hard and becoming a athlete is a choice that the students make... It doesn't mean that they should have free education.. That is why there is financial aid. I see many of our athletes who are on teams at my college where i am employed and they are in school just to play sports. their grades are horrible and we over accomodate them. We have override classes to fit their schedules because they could not register ahead of time because their GPA's were too low. I think we need to incorporate a different approach to proposing such a thing . I do not agree with it and feel it is absurd...

Like kgodwin, I am disturbed at the overwhelming antipathy towards student-athletes exhibited in this post. I was a student-athlete, and while it was certainly a lot of hard work, and at times required a challenging juggling act, I consider it some of the best preparation I ever had for my eventual career in academic medicine. I am not unusual-- a surprising number of my colleagues were college athletes as well.

There are certainly some programs and athletes who do their best to subvert the system. But most scholar-athletes are committed to their studies, and most programs work hard to help them succeed. In fact, at most schools, the athletes have a higher GPA and graduation rate, on average, than the rest of the students (recognizing that they likely have substantially more support in terms of tutors and organized study time as well).

To hhopf Where you see antipathy, I see genuine concern and worries about exploitation. Students with the poor academic preparation of whom I am speaking should be at a communit college or a small four-year college with courses that can bring them along. They shouldnot betrying to do courses at a state flagship research University while practicing and training and playing 44 hours per week ON AVERAGE!

The 'horse is already out of the barn' argument and the argument that we have to face the realities of the status quo, so let's just make some minor adjustment is the same kind of argument that was used about slavery and then about the virtual apartheid that was the 'separate but equal' principle. Things aren't so bad. Some advance is better than none.

First, as the academic adviser for men's athletics at UT Austin, Brian Davis, says he tells the student athlets, the NFL stands for NOT FOR LONG. And by any estimate, only a very small percentage of athletes at any of the major programs will ever make it into the pros even marginally.

So these chits for 95% of the student athletes will be usable immediately.

Now let's take a football-playing student who has entered UT with SAT's of 900 instead of 1250 and with poor academic preparation. Let him do what the NCAA's own survey has shown, he spends on average 44 hours practicing, training and playing football. After four years of this at age 22, he then says now I am going to leap into 2 to 3 serious years of education at UT Austin. And boy is he prepared to do the course work.

I'll sell you the Brooklyn Bridge and I have the deed for it right here.

If my memory serves me well, Marquette University had a de facto policy for its basketball players in the 1970s that allowed them to return to the university and finish their degrees without any time limit and without charge.

Richard Crepeau
University of Central Florida

hhopf - would you be willing to let us know where you attended college, as well as what your sport was? Your student-athlete situation sounds like the correct balance that many of us want to see rather that what is going on at many schools. I don't think people here are critiquing student-athletes like you; they are saying that your particular arrangement was what schools should be aiming for. Certainly I had a friend on the crew team at my large state university who was a shining example of a student athlete - great grades, in good shape, good academic/sport/social life balance, would have gotten admitted on her own academic merit without the athletic talent. You would not be able to say the same for our basketball team, our football team, or much of our soccer team, however. So I just wish they'd make the basketball team, the football team, and the soccer team like the crew team, the baseball team, and the tennis team. Real student athletes rather than pre-professional athletes who have to, for technical reasons, pretend to be students.

1. D-1 football and men's basketball players are very different from other student-athletes, such as field hockey players and cross-country runners. The degree of difference can be inferred by comparing the salaries of the football and men's basketball coaches to those of the field hockey and cross-country coaches.

2. The difference is that football and men's basketball players are part of a the giant, semi-autonomous (and often de facto autonomous) sports/entertainment business of D-1 intercollegiate "revenue sports."

3. Football and men's basketball players spend more hours per week on football (games and practice, not counting travel time) than they do on their studies (classes and homework). It should be obvious that these "student-athletes" are much more employees of the university's sports/entertainment business than they are students. (D-1 men's basketball makes no bones about this, due to the NCAA's "one-and-done" rule that makes recruiting a player who has no intention whatsoever of getting a college education or a degree to play for the university for a single, dubious academic year [staying academically eligible--no problem!] before moving on to the pros, perfectly SOP.)

4. These "revenue sports" players are woefully under-compensated with athletic "scholarships," junk classes in junk majors (my favorite being "Leisure Stduies"), rampant express and implied academic cheating to keep players eligible that prohibits any actual learning.

5. In spite of the fact that D-1 "revenue sports" rake in billions, many if not most big-time college football and men's basketball programs barely break even. The fall-back rationale is that even if they lose money, they encourage alumni to donate more than they otherwise would. (Not calculatable are the donations not forthcoming because of the schools' sports/entertainment industries.)

6. D-1 revenue sports are a perfect example of the proverbial frog voluntarily boiling in water heated a degree at a time over the long haul. Originally, it was a legit "The fellows from our school can beat the fellows from your school" competition. Then schools began using ringers and "tramp athletes." (George "The Gipper" Gipp was one of them.) Check out the Marx Brothers movie, "Horse Feathers" to see how far back it goes. Then schools began giving those "scholarships" to nominally legitimize adding semi-ringers to the student body. Enter television: at first a couple of games on the broadcast networks on Saturdays and four bowl games on New Year's Day, and then all those cable networks with football games on three or four days and nights a week and more than thirty bowl games, now stretching up to mid-January. D-1 revenue sports are an obvious grotesquerie in academic institutions, but people are oblivious because the athletic bloat came on gradually. And plus, it's so much fun to watch large, armored men in colorful uniforms collide at high speed.

7. A good idea would be to go Mr. Smith's proposal one further: Have "revenue sports" athletes be university employees, much like groundskeepers and security. Make D-1 football and men's basketball leagues professional minor leagues with an age cap, say, under-25. Give the players modest salaries, room and board, and Mr. Smith's lifetime education chit, with the proviso that the classes taken must progress toward a degree.

8. To the argument that openly treating erstwhile "student-athletes" as employees would dampen the "spirit" of the enterprise: Nonsense. The kind of people who dress up in school colors, even paint themselves in school colors, tailgate to high heaven, and stake much of their identity on whether the team wins or not will not have their passion (if that's what you want to call it) lessened by the fact that the players are now paid in money instead of suspect college credits.

goxewu

Thank you for your 8 points of wisdom. Re #7,years ago local Austin sportswriter Kirk Bohls asked me what I would propose as an alternative to the current plantation system whereby student athletes in the big-money sports spend 4-5 years performing and generating by their play, e.g., at UT Austin in football alone $89 million, and are compensated merely by scholarships, room and board and modest monthly living expense stipends and a large percentage after 6 years have no degrees.

(BTW everyone does know that if players meet the standards set by the NCAA APR system, they will only have ca. 80% of their degrees done after 4 years, i.e., the system is designed so that players will not finish their degrees in 4 years, right?)

I proposed giving them what they now have plus $15 K (now $20K) salaries--easily enough generated if you bring coaches' and ADs' and PR directors' and sports CFOs' salaries back to planet earth from where they now are set by the big-time sports cartel. Also they would get SIX-year scholarships.

During their first 4 years as football players, they would take half loads of legitimate courses (in football 2 in fall and 3 in spring).

After 4 years, they would have their degrees finished and then the vast majority who have no chance of going pro could then finish up their degrees in 2 years as legitimate students learning how to makke their way in the real campus world.

I also proposed a required course in personal finance and budgeting so as to prevent the waste of money and the bankruptcy that now besets many players who go pro.

This is for the fantasy world where all those whose livelihoods are now dependent on big-time college sports including each and every fat cat official of the NCAA and all the conference officials and AD's and assistant AD's at universitiies and college sports writers and merchandise marketing agents and even sports journalism profs and so on would see the light and work hard to return college sports to what it never was: a true intercollegiate educational athletic experience.

Again, I'll sell the Brooklyn Bridge first.

Interestingly, the Western Hockey League (WHL), the main North American feeder for the NHL, provides one year of full financial support (tuition, fees, books,etc) at an institution of the players choice in the future for each year played in the WHL. (15 out of the top 20 players drafted in 2010 came from the WHL.) This is in addition to the high school support/standards applied for students of that age group.

While I do not specifically know how many complete their education, working as a scout I have encountered far more than not who have taken some advantage of this opportunity to continue their education beyond the secondary level. I only expect this to increase as distance learning continues to grow.

I work with student athletes through my current position at a Division I institution. I see many work hard, on the field and off, knowing they will not have a shot at the pros. So they make the most of their time while they're here. I see others who fritter away this amazing opportunity to earn an education while playing the sport they love with financial support unrivaled by most scholarships my University offers (many receive room, board, tuition, fees, textbooks (loaned), computer (loaned) and calculator (loaned), plus a stipend (depends on the board plan)). But, if you asked me if this behavior was any different than that of a random group of students of similar size, I'd say "No."

I think we notice student athlete behavior more, and like the rest of the world, tend to generalize their behaviors to the rest of their population more readily than we do with other student groups on our campuses. If a group of students lights off firecrackers, no one notices (except the staff who respond). If a group of student athletes does it, it makes the front page of the school paper.

There are certainly some student athletes who drive me crazy, but there are non-student athletes who do the same. The supporting cast around student athletes, and I don't just mean coaches, can make their issues a little more complicated and time consuming. Coaches can also be of great assistance with off-the-field issues. Kind of like parents, they can be both a blessing and a curse. Sometimes, everything happens in concert to help the student succeed. And sometimes, instead of helicopters, it's a full-out "BlackHawk Down." :)

As one of those nerdy, awkward, pre-gay boys for whom high school phys ed was always torture straight out of the dreams of Torquemada and who in part eliminated from consideration any college that required phys ed, I find myself in the curious position of saying that by and large (with a few memorable exceptions--but so few I can count them on the fingers of one hand), I have had generally positive experiences with student-athletes, especially women (who for whatever reason seem always to be very conscientious about informing me ahead of time and about making sure they have covered what is due when--and I write as a male): at least where I have taught (comprehensive college for the last two decades, farm belt former normal school before that, and a few other kinds of institutions), I have never had coaches try to interfere, students try to get out of assignments, and only once or twice do I recall a student trying to use athletic participation as a way to skip half the class sessions (ironically, that was at an elite SLAC in the Northeast--one that aspires to be a Hamilton or Middlebury--in its dreams--there it was the class arrrogance of students that led to an ethos of entitlement, not the status as student-athletes). Even when I was a grad student at a Big 10 University, I found my student-athletes courteous and respectful and as committed to the learning enterprise as any other category of students (then again, it was the basement of the Big 10 athletically, so maybe those students knew they'd better not count on pro careers--and they were held to the same academic standards as everyone else).

Having said that, I still think the idea put forth in this essay is as wrong-headed as can be. If student-athletes are so encumbered by the athletic that they cannot finish the degree in the noral time range (which seems to be 4-6 years these days), then something is radically wrong with the system and the way athletics are done needs to change. This is the tail wagging the dog, it seems to me.

I think this idea suffers from several problems. Perhaps most importantly, it assumes that the massive revenues generated by some sports actually end up in university coffers. As several other commenters have already noted, most of the true profit ends up in private auxiliary industries (advertising, television, T-shirt production); while the sporting programs either spend on themselves, in facilities and salaries, or redistribute the income to less profitable sports. This is why real defenders of college sports always fall back on vague claims about the Alumni effect. So what we're really talking about here is placing universities on the hook for the business costs of the real money makers. In that sense, this idea (despite clearly noble intentions) begins to resemble the stadium building scams run by professional football teams. The costs are placed on the public, even as the profits remain private.

I guess the second big problem I see is that you would create permanent entitlement wars, whose expenses would rapidly prove shocking (esp. given the rather modest amounts of money that sports produce for the institutions that host them). The status of athletes whose programs are plainly unprofitable -- but who nonetheless are hard-worked, highly-specialized performers -- would be a constant bone of contention. Even if one imposes the (somewhat arbitrary, it seems to me) of giving these 'chits' only to scholarship athletes (walk ons don't work hard?), there will be constant battles over how to allocate them and whether they are justified.

Finally, should we encourage the current culture of all-consuming devotion to sports, or should we in most cases encourage young people to find a balance. There seems something wrong to me about the idea that we should construct a system in which people spend four years at an educational institution, focused entirely on athletics, on the assumption that they will then return to that same institution, and focus on academics. That's nearly ten years of a young person's life, stewing in the same institutional juices without necessarily having a radically different experience. I imagine there would be all sorts of temptations to simply hang out near the stadium, while on the chits. And then we are back to square one: the problem of helping young people see that sport should just be one part of a larger life, for most people.

There seems to exist be among several commenters a kind of willful obliviousness to the gigantic (pun intended) difference between D-1 football and men's basketball players, and the rest of the "student-athletes," such as cross-country runners, field hockey players, and track athletes. Even when there's more than a whiff of professional opportunity (great track athletes can also turn pro and make significant money) and intense school pride in a sport (e.g., women's softball), nothing, but NOTHING, compares with the D-1 football and men's basketball industries.

D-1 football and men's basketball players are an entirely different breed, actually "athlete-semistudents." This is most egregiously evident in the "one and done" basketball player created by the NBA's perverse rule that a player cannot go directly from high school to that league. (Never mind that a kid can go directly from high school to, say, the Marines.) That player spends a year on a college team, doing the absolute minimum to stay eligible through the NCAA tournament ("March Madness" in more ways than one), before moving on to the pros. ("The pros" now means more than a miniscule prospect of making a team in the NBA; there are all kinds of pro leagues all over the world that want American players. The upshot is that many more D-1 men's basketball players have pro ambitions that exceed their academic conscientiousness.)

I, too, have had (when I was a college professor) very good experiences with student-athletes, especially those in the "non-revenue" sports. But the only time I was the object of attempted coercion was as a TA at a very big-time basketball school, and it regarded a star men's basketball player who was going to get an unsatisfactory grade in my class because his attendance was abysmal. An assistant coach kept telephoning me, lobbying for an eligibility-preserving grade for the player. (I held my ground, but some other faculty member caved, and the player stayed eligible.) During the rest of my teaching career, I made it implicitly clear that jocks got no special breaks, other than a little slack for injuries and maybe an extra absence for an away game. But lots of other professors I knew had the same experiences of being pressured to help maintain eligibility for academically substandard (to put it lightly) "revenue sports" players.

BTW, "T-shirt production" and the like don't drain off "revenue sports" profits. Licensed T-shirts, replica jerseys, etc., are a considerable source of money for the school. Ironically, a school can make money selling a replica of the jersey one of its players wears, but the player can be (and a few have been, this season) suspended for selling the same.

and what of kids who play club sports, should they also get 4-5 yrs of education on top of playing for the glory of their school? bruce smith misses the mark entirely. instead of bemoaning how these poor souls put in 40 hrs a week plus, they should toughen up. my soccer and track players do well in class; my basketball players (men and women) not so much. we all know the answer why. if i had football players like i had when i was a teaching asst at university of virginia, i'm sure they'd be even worse. (not all, but...)

the solution is for some enterprising billionaire to start a kind of farm system in the us that competes with college football (if successful it could be like the nhl or baseball farm systems). that could take the wind out of the sails if done right -- how often do you see college baseball or hockey on tv? who cares but those who play? another possibility is for someone(s) to start up a league in europe that would essentially act as both an independent league and proving grounds for the nfl. like basketball. if successful, it could take all the great talent and pay them like the minor pros they are and for the young athletes get around the ridiculous rules that require a minimum amount of college play, or minimum wait past high school to play in the pros. that would cut down a lot of the corruption with agents and payouts to students (like reggie bush) and make it less saleable to espn and others. not immediately, but maybe in the long run... golf and tennis don't have these absurd requirements, and it's absurd that football and basketball do.

* Nominal and de facto minor leagues in pro football (XFL, USFL, UFL) and basketball (CBA, EBA, D-League) have been tried and have failed, or are still being tried and barely surviving.

* The NFL tried a European league and it was a dismal failure.

* Big-time college football and men's basketball seem to have a fan base and a governing passion (identification with a school, even by fans who can hardly spell the university's name) that doom pro minor leagues competing against them to failure (i.e., nobody wants to watch them on television).

* International pro basketball is a small ray of hope. A few American players have gone directly from high school to teams in Europe and Asia without playing in college. But foreign teams reasonably limit the number of American players on them, and those players must possess, in addition to basketball talent, an ability to live in a different culture that doesn't speak their language.

* Women's D-1 basketball has moved steadily toward a moneymaking enterprise, and some people see it acquiring the same vices of commercialization as men's D-1 basketball. But the women's pro league, the WNBA, creeps along at subsistence level. Women's pro leagues in soccer and softball are on life support. American audiences don't seem all that interested in women's professional team sports, so female intercollegiate athletes still have to compete for the love of the game and not because they can make a lot of money by turning pro. Consequently, women D-1 college basketball players are, as student-athletes, a couple of cuts above their male counterparts. Maybe American sports fans' male chauvinsm is good for something.

* Nominal and de facto minor leagues in pro football (XFL, USFL, UFL) and basketball (CBA, EBA, D-League) have been tried and have failed, or are still being tried and are barely surviving.

* The NFL tried a European league and it was a dismal failure.

* Big-time college football and men's basketball seem to have a fan base and a governing passion (identification with a school, even by fans who can hardly spell the university's name) that doom pro minor leagues competing against them to failure (i.e., nobody wants to watch them on television).

* International pro basketball is a small ray of hope. A few American players have gone directly from high school to teams in Europe and Asia without playing in college. But foreign teams reasonably limit the number of American players on them, and those players must possess, in addition to basketball talent, an ability to live in a different culture that doesn't speak their language.

* Women's D-1 basketball has moved steadily toward a moneymaking enterprise, and some people see it acquiring the same vices of commercialization as men's D-1 basketball. But the women's pro league, the WNBA, creeps along at subsistence level. Women's pro leagues in soccer and softball are on life support. American audiences don't seem all that interested in women's professional team sports, so female intercollegiate athletes still have to compete for the love of the game and not because they can make a lot of money by turning pro. Consequently, women D-1 college basketball players are, as student-athletes, a couple of cuts above their male counterparts. Maybe American sports fans' male chauvinsm is good for something.

* Nominal and de facto minor leagues in pro football (XFL, USFL, UFL) and basketball (CBA, EBA, D-League) have been tried and have failed, or are still being tried and barely surviving.

* The NFL tried a European league and it was a dismal failure.

* Big-time college football and men's basketball seem to have a fan base and a governing passion (identification with a school, even by fans who can hardly spell the university's name) that doom pro minor leagues competing against them to failure (i.e., nobody wants to watch them on television).

* International pro basketball is a small ray of hope. A few American players have gone directly from high school to teams in Europe and Asia without playing in college. But foreign teams reasonably limit the number of American players on them, and those players must possess, in addition to basketball talent, an ability to live in a different culture that doesn't speak their language.

* Women's D-1 basketball has moved steadily toward a moneymaking enterprise, and some people see it acquiring the same vices of commercialization as men's D-1 basketball. But the women's pro league, the WNBA, creeps along at subsistence level. Women's pro leagues in soccer and softball are on life support. American audiences don't seem all that interested in women's professional team sports, so female intercollegiate athletes still have to compete for the love of the game and not because they can make a lot of money by turning pro. Consequently, women D-1 college basketball players are, as student-athletes, a couple of cuts above their male counterparts. Maybe American sports fans' male chauvinsm is good for something.

* Nominal and de facto pro minor leagues in football (USFL, XFL, UFL, CFL) and basketball (EBA, CBA) have been tried and have failed, or are still being tried and barely surviving.

* The NFL tried a European league, and it was a dismal failure.

* Big-time college football and men's basketball have a fan base and governing passion (fans who can't even spell the name of the university identify with its teams) that seems to doom pro minor leagues who would compete with them to failure. That is, nobody wants to watch them on television.

* International pro basketball is a small ray of hope. A few American players have gone from high school to teams in Europe and Asia without stopping off to play momentarily for a college. But foreign teams limit the number of Americans on them, and those players must have, in addition to basketball talent, an ability to live in a foreign culture that doesn't speak their language.

* Although women's D-1 basketball is on a trajectory toward the same sort of de facto professionalization and commercialization plaguing men's D-1 basketball, the women's pro league, the WNBA, still limps along financially. Women's pro leagues in soccer and softball are constantly on life support. American audiences don't seem to take much to women's professional team sports. So women basketball players still have to compete more for the love of the game than for professional opportunities, and as a consequence remain as student-athletes a couple of cuts above their male counterparts. Maybe American sports fans' male chauvinism does some small good.

Sorry for the double post. I got that "Page Not Found" thing and re-did it.

goxewu,

thanks for pointing out all the attempts that came and ultimately went. you're right of course about that. but just because these attempts failed doesn't mean that one won't come around that doesn't. it might just be a matter of timing. think about pro soccer in the us; failed first time round, seems to be doing better now. and remember the nba, which seems to be a world conquerer, almost completely faltered in the 80s with boring play and coke before jordan came along. and the nfl was just an amusing sunday diversion until not too long ago when it became big business. so you never know what could happen...

Re #39:

Skaking is right, of course.

(Should I type the above four times over in a column to duplicate the sought-after "Page Not Found" effect?)

I don't know that I have a problem with this idea, per se, given how mixed up sports are in academia, but there's another problem that needs to be addressed: many student-atheletes aren't academically prepared to function at the levels of their schools. Many would be better off in community college. Could we give them vouchers to go there?

@kgodwin (#17)

I'm not talking about theater classes - I'm talking about the productions. Theater students need to do these productions if they want to have a shot at succeeding in their business. In fact, many would argue that theater classes are kind of useless without productions under your belt.

Theater students, or any students in a show (who may other majors), do not have control over when their play rehearses or when it performs. In addition, at my university, the dept puts shows on for local elementary and high schools as part of our community outreach and when that happens, it happens during the day and students in the shows have to miss class (the show really can't go on if your lead can't get out of physics).

And so your statement epitomizes exactly the kind of misinformation about the "specialness" of sports that I'm talking about. I don't dislike atudent-athletes and often find them to be good students. But I don't think they deserve more concessions than anyone else.

BTW, my university has graduated several BIG Hollywood stars and maybe two minor sports-related people. We get some boosting from the sports people, but the Hollywood stars have told the admin in no uncertain terms to p*ss off. Why? Because they were treated so badly when they were there.

Actually, most athletes compete in sports that are not revenue-generating and won't have a professional career afterwards. To give them the chance to take classes over the summer [without having to pay tuitiion] or perhaps graduate one year later would be a substantial help for them. I'm always amazed that the semesters are so short with so much material crammed in, rather than spread out more.

D1 ball players taking Diff Eq? Funny. Simple, require higher admission standards for student athletes. Also, require a criminal background check. Swimming, golf and volleyball players are doing just fine with academics. The author is missing out on the elephant in the living room.

There is nothing new about the "chit" reform proposal. In fact it has been around for a very long time as others have noted. Like other reform proposals, it does not address the problem.

The reason why football and basketball players at big time Division I schools don't get an education is because (1)we routinely admit academically underprepared athletes, (2) we create phony courses and majors for them to keep them eligible, and (3) faculty enablers ("jock sniffers") allow the sham education to occur.

The end result is that many athletes get no education at all. When we begin to call out our colleagues who engage in this fraud by insisting upon transparency and disclosure of course grades, we will finally address the problem. Once this occurs it will reverberate throughout our entire educational system (K through college) and, finally, enablers at all levels will be short circuited. Only then will athletes (football and basketball players) get the education that they deserve.

Let's not complicate the solutions for this enduring problem by focusing on commercialization, coaches salaries, pay for play, recruiting violations, etc. The problem is in the secret society of the academy. The problem is us.

Did I read this article correctly? Shouldn't it be the other way around? ("Allow Students to Be Athletes," or "Require Athletes to Be Students First," perhaps?) Have I really just read that giving athletes IN COLLEGE vouchers to use for education at some later time, maybe at some other college, is a good idea? Doesn't that make the players employees of the university (albeit ones who get paid in "chits")? How can such a scheme still allow these employees to be called "students" or their programs to be called "college" athletics? Sports are great for teaching college students teamwork, leadership, coordination, time management, etc.--once they are students. At my school, a few students decided to try out for basketball. When they arrived at the tryouts, they were informed that they should have registered with the NCAA (and paid a fee) FIRST. Why would they do that before they knew if they had made the cut and would in fact be playing basketball? Policies such as this just demonstrate that college sports no longer exist for the benefit of the students. Imagine...putting off going to college while you're...in college. Unbelievable.

This may be the most ridiculous suggestion ever made regarding student athletes. I've taught sports for years and the resolution to the problem isn't to let them play without classes--it's to place their education first. This writer's suggestion would make more sense if he required that students must graduate before they play! Based on his thinking, the student could take classes for four years and earn "chits" for the right to play once they have graduated! Why not hold them to an academic standard instead of watering it down like this guy suggests.

Richpa what world do you live in? Of course colleges are just farm teams for the pros!

Five year chit for "study" just formally recognizes and insitutionalizes that role. Any pro that recruits from a college should be required to repay the farce the college had to undergo to house and develop the meat and muscle the "organization" wants to acquire and make an equal, non-deductible donation of that price for women's athletics at that institution. That goes for alums who pressure colleges to "win" - they contribute to "super jock's" recruitment and match that with a donation to a non-pro sport at the school.

I should live so long.

What pretty much everyone misses in this whole discussion is that VERY FEW college athletic departments operate in the black. Embedded in this suggestion is the idea that the "tremendous revenues" generated by these sports be paid back to those on whose backs the revenue is generated. One problem...for most schools they are a resource drain, NOT a boon.

let's look at this: http://www2.indystar.com/NCAA_financial_reports/expense_stat/show?school_id=164

That is a revenue/expense report for Auburn university... inarguably one of the elite athletic schools. What catches my eye is that despite the enormous revenue generated, the department as a whole is $121,000 in the black. That's it.

University of South Carolina? 2.6 million in the red. Virginia Commonwealth? 480k in the black...but only due to $7 million in student fees assessed. So not only are athletes afforded fully-paid educations, but other students are footing the bill for some of that as well (common theme as you look at more schools on the list...many are in the black due to the direct subsidy of student fees).

College sports is NOT a money-making proposition for the vast majority of schools out there. It is a drain.

The other fact that people neglect is that the majority of problems lurking in the back of most people's minds are limited entirely to D-I sports. And as goxewu notes, primarily the "revenue" sports of football/men's basketball.

Want a better idea? Look at hockey... there is a junior league out there in which players participate in until age 22 or so (at which point they are no longer eligible). If they haven't made the pros at that point, many go on to play college hockey and get a real education. Hockey athletes here tend to be older (average age 23) and also tend to be good students. And it IS a D-I hockey program.

Divorce the pre-professional occupation of "football athlete" entirely from school. If they play 4-5 years and see they have no chance at the pros, THEN perhaps they will be more willing to be a true student athlete.

This nonsense of chits is just that. Nonsense. The incentives are completely backwards.

They are already afforded more accomodation than any other category of student at many schools (the example of theater rings particularly true...or how about fine arts portfolios, engineering coops, etc). Where I was an undergrad... (D I-AA school), football players had special dorms, special eating facilities, special tutoring, special everything. And I guarantee you it was not a revenue-generating sport at the time.

I know that I'm late to this conversation, but I'd like to give my two cents as well.

D-1 Football and Basketball are basically farm leagues for the professionals. You can choose to not accept that, but if you do you're willfully deceiving yourself. So what to do about the issue at hand, the student athlete? The options are rather simple.

We could simply pay them like any professional athlete. No more free ride tuition nonsense, just hand them a paycheck for what their time is worth. Let them make the decision regarding enrolling in classes or not. If the university is going to spend that money anyways, why not just compensate the kids appropriately? Remove all the onerous prohibitions put in place by the NCAA. Give them the choice to take classes if they desire, and hold them to the same academic conditions as any other student. They would be university-employed athletes, not student athletes.

This follows into the next point, which is completely divorce the sports institutions from the university. Leave the option for club sports for the actual student-athletes, the ones who play sports as an extracurricular. Doing this, the university can simply turn ownership over private individuals who would be responsible for administering the program. They can pay the athletes, and it would be nothing more than an actual farm league for the professionals. The university benefits by virtue of the team branding; the new owners benefit by virtue of having inherited an established name. Everyone wins, as I see it.

Failing these two options, I suppose there is one more option: return the sports programs to their original mission, that of being an extracurricular activity. No scholarships, no ESPN, and no $5 million a year coaches. For those that would argue that this would unfairly disadvantage students for whom athletics is their ticket to a university education, I see a simple solution to that as well. Simply transfer the funds to scholarships for disadvantaged students in general. No need to privilege athletes exclusively.

My issue with the idea of the chit is that it's not only poorly thought out, but unfair to other students who do not compete in athletics. Suppose athletes do play for 5 years, well, where are you going to house them? Are you going to feed them, too? The chit provides them free tuition plus room and board on completion of their service to the university. But during their time playing, if you're housing and feeding them, that's room and board cost subsidized already, draining even more money from the system. How will that impact already crunched budgets?

The author claims that my first two options are cynical. How so? We already pay them for their service, and how is it fair to them to be forced to practice day in and day out with the only remuneration being tuition and housing? Further still, this chit system has nothing in the way of recompense for the athlete during the years that he or she plays. Do you expect them to just slave for the university for the promise that they'll be granted a college education later? They're already denying themselves earning potential as is; why compound it further with a system that literally does enslave them to a university? What if a student is injured and unable to play any more? Is he or she entitled to the full chit as well? Suppose for personal reasons an athlete drops out. What then? If he or she must move across the country to return home, for instance, would this chit be nationally recognized? And what university would accept such a deal?

I think that we really do need to face the cynical reality. Student-athletes are not. They are athletes. They deserve much better than the raw deal they receive today.