End The Charade

Who are these kids that play football and basketball for the elite college teams?  Are they “student athletes” or are they, in fact, professional athletes in training?  Big time college sports, here defined as football and basketball at our large universities, earn huge amounts of money for these schools, roughly a combined $60 million per year per institution.  So prized are these lucrative sports by the institutions that often the coaches are the highest payed employees of the university.  For example, Rick Pitino, the University of Louisville basketball coach was paid about $4.6 million last year and, why shouldn’t he have been paid that much?  His basketball program earned a net $16 million for the university.  It was recently reported that college football and basketball coaches were not only the highest paid school employees but also the highest paid public employees in 40 of the 50 states.  A 2012 analysis reported that the spectator sport segment of the U.S. economy has grown to the level of > $25 billion/yr.  The top professional athletes are well paid.  As an example, the average NBA player earns approximately $5 million/yr with the biggest stars earning several times that sum.

So, why are we calling these aspiring professional athletes “student athletes”?  Why do we pretend that they are in college to earn degree that will prepare them to be accountants, chemists, teachers, etc.?  Why would any kid who has the athletic ability to play a professional sport pursue a career where it will take him a lifetime to earn as much as his first year or two as a professional basketball player?  Let’s face it, with few exceptions, these kids enter college and consider it a stepping stone to a career in professional sports.  I realize there have been and will continue to be exceptions.  There have been a number of college and pro stars who have gone on to outstanding careers after sports and those exceptions should continue to be supported and encouraged.

However,  let’s avoid the countless NCAA investigations into academic fraud and wrong doings faced by many of these kids whose only interest is a pro contract and their institutions whose primary interest is cashing in on part of that $25 billion/yr expenditure on spectator sports.  After all, that revenue helps those millions of average kids who go to college with the hope of a career that will provide the key to a lifetime membership in the middle class.  So rather than worrying whether the professional athletes in training are attending classes and doing their own work, and maybe even earning a bit of spending money, let’s just end the charade and have Departments of Professional Sports that train their students for success in their chosen field, The NBA, The NFL or some other career in sports.