Just read a mock NBA draft that predicted that 7 of Kentucky's players would be taken in the first two rounds of the NBA draft. Are these future millionaires even going to class this spring semester ? And if not why are they even considered to be college students? Why am I asking this question? I already know the answer! Our colleges are more interested in the money and publicity than giving these young men an education. Let us just go ahead and stop playing this charade and have our colleges SPONSOR teams and not expect these athletes to get an education.
Do College basketball players even go to class???
- Thread starter davisdorm
- Start date
Very, very narrow viewpoint, the majority of college players go to class and graduate. I would be willing to guess that less than 1% play on a professional level. Many of our community leaders have had their careers funded by collegiate sports.
In most cases, they agree to finish out the semester so that the school's APR won't take a hit. Their coach is going to do whatever they can to help them get drafted, so they don't want to bite the hand that is feeding them, so to speak. But I agree with recycled, you're throwing out a very narrow viewpoint. Just because a small minority of the schools playing college basketball don't appear dedicated to education, that doesn't mean we should blow up the entire system for the hundreds of other D1 schools that do have actual student athletes. Consider the kid from Michigan State announcers were talking about Saturday night who scored in the 99th percentile on the MCAT and is going to med school next year...your proposal would've forced that kid to choose between sports and a vocation that will benefit society. That's not a good thing, in my opinion.
I do, however, favor offering an athletic performance major for athletes. Basically, I think we should give course credit for playing varsity athletics, similar to theater or music majors getting performance-based credit. First, doing so would account for the extreme time commitment of athletics. Second, kids who are more athletically-centered would still get the benefit of a Gen Ed curriculum but could apply the participation credits to an athletic performance major and would not have to pretend to be into Communications or Sociology of AFAM. Third, athletes who are more academically centered could take those performance credits and use them as their elective credits, and still major in History, English, Business, or whatever else they want.
