How Big-Time Sports Ate College Life

Kids more remember athletic events because college education is generally subpar. The professors are generally uninspiring or particularly motivated to further your education. Many of them can't teach, they have two office hours a week and they're more interested in furthering their own research than they are sharing knowledge. At least you storm the court at a basketball game, a player will give you a high-five. You might go a whole academic year without a professor having a personal conversation with you.

 

That's on the student. Shouldn't expect a professor to try to set up talks with dozens of students. A student, if he/she wants to talk with a professor, can reach out.

 

I don't think it's an either/or proposition. I have great memories from sporting events I attended as a fan, but I also had strong relationships with at least one professor with whom I kept in contact after graduating. I had somewhat lesser relationships with other professors and TA's that enriched my college experience. Lord knows, going to Mizzou in the mid- and late 1980s, you needed to make contacts beyond the shared fandom of athletics. (Of course, the time Kansas came to Hearnes ranked No. 1 with Mizzou at No. 3 — and with tickets right behind the Antlers — watching the Tigers defeat Peka-head and friends is a particularly fond memory.)

Again, not an either/or proposition.

 

Oh, I agree with you. I'd love to see 100 students in a class pester the shit out of a prof.

But, on another level, there's some "Oh geez" in there, too. Kid comes from high school, where it's 25-to-1 ratio and some relationship is built, to in some cases 450-to-1, and this 18-year-old paying thousands of dollars is automatically supposed to know how to adapt? Real world and all that?

I'd buy it better if the kids were getting the wage instead of paying for it out the nose.

At any rate, Phoenix and some of the other diploma mills exist for these very reasons. Crossthreading the Apple topic, soon enough some trade school is gonna be smart enough to determine precisely what kind of training Apple needs, then develop a curriculum that pitches directly to it. Shit - Apple oughta do it.

 

There have been plenty of coaches who haven't given a shit about their players' academics, just as long as they help them win.

You'd think that a coach would care enough about his players that he'd encourage them to pursue their academic interests wholeheartedly. But we all know that's not the case, which is why Paterno and Krzyzewski have always been praised for graduating their athletes, as if they are the exception instead of the norm.

 

I suppose they can reach out, dools, but I also think that with what families pay for college tuition these days, professors and instructors may need to go the extra mile to make the subject matter palatable to the students.

 

You are absolutely correct, but that has nothing to do with your original statement. Merely the fact that Meyer has a bonus in his contract for academic performance does not mean he wouldn't care otherwise. He might not, in fact, care otherwise, but the bonus is not evidence of that.

 

That's right. It's not like people are saying he only cares about winning a national championship because he gets a bonus for that.

 

Then why does he need a bonus for something that, besides eligibility concerns, wouldn't concern him otherwise?

Fact is, these academic bonuses started showing up in a lot of coaches' contracts because the coaches hadn't cared if their kids graduated or not. Once some money got involved, then the coaches started caring.

Winning a national title benefits the coach in numerous ways, including money, and letting him keep his job. Having kids graduate, outside of the occasional "He does it the right way" meme, doesn't really benefit him.