Intercollegiate Sports in America, 1900-2018
 

Spring 2018

Tuesday 4 pm and online

Colleges and Sports

Although some hoped that small liberal arts colleges could escape the need to focus on winning and recruiting athletic talent, recent experience has demonstrated that academic elitism provides no safe harbor from the competitive American commitment to winning. The practice of recruiting under-prepared student-athletes and the overemphasis on winning extends down from big time Division I institutions into Division III schools.

Perhaps the most extensive treatment of elite colleges and sports appears in two important books, James L. Shulman and William G. Bowen, The Game of Life: College Sports and Educational Values (Princeton 2001) and William G. Bowen and Sarah A. Levin, Reclaiming the Game: College Sports and Educational Values (Princeton, 2005). Both of these books, along with other items included in the readings, show clearly that elite colleges and universities, public and private, large and small, give preferential treatment to talented athletes in admissions, but that some of these athletes, especially those with professional aspirations or poor secondary school preparation, have less successful college careers than their non-athletic counterparts.

They also demonstrate that while big-time football programs at large public universities generate a significant amount of publicity and visibility, the impact on the student body is not as great as the impact of competitive athletics at small colleges where the competition is intense and the number of students is much smaller. In large universities, perhaps 2% of the students are involved in intercollegiate sports while at small colleges in Division III about 15 to 20% or more of the students may be involved. The numbers for small colleges vary widely while those for the large universities show a much narrower range.

Some commentators, however, believe that the effort to reconcile competitive sports with academic values is not only impossible but destructive of the institutions. Some call for separating sports entirely from college. Others think that it is impossible for academic values to compete against the power of competitive sports. Many worry that, whatever the rules, the impact of the intense competition in college sports on individual student-athletes is surely damaging.

When we look at the multiple opinions and concerns expressed by the many constituencies of college sports, we can identify the elements of the enterprise that produce the conflicts that have surrounded the relationship between athletics and academics at American college campuses.

For example, we know that while sports and colleges speak to many of the same constituencies, there are some groups such as fans, national television enterprises, professional sports agents, and the many newspapers, news magazines, and Internet media properties for which the college's academic mission is a decidedly less valuable element than the college sports activities. This produces conflicts with those within and without the universities who see the academic mission as paramount such as faculty, many alumni, and a significant number of students, not to mention the endless critics of college sports.

In addition, the sports enterprise must satisfy the public's (and the fans and college sports constituencies) need for high quality contests, clear winners, the image of wholesome student participants, and the constant development of an institutional identity through sports advertising and media promotion. The value of the college sports enterprise is not the money it generates since except for a few top programs almost all college sports franchises lose money. Instead, as the NCAA's primary value statements indicate, the key elements sustaining the mystique and popularity of college sports include the following items.

First, of course, is the endless effort to ensure that college sports are about student-athletes not semi-pro athletes affiliated with college. Over the years the NCAA as part of its franchising responsibilities has worked constantly with colleges to create visible and effective linkages between academic progress towards a degree and student athletes. These efforts have often been controversial as they apply to institutions with wide variations in their academic and student quality and preparation, but over the years the members of the NCAA have identified key indicators to identify academic progress. The difficulty here is to recognize that student-athletes are a separate population pool than regular students, and that traditional measures such a graduation rates does not adequately capture their circumstances. So such devices as the Academic Progress Rate and other measures that recognize the mobility of student-athletes some of whom will leave early for professional opportunities in many sports, not just football and basketball, and others of whom will transfer to other colleges to acquire better opportunities to play. These are not necessarily academic failures, if they leave in good academic standing and having made appropriate progress towards a degree. In this regard, the NCAA and its franchisees have created better measures of academic progress than the standard graduation rate statistic.

Additionally, the marketplace for college sports wants to see legitimate students participating in the games. While sports consumers want their college teams to win, they want the performance to really be about college students participating. Thus the recruitment and eligibility rules, in all their complexity and endless detail, reflect the recognition by the NCAA franchisees that while they want to win, they have to find ways to do so with talented athletes who are clearly students. Many of the cases of rule violations prosecuted through the NCAA process reflect the effort of coaches and others to skirt these rules in order to improve their chances of victory, but the consistent effort to maintain the rules indicates the importance of ensuring that college sports are played with students.

Finally, among the many other elements required of college sports franchisees, the competitions themselves must be seen to take place on as level a playing field as possible. This means that game rules need to be constantly revised and enhanced to be sure that every team or player that comes into a competition venue will be treated exactly the same way during the competition, whatever the differences that separate the individual schools. Thus game rules reflect this requirement, but often the game rules conflict with other requirements of the public's enthusiasm. For example, safety for players is an important element and so game rules have been constantly revised to reflect the public's changing tolerance for violence in contact sports such as football, soccer, lacrosse, and hockey. The current conversation about concussion and about ensuring the independence of the medical staff at the games from the coaching staff reflect this concern.

Even with all this attention by the NCAA, the audiences want some other things from college sports. Although it is reflected everywhere, it is important to emphasize that the audiences want wining programs. They do not necessarily want programs that win all the time. They want competitive games between teams representing institutions that have a good chance to win and that, over some relatively short period of years, is able to win more than it loses during some years. If only a few teams win and the rest lose, then the competitive context is lost and the attractiveness of the games fades.

As part of the winning, the current versions of the high profile sports of football and basketball, and including the less visible but equally affected other sponsored sports, require coaches who can recruit a sufficient number of talented student-athletes to compete successfully. It is the coach who carries the institutional responsibility for winning, and when the coach's team does not succeed with some consistency, the institution changes coaches. This volatility is part of the driver of high salaries for coaches, where the high levels of a compensation structure protects the coach against the instability of the profession.

The fans and audiences want high production values in the games, contests, and competitions they watch. They want elegant facilities, they want professional level officiating, they want good television coverage that mimics what they see in the professional versions of the games. The want their university or college to have training and practice facilities equal to those of other institutions, even though they recognize that this competition on facilities is an endlessly money losing enterprise for most institutions.

Why then is it so hard to construct a stable and recognized relationship between college's academic mission and its sports enterprises? Among many reasons, colleges exist to improve and enhance the opportunities of all of its students and prepare all of them to succeed in their post college years, whether it is in professional or graduate school or in gainful employment. Sports however is focused on enhancing only the exceptional talent of a very few individuals, and enhancing a talent that currently carries no academic component. College sports has always been seen as an extracurricular activity, separate from the main business of the institution if linked by the student status required of its performers. Since the goal of sports is to enhance the exceptional athletic talent of a few students, not the success of all students who participate, it's primary focus on the exceptional triumphant athlete conflicts with the college goal of enhancing all students.

Similarly, college has many goals for its academic programs from instruction for students who will become professionals in a field, to general education that prepares students for success in whatever they choose to do. Academic programs also provide a venue for research, for public service, and for other activities that offer opportunities for all students to participate. While college sports has programs that attempt to mimic these goals within sports, by having student-athletes participate in various public service and charity work, no one is confused that the real, primary, and essential purpose of sports is to select and highlight the highest level of student athlete performance and that the benefits of sports participation is restricted to the very few with the highest talent and skill.

Finally, within this context, it is difficult to fully assess the importance of the professional sports enterprise's impact on the college contests. The endless attention paid to the process by which a very small number of student-athletes turn professional during or after their college years overemphasizes the importance of professional opportunities for college players in professional sports. Most visible in the sports of football and basketball, the pressure of the professional games affects many collegiate programs from tennis to golf, from baseball to hockey, and includs such sports as track and field, swimming, and other Olympic sports where an Olympic appearance can lead to significant professional opportunities for a very few student athletes.

Whether these pressures will eventually so undermine the college game that the NCAA franchising system can no longer contain the damage is not clear. Many commentators have predicted or called for the end to college sports in its current form, but over the period since the early 1900s intercollegiate athletics has found ways to maintain its enterprise through endless and consistent detailed adaptation and modification.


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