That's Katha Pollitt's takeaway from the Penn State scandal:
College sports distorts academic life in many ways, beginning with admissions. Recruited athletes’ scholarships soak up almost a fifth of places at most elite colleges, and athletic scholarships raise costs for everyone else. People defend these programs as offering hope to black and low-income students, especially boys, who otherwise couldn’t go to college at all. But what about their high school classmates who do better in school and can’t afford higher education either? Where are our priorities?
Right now, we are telling the kids at the bottom that the way out is not to study and take college preparatory classes but to work on their jump shot and their blocking. If there was no scholarship incentive for those skills, the kids might not blow off their classes in favor of endless hours in the gym. Instead of the false hope of winning fame and wealth by turning pro after college—a brass ring grasped by only 1.5 percent of seniors who play NCAA football and basketball—they might focus their ambition on careers that could lift them out of poverty for life.
George Will is on a similar page.
(Photo: Former Penn State football coach Joe Paterno statue stands alone before the Penn State against Nebraska football game at Beaver Stadium on November 12, 2011 in State College, Pennsylvania – the first since the Sandusky scandal broke. By Patrick Smith/Getty Images.)
The Dish 
