Another reader piles on Katha Pollitt's piece:
While I’ll admit college football and basketball are cesspools of corruption, they are also the engines that provide opportunities for hundreds athletes in other sports. Penn State has 29 intercollegiate sports for men and women, and 27 of them survive because of men’s football (men’s basketball breaks even). One of the primary drivers of the rush for money is the significant costs of adding women’s sports due to Title IX, which mandated equality of opportunity in college sports.
I think Title IX is a good thing, but it’s exacerbated the problem of funding non-revenue sports, and put significant pressure on the revenue-producing sports of football and basketball. If my daughter is good enough to play college softball, field hockey, or soccer, I’d like her to have that opportunity. But I also know that football makes it possible.
A reader with extensive experience in college athletics fisks the piece:
I have worked in college admissions for over a decade now, including a private university, a medium size state school, and, recently, in college placement at a boarding school where I get to chat with admissions folks at colleges of all shapes and sizes. All three schools compete at national levels in several sports and are no stranger to top athletes and programs. I was also an athlete in college, though certainly not someone who would have turned a recruiter's head or earned a scholarship. Sadly, I had to stop rowing and get a job to pay for college because my school didn't give athletic scholarships for crew!
The problems with Pollitt's piece are that many of her facts are distorted or just plain wrong and her conclusion is unsophisticated overkill. Lord knows there is enough evidence to demand a dismantling of the NCAA and a serious reevaluation of the role of money certain sports at colleges. She is certainly spot-on that some programs use poor, minority athletes essentially as chattel and broader conclusions about American education can be drawn from that alone. Disseminating false and overgeneralized information, however, only taints the worthy cause of reform. College sports needs to be inoculated against the influence of big money. It doesn't need to be euthanized.
Notable errors in her piece include:
1. NCAA rules preclude athletic scholarships at all DIII schools, among them "the most elite colleges." Those schools recruit, in a much less loaded sense of the word, but those athletes and programs aren't part of the money making machine we see at DI football and basketball programs. There are plenty of spaces for academically qualified students.
2. A fifth of places reserved for recruited athletes? 20% of every student body?! What!? That is preposterous and I demand to see a source. Certainly that's not true at any school I've ever heard of. I've experienced that between 1-3% of an incoming freshman class are recruited athletes, and that is much smaller at large state schools. It's worth noting as well that just because one is recruited does not mean that one is receiving scholarships.
3. Her assertion that quality suffers in exchange for athletic talent is certainly true at times, but not so craven as she makes it seem. Coaches can give a little push to a top recruit to see that their names get a little more consideration, but it is incredibly rare that a lazy feckless kid gets that tennis scholarship because there is usually another tennis star of equal or near-equal talent also wants/deserves it more. The only times you see truly egregious compromises of standards are for football and basketball or other money sports, as was outlined in the Atlantic a couple months ago. Interestingly, but hardly surprisingly, we make far more, and more egregious compromises for the children of alumni (especially the rich ones) who have neither athletic talent or academic curiosity.
4. "Athletic scholarships raise costs for everyone else." Dubious at best. Again, the programs are getting a tremendous return on their marquee sports teams, so in that sense the scholarships pay for themselves for the big money sports. Indeed both schools I worked for kept separate financial aid ledgers for athletes and some portion of athletics revenue was folded back into general operations, including financial aid for non-athletes. Moreover, alumni are also philanthropically supportive of many athletic scholarships, so those privileged tennis players Pollitt gripes about are most often subsidized by tennis alumni, not current students. Granted, you could argue those alums should give to undirected scholarship funds, or that (more) athletics revenue should go to financial aid, but to say athletic scholarships are taking funds from non-athletes is disingenuous.
5. "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." True, but this is a problem of public perception, not college practices. We admissions professionals tell students over and over and over is that 90% of financial aid awarded nationally is based on academic performance. There are billions and billions of dollars worth of scholarship aid out there for students, and only a tithe of it is solely for athletes. We can all do a better job of advertising this reality, but just because people perceive that athletics is their big or only ticket doesn't make it so.
6. "Sports is sports and education is education. That’s a better system." No, the better system is to recognize that sports IS education if properly and ethically administered. Athletics should be more than just fun; it should be about civil competition, self-discipline, honor, courage, collaboration, and commitment – virtues our society sorely needs. Young men DO go to Oxford to play cricket, but as part of a broader educational experience that takes place in and out of the classroom. Forgive the presumption, but only a judgmental non-athlete or a cynic would make Pollitt's unyielding distinction between sports and education or try to reduce all athletics to merely kids on the playground. I learned just as much on the soccer field and in the crew shell as I did in my coursework.
Again, I agree with the thrust of Pollitt's piece. In the wake of Penn State, college boards and communities need to take a good hard look at their programs. The NCAA needs to get the money out of the game. Where she loses me, though, is in making a poorly cited and unsophisticated argument that condemns the valuable experience that college athletics is for most participants. The majority of college athletes and coaches in this country are competing for the love of the game, the experience and growth they get, and the friends they make. There's little or no money in it for them. They are hardworking scholar-athletes on work study, learning through competitive sport in the classical, virtuous sense. Just because some football and basketball programs pervert that laudable goal doesn't mean tennis, wrestling, and volleyball should suffer or that sports doesn't have an important place at our schools.
One more reader:
Ms. Pollitt would do very well not only to read the powerful coming-out piece by Mark P. McKenna, but to read the final paragraph twice. I have, and it’s had a significant impact on my own inclination to seek easy answers and to dehumanize others:
Please believe me when I say that this is not a story about Penn State or some other corrupt organization. Characterizing what happened in State College, particularly the failures of so many adults to report the abuse, as the product of some morally bankrupt institution is a way of convincing ourselves that we are outsiders to these sinister forces. It is no different from calling Sandusky a "monster." That is soothing, I realize. But it also lets us off the hook too easily, allowing us to avoid asking hard questions about what happens, or can happen, in our own backyards. The Penn State cover-up could have, and undoubtedly has, happened at many other institutions, including those you most care about. Don’t content yourself with demanding something of Penn State, or big-time college sports. While that might make you feel better, it won’t prevent the next tragedy.
The Dish 