Elliot Nielson Ms.

Mckenna Writing 2010 April 26, 2012 Athletic Scholarships Should Be Removed Athletic scholarships in the United States should be completely removed from the college tuition system. This would allow for a more logical redistribution of funds, so that the money going towards sports scholarships would instead be allocated to students in the form of financial-aid and merit based scholarships. After all, college is defined as an institution of higher learning, not a brand for a sports team ("College," def. 2). The point must be admitted, that college sports do bring in money for their schools, but to favor athletes of a specific sport is unfair to other talented applicants and students as a whole. In America, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) provides athletic scholarships for colleges and universities across the nation. The schools are placed in different divisions based on size of athletic program. Each division competes with other schools in their same division. The NCAA also chooses scholarship division, by this scale; I most, and III none. The requirements for each division are as follows: Division I members must offer at least 14 sports (at least seven for men and seven for women, or six for men and eight for women) Division II programs must offer at least 10 sports (at least five for men and five for women, or four for men and six for women) Division III programs must offer at least five sports for men and five for women. (Differences Among the Three)

In general, Division I is the most competitive, with many of its games being televised, and Division III the least, with little on air time. Division II falls somewhere in the middle (Pennington). Many student athletes in high school spend their time trying to be picked for the relatively rare sports scholarships offered by the NCAA. According to the organization, the average athletic scholarship per athlete is $10,409, and without the big sports of basketball and football, the average drops to $8,707 (Palmer). The average NCAA school tuition costs between $20,000 and $50,000 (Pennington). This means that even if an athlete manages to beat the stiff competition through long hours of work and training and get an athletic scholarship, that scholarship often will not even cover half of his or her freshman year of college. This measly sum makes the effort of being good enough to get the scholarship not cost-effective, especially considering the odds of winning the scholarship. There are often well over ten times as many athletes in a sport than there are scholarships available. In 2003, the NCAA gave scholarships to 138,216 athletes who had played in their sport for all four years of high school. This is certainly a large sum, but amounts to less than 3% of the 6.4 million total applicants. For individual, non-revenue sports (anything not football or basketball), the percentage is often less (Pennington). So many good athletes apply and so few succeed, that it simply is not worth the time and energy to compete for athletic scholarships. Athletic scholarships are also given out unjustly and subjectively. The way schools hand out scholarships or partial scholarships is through recruiters and coaches of the respective team, who go to various high school competitions and events and watch for

potential star players. After watching them, the recruiters contact the players and offer them a scholarship (Pennington). If the player accepts and does well during their freshman year in college, they might get picked again for a scholarship. The flaws with this recruiting process are obvious. If the coach is having a grumpy day, or feels biased towards a more attractive player, an athlete who deserves a scholarship wont get one. Everyone has bad days, even well trained athletes. So if a player makes one mistake the entire year, and its when the recruiting coach is watching their game, then they wont get the scholarship they would have otherwise. This is clearly unfair to all players involved, and the recruiting team. These random, spur-of-the-moment decisions are an inappropriate way to decide if someone should get a good, subsidized education or not. They should be decided in a more fair way, like merit-based -- or even better, need-based. Once an athlete does get recruited by a college team, that athlete must continue training rigorously in order to retain that or a similar scholarship for the next year. The intensity of the competition clearly increases with the jump from high school to Division I or II level, so athletes spend even more time training and practicing for their games. This takes time away from studies, but also makes them worry about losing their small cut of a scholarship to a newer and better player. Players have to effectively play to pay for college, and this distracts them from getting an education and degree (Gerdy). When an athlete gets an athletic scholarship, they become a type of employee for the coach. If the player doesnt perform adequately, then they will be fired, and unable to attend the school. With this threat constantly hanging over their heads, would the players rather focus on academic performance, or on making sure they can continue attending college? Both options are bad for the student, and without the athletic scholarship, this wouldnt happen.

Many team members feel that the stress of both college and varsity level sports, and the threat of being fired, is too much for them, and choose to relinquish their scholarships after one or two years of playing the sport (Pennington). This is probably the worst outcome for both the athlete and the school. In some cases, the player can no longer afford to attend their university, because they dont have their scholarship, and loses many of their hopes of playing in professional sports, because most professional level athletes get recruited from college. The school gets another registered dropout on their statistics and loses a potential graduate and a player on their team. Some argue that many recent requirements for athletic scholarships must include working towards a degree, maintaining a high GPA, etc. Athletes must focus on both worlds, supposedly solving the problem of poor graduation rates. But making higher standards for people who are already stressed to the point of quitting wont create a very high quality of education. Instead, it will probably encourage academic fraud and cheating (Yasser). These can range from simple essay-buying, or go all the way to bogus, weightless degrees. In effect, it is just a gimmick to improve college statistics without improving the players education or solving the problem of fraud or cheating. This is not a realistic solution. Sports players in university or colleges can also be affected by severe injury in their games. Football players face the growing danger of concussions and brain damage from ramming into each other at high speeds, even with a helmet. Divers drown, hockey players get broken bones, and surprisingly, some athletes lose their ability to make good career plans. A study found that new college students were much more likely to be able to make mature educational and career plans if they were not part of a Division I or II sport (Blann). An interpretation of this is players think that their odds of getting selected for professional

leagues after graduation are much higher than they actually are, resulting in athletes focusing more on sports and less on the degree that would be more likely to help them. The unlikelihood of becoming a professional sport player contrasted with the likelihood of injury makes the idea of keeping athletic scholarships even more repulsive. Each school has a limited number of slots for students available per year. This means that admission is often competitive and many good applicants who try to get accepted are rejected. Colleges must make tough decisions on who gets accepted and who does not, sometimes between evenly matched people. The spot then goes to what would make the student body more diverse, or who has done more volunteer hours or participated in a sports team. College coaches can give that spot instead to their favorite player, not based on their academic merits but their ability to play their sport. Academic societies, like colleges and universities, should give priority to those who are dedicated to learning the slot, instead of people who are good at playing a game and not as good academically. To solve the problem of constant dread from potential firing, the athletic scholarships could simply be eliminated and replaced with need-based scholarships. Sports teams could still have good players, but they would be called student-athletes, not athlete-students. They might not be as talented at sports as the athletic scholarship recipients were, but they would be more focused on education. If the athlete did not perform adequately, he or she would only be removed from the team, not the entire school. Having team members with more time to study would also help reduce the rate of academic fraud of a school, while simultaneously reducing the percentage of dropouts.

Switching to merit based scholarships would also solve other problems associated with athletic scholarships. The financially and emotionally high cost process of millions of high school students training to be picked for college sports would be eliminated, and arguably more suited students would receive that money instead. This would be a very big change to how many colleges operate, but it is a necessary one. The current system of Division I athletics is designed with the sole intent to get the very best possible players to be a part of the teams, not to help give them an education. It is an unfair and almost corrupt way of choosing students for a school, and, like a corrupt file on a hard drive, it must be repaired. The best course of action is to funnel the funds for athletic scholarships into need-based scholarships, so that the same amount of money would be given to those who need it, and the slots would go to those who deserve it.

Works Cited Blann, Wayne F. Intercollegiate athletic competition and students educational and career plans. Journal of College Student Personnel 26.2 (1985): 115-118. Abstract. PsychNET. Web. 25 Apr. 2012. <http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/1985-32078-001>. "College." Def. 2. Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. 11th ed. 2003. Print. Differences Among the Three Divisions: Division I. National Collegiate Athletic Association. N.p., 7 Dec. 2011. Web. 25 Apr. 2012. <http://www.ncaa.org/wps/wcm/connect/public/ncaa/ about+the+ncaa/who+we+are/differences+among+the+divisions/division+i/ about+division+i>. Gerdy, John R. For True Reform, Athletics Scholarships Must Go. Chronicle of Higher Education 12 May 2006: B6-B8. Academic Search Premier. Web. 25 Apr. 2012. Palmer, Griffin. Scholarships: Slicing the Pie. 2008. The New York Times 10 Mar. 2008: n. pag. New York Times. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Apr. 2012. Pennington, Bill. Expectations Lose to Reality of Sports Scholarships. The New York Times. N.p., 2008. Web. 25 Apr. 2012. <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/10/sports/ 10scholarships.html?_r=3&oref=>. Yasser, Raymond. Athletic Scholarship Disarmament. Journal of Sport & Social Issues 17.1 (1993): 70-72. Academic Search Premier. Web. 25 Apr. 2012..