1992-former high school football star Damian "Football" Williams celebrates smashing truck driver Reginald Denny's head.
Posted on 05/05/2012 6:28:24 AM PDT by MinorityRepublican
In more than 20 years I've spent studying the issue, I have yet to hear a convincing argument that college football has anything do with what is presumably the primary purpose of higher education: academics.
That's because college football has no academic purpose. Which is why it needs to be banned. A radical solution, yes. But necessary in today's times.
Football only provides the thickest layer of distraction in an atmosphere in which colleges and universities these days are all about distraction, nursing an obsession with the social well-being of students as opposed to the obsession that they are there for the vital and single purpose of learning as much as they can to compete in the brutal realities of the global economy.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
I have an undergraduate and a professional degree. I would not have had that if it wasn't for football. I didn't play it in college, but I did play ball in high school. It kept me focused on my grades. It kept me from being drunk all the time.
College sports brings in students with higher test scores. My alma matter is Michigan State. It is much harder to get into MSU than it was when I was there. As the football and basketball teams got better, especially the last five years, it became more selective as more people applied. People want to be a part of a good program. Good programs bring in good students - not just as players, but spectators.
As for the other sports, the athletic dept budgets are separate from the university itself, so it is funds that bring that in. Donors from rich alums who are sports fans (Phil Knight and T Boone Pickens are two of the most famous of their schools) along with ticket sales and TV revenue. There are usually one, sometimes two, and rarely three sports that make money on campus. Football. Men's basketball. Sometimes hockey. These sports fund ALL of the other athletic programs.
Rush was right.....
Agreed. But, and not to at all excuse corruption, the money generated from the Penn State football program in large part, along with an original grant from Hersey, funded the building and continues to support the Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center and its programs.
Penn State Donates More Than $2.6 Million in Bowl Funds For Child Abuse Prevention
All that said, this knuckleheaded busybody misses a fine point about small government. As much as I abhor how NCAA Div. I is now a de facto farm club system for the NFL (and I love the NFL!!!), I don't think that's it's the government's place to tell colleges how to run their sports programs. I just want to smack Michael Wilbon and other sports journalists who actually want Congress to intervene in how the BCS is run. We can't get the Senate to pass a freakin' budget-- to hell with tinkering with the BCS.
Yes!
The WSJ didn’t used to be known for its left wing dribble. Looks like it wants to go the way of most of the print media.
Everything I don’t like should be banned; like, permitted.
1992-former high school football star Damian "Football" Williams celebrates smashing truck driver Reginald Denny's head.
>>That’s because college football has no academic purpose.<<
And neither does anything else I did when I went to college with the small exception of going to class and studying. I did all that for about 25 hours a week (40+ in law school). That left more than 125 hours a week to fill up with other activities.
This is a patently stupid article. I didn’t play college football, but I played a little baseball and basketball in college. Don’t you (the author) dare tell me that I and my fellow athletes got nothing out of the experience. I played with some guys that might not have gone to college but for athletics and most ended up with a degree — they grew up and realized street ball and hanging with their buds wasn’t going to make much money. Others are better prepared for a career or avocation due to their participation. I officiate 2 college sports — football and basketball — and I am a MUCH better official for having played ANY college sport. Its just a different game than HS on so many levels.
There are college ADs and Presidents that have made bad decisions — not having a D-I playoff is a HORRIBLY STUPID decision (so far). But we need to change those things, not banning the game.
The only reason this guy has any sort of a name is because of Texas HS football. In Texas, college athletics can not be funded with public money, but HS athletics can. His argument doesn’t work on any level, but it makes a little more sense on the HS level — and that would have destroyed any way for this guy to be known. Sort of ironic.
>>they don’t even stop to think that there is nothing in it for them. <<
There are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of individuals who spend their money that, in part, shows you to be terribly wrong. Just because YOU don’t get anything out of it (or don’t believe anyone would) doesn’t mean others don’t. It isn’t your money, so why are you worried about it? A simple, “I don’t get anything out of sports, so whatever they do is fine with me...” would more than suffice. I don’t have a problem with anyone calling something dumb when it really is, but not liking something doesn’t make it dumb.
OK, so tell me specifically, what does a sports fan, at the end of the season (or game for that matter), have to show for it, regardless of wether “their” team had won or lost?
>>My alma matter is Michigan State. <<
Sorry to hear that! </wink>
Seriously, you make a great point on grades. The NCAA requires athletes to be making steady progress towards their degree - 12 hours a semester. I knew people who slump around and do less than that and didn’t care much about their grades. But the athletes did. I remember a class I had my last year in college with a bunch of baseball players. Hell they were there more than I was and I made good grades!
We need to reform the institution of college but athletics is way down on the list of priorities.
Of course they had never won the Rose Bowl before that either.
On the other hand, Berkeley kept its football program, and they won the Rose Bowl as recently as 1938.
“... get these ape training programs off our colleges and off our campuses!”
“Our” college? “Our” campus? Which one do you own? Let me guess... you belonged to the chess club?
“Football is a violent sport which arms our society with a martial class of humans who may be called upon in time of conflict or strife. It also teaches group struggle on a level that is not even achievable by our economic competitors.”
That is an accurate statement however..
“Young men are brought to the peak of there athletic potential.”
Football players are nowhere close to the most athletic-gifted athletes in the world today. While they may be brought to their peak, their peak ain’t very high in most cases.
The men who are the best athletes would be the Tennis players. While it is not a contact sport, it requires more athleticism than any other sport out there due to the high level of fitness, hand-eye coordination and mental aptitude.
On top of that, it teaches independence and reliance on ones self.
Just saying ;)
I don’t know. Different people get different things. What do you get out of whatever activities you participate in? I’ll bet what you get out of one or more of them are things I couldn’t care less about — does that mean you should abandon those activities because *I* don’t value what you get out of it?
They don’t have to get anything out of it. They can do it for any reason or no reason at all. Why do you have a problem with that?
Leftists secretly agree, and that's why they have it out for the tribal warfare game of football. They want to destroy America. Football, religion, guns, and hunting make America strong, competitive advantages our envious foes do not have.
The next time you are in an airplane coming in for landing look out the window at American life below. It is amazing how many football fields and churches there are. We are a nation preparing to fight. Our biggest threat, and probably demise, is our domestic leftists slowly rotting America from the inside.
A top level safety has to be able to cover a very tall and fast wide receiver, and also be strong enough to stop the run and take on 205-250lb running backs running straight at you or around you depending on whether they are speed or power backs.
“I can not believe the foolishness I am hearing on this subject. Football is a violent sport which arms our society with a martial class of humans who may be called upon in time of conflict or strife. It also teaches group struggle on a level that is not even achievable by our economic competitors.”
Your entire post was spot on. 90% of my fellow Marines played high school football. There is something about shared suffering, struggle and acomplishment that brings a team or a unit closer together. Your teammates become family. If someone messes with one guy he ends up getting his ass kicked by all. Football has a place in our society. Buzz is just pissed he never had the cojones to play the game.
I own a share in ALL of the publicly funded ones.
Let me guess... you belonged to the chess club?
You say that like it would be a badge of shame. I don't think an intellectual pursuit like chess is any less deserving of respect than some talentless, neanderthal pursuit like football. I would guess that in all of human history, those who helped make the world a better place were far more often chess players than football gorillas.
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