The problem is that colleges and universities are the minor leagues for the NFL and NBA. That’s the problem. And....Our nation’s K-12 government monopoly schools are the minor leagues to the minors.
The system is a corrupt “Scratch my university or K-12 back, and I’ll get government taxpayers to pay for your minor leagues”.
There is a solution:
Remove privatize all sports from the government K-12 schools through government university levels.
Maybe, but the sports is merely a symptom. The real problem is that many public schools, urban ones especially, are warehouses, not institutions of learning. I would bet most of those kids who can't even read at a third grade level are surrounded in their home neighborhoods by non-athletes who can't read either. The advantage these trained athletes have is that many of them have learned the value of hard work and discipline while many of their peers in the hood have not.