I hope you have not mistaken me for one of those “beer bellies.” I could give a rats ass less about college sports as a spectator. If it is on, and it is a team that I like, I might or might not watch it. Typically, I am too busy doing shit to sit and watch sports in the middle of the day on a Saturday, or Sunday for that matter.
Where you and I disagree, is that I believe college athletics are good in higher education. They make for great sports trainers, they teach teamwork, they teach hard work, they instill healthy living, so to me, they have a place.
I don’t think that they need to be the beginning and end of the entire damn campus (as many are), but they have some good qualities as well.
Hell, two of my daughters are going to junior colleges which do not have ANY sports and one is going to start at Abilene Christian University next fall - sports is an after thought at that school.
“Hell, two of my daughters are going to junior colleges which do not have ANY sports and one is going to start at Abilene Christian University next fall - sports is an after thought at that school.”
I have a very good friend and former employee who went to Abilene Christian. As for the value of intercollegiate team sports, we used to have physical ed in High School for the purposes you state. I took PE in College because it made me feel better and do a better job studying, but you can teach the values that team sports are supposed to provide in other ways. I still don’t see any reason for intercollegiate athletics from a students’ point of view. The money that goes into this area in universities and colleges takes from the hard core academics in much the same way that professional sports franchises want the taxpayers to bankroll their facilities then when they are not good enough, they move their teams and leave the taxpayers holding the financial bag for many, many years. Big businesses all want the government to give them all sorts of breaks and incentives so that they can make even more money than otherwise would be the case if they had to foot the bill for their facilities. Intercollegiate as well as Professional Athletics are the same kinds of businesses, feeding at the public trough while they are laughing all the way to the bank.