Why do some students get scholarships from playing sports?

Question

Recently at my school, there was a big commotion about 2 students going into UCLA and Fresno. I'm just curious at why they get scholarships when most football players at my school are doing horribly at school. Is football really that important to colleges? I might have this all wrong, but it just seems that way from what I've seen. It's just sports; do sports help humanity in any way?

I'm just ranting.

Answer 1

College sports are actually a big part of a school making money. College athletes aren't allowed to receive money for being on a team like a professional athlete, but they can be issued scholarships. When a college football team is successful, they sell merchandise, attract many prospective students, and receive money from television stations and sponsors. Do they deserve a scholarship more than someone who actually gets good grades? Of course not. But universities need to make money outside of student tuitions, and this is a big part of how they do.

Answer 2

Because sports franchises are big moneymakers for universities. Never forget that all universities are businesses! They want money more than just about anything, and students come second. This might be a cold hearted way of saying it, but think about it- if the school has no money, the school can't pay it's professors and build any buildings. Then no one gets to learn. School makes money? School can teach students.



Sports teams are a great way to make money for a college, and they take advantage of that. That is why the jocks with a 1.5 gpa get thousands of dollars from universities and you (the hard working student who got a 4.0) get nothing. It's a business.

Answer 3

Don't paint all student-athletes with such a broad brush. Many student-athletes maintain a superb academic record, and receive recognition for such achievements made off the field or court. NCAA rules for academic eligibility and graduation rates are fairly strict, and in many cases far exceed the standards placed upon a school's student body. No one is offered a Division I or II NCAA scholarship with failing grades on taking less than the required subject and number of classes. Don't believe the "stories" you hear.



My local university recently received recognition for it's 336 student-athletes attaining an average 3.36 GPA for the 2010-2011 academic year, with a 71% four-year graduation rate. Thirty-one of those athletes had a perfect 4.0 GPA for the academic year. Those figures far exceeded the general student population as a whole.



Those student-athletes are not dummies.

Answer 4

The school's faculty and staff aren't getting paid in Monopoly money. Buildings need to be built; scholarship funds need to be replenished. That sweet recreational facility doesn't pay for itself, nor does all the new lab equipment that has to be purchased regularly. I could go on. Bottom line, it takes a lot of money to run a university. Most schools, at least the kind you're talking about, are non-profit institutions; they're not trying to make money, they're trying to break even. Sports are just one of many ways colleges are able to keep their doors open, their professors paid, and their students happy with the facilities.

Answer 5

while i agree with your views about sports being given too much credit, people get sports scholarships because 1) they are good at the sport 2) they want to play it at the college and 3) their plan is to keep going with the sport in the future

Answer 6

In this case, you're not wrong--society is wrong. Yes, you summed it up right, society (in certain cases) places sports above academics. It's not right, but that's what's going on: your school places sports above academics here. My high school did the same kind of thing.



Sports don't help humanity, no, if by that you mean things like alleviating hunger and so on. They do provide spectator sport, though, which we apparently value. That isn't necessarily a bad thing; I don't understand it myself, but a LOT of people enjoy that kind of thing.

Answer 7

the colleges give them scholarships because they want them to play that sport for their school. they want good players. the best way to get the good players is to offer to pay for their college education

Answer 8

Yes, football is really important to colleges. Here are some of the reasons why:



1. Alumni care about sports. The sports teams help us to feel connected to the schools we attended, and when the teams are winning it can help us feel proud. They also make it easy for people to sell us a lot of licensed merchandise, and the connection they help us feel makes it more likely that we'll donate money to the school. Football brings in a lot of money from ticket sales, licensed merchandise, donations, and so on. Basketball brings in enormous amounts of money.



2. Prospective students care about sports. Not all of them, but for a lot of people, part of "the college experience" is football games on Saturday afternoons. Moreover, kids who know about colleges at all are likely to know about those with sports teams. They may grow up wearing t-shirts from a local university, or a university that a parent attended, or whatever, and therefore winning teams can help recruit kids from a young age.



3. People on campus care about sports. The football programs are already in place, and if you started talking about dismantling them, or cutting back on the amount of money spent on them, you're going to upset people. Did you see how upset UPenn students were when Joe Paterno got fired, even though there were good reasons to fire him? Students and professors and administrators and other university employees -- again, not everybody, but a lot of people -- feel an emotional connection to their teams, and the suggestion that the teams might be eliminated would really upset many, many people. If there weren't already football teams at so many campuses, people on campus might not feel strongly about starting teams. But eliminating teams that we already feel so strongly about is a whole different thing.



And winning teams are even more important than losing teams. There are real downsides to that: you might be interested in reading a book called "Scoreboard, Baby" about one year in the University of Washington program or, for a look at some high school football players who thought they could get away with awful behavior, "Our Guys" about the Glen Ridge rape. It addresses some of the real costs to human beings that can result from schools' efforts to build and maintain winning football programs. That includes costs to athlete/scholars, who may end up on campuses where they don't have the background to really succeed in classes and where they are dealing with all sorts of responsibilities to their studies and to the team, and who may end up graduating without any prospects to play professionally but also with an inadequate education. There are also harms to individual players who sustain relatively minor head injury after head injury and can end up with significant brain impairment, and who are at risk for a number of other kinds of injuries. But there are also advantages to schools of taking the programs that already exist and making them as likely to win as possible. And that means that players who can help a team win are very valuable to colleges.



If you go to UCLA and achieve something significant academically, the UCLA alumni are a lot less likely to know about your achievements than about how the football players are doing on the field. Prospective students are unlikely to hear about your achievements unless the school chooses to showcase your work on the admissions-related part of the website. And many of your schoolmates and even professors and administrators and other employees are likely not to be even able to understand your achievement. You certainly won't be building a legacy that lives on long after you're gone. Schools absolutely recruit top scholars, because a reputation for academic excellence really helps the school in many ways also. But football connects to all of our emotions, and that can be much more powerful. It absolutely does mean a lot to most or all colleges with football teams.



And I do think sports helps humanity. For one thing, I think the sense of connection with other people can be very valuable. Second, I think that whenever anyone strives for excellence in almost anything, that's important to humanity. And finally, I think entertainment is important to human beings -- not necessarily as much entertainment as my cable company wants me to absorb -- and that watching games is therefore something valuable to many people.