College and Athletics

Parents Forum
1

<p>The whole Stanford intellectual gravitas goes poof when it comes to recruited athletes. "We value students who demonstrate intellectual vitality and who radiate a passion for learning and inquiry." Just sayin': the left tackle at my school who got into Stanford a few years ago radiated attitude, low ACT scores, moderate grades, mediocre recommendations, and a "passion" essentially only for smashing other people in the face if they dared approach our quarterback. As for "learning and inquiry" -- don't make me laugh. I just wish, on occasion, Stanford itself would be intellectually honest and simply state that we throw all of our criteria out the window if you are good athlete and we want you; in fact, as is stated explictly on the Stanford applications website, Stanford can even waive the whole application process if it wants to.</p>

<p>So: yes, Stanford is a great place, etc. etc., but those who know . . . well, we know. There's lots of blah blah blah (as Kei$ha would say).</p>

2

<p>Please, other schools make allowances for athletes with less than stellar grades.</p>

<p>I was in Palo Alto 2 weeks ago. I would have been proud if the worm had gone there. He has many friends quite content in that environment. I see no reason to bash this university. Others may prefer HYP or Chicago or MIT/Caltech/CMU. Honestly, does anyone think the OP’s son would have been any happier with the students at any of these institutions, far from home?</p>

3

<p>I feel like a post-slut, but this nonsense post gives me 2000 posts. I feel like I know all the old-timers and their wonderful kids, and yet, since 2004, I don’t post so often. Please forgive me.</p>

4

<p>Not to totally downplay the significant commitment to skill development and other types of training that athletes have, but . . . a recent book called “The Sports Gene” by David Epstein makes a lot of sense to me. I think that in addition to the truism, “You can’t teach height,” we will soon have, “You can’t teach length of the Achilles tendon,” and “You can’t teach genetically determined ability to improve in response to training.” I was going to add, “You can’t teach ratio of fast-twitch muscle fiber to slow-twitch muscle fiber,” but apparently you can affect that by training–for the worse, as far as sprinters are concerned.</p>

<p>Epstein reported Usain Bolt’s statement that he did not train as hard as his teammates. Epstein said that was actually a good thing, because it would have reduced his ratio of fast-twitch to slow-twitch muscle fibers.</p>

<p>It is pretty clear to me that the playing field is awfully uneven with regard to innate capability to develop as an athlete. Of course, one could either develop or squander one’s innate gift. But I am not sure why I should especially admire a nephew by marriage who happens to be 7’ tall, as opposed to another nephew who is 5’4" (in shoes with thick soles).</p>

5

<p>Quantmech - For a scientist, you make a fallacious statement based on unbelievable assumptions.</p>

<p>There are tall people out there who are totally useless as athletes as much as short people who are beyond belief as athletes. There are many running backs in NFL who are closer to 5’6".</p>

<p>Athleticism is as much inherited as lifetime of hard practice.</p>

6

<p>Gimme a break, texaspg. A recent article in Sports Illustrated included this comment from an NBA recruiter:

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<p>There has been a recent discussion of what fraction of US men who are of basketball-playing age and are 7’ + are in the NBA. One estimate is as high as 17%. I doubt that. But being 7’+ is certainly an advantage for basketball. I doubt that many men who are 5’6" are successful in the NBA. Football imposes different requirements. </p>

<p>It is conceivable that there might be a sport for everyone. Short young women can often do well in gymnastics. A really short male might succeed as a jockey–and maybe in men’s gymnastics or skating. No one in my family is going to outrun Usain Bolt, though, even if he trains his heart out.</p>

<p>I once read a cv from a man who was an NCAA championship fencer. I imagined a super-quick, athletically skilled guy. When I met the man, it turned out that he was about 6’6" and had arms that were even longer than you might predict, based on his height. All he really had to do in a fencing competition was stand there and point at his opponent, if the opponent was of more average height. The opponent couldn’t reach him with his epee fully outstretched, before he (the opponent) was hit. If we ran NCAA fencing with epees of different lengths, so that a person’s outstretched arm + epee length was equal to his opponent’s, it would be a more interesting sport to me.</p>

<p>Yesterday on NPR Terri Gross was interviewing David Epstein, the author of the book on the Sports Gene. She seemed amazed that sports is not a “level playing field.” Ha!</p>

7

<p>With regard to swimming, another thing you can’t teach is neutral buoyancy, which appears to be a considerable advantage (in addition to height).</p>

8

<p>From an interview of David Epstein by Daniel Coyle

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<p>Just adding this as an athletic option for short people.</p>

9

<p>Yes, but all you are proving is that people may do a sport no matter what height they are. </p>

<p>Gymnasts train like 14 hours a day for about 10 years to reach their full potential. Stanford admitted Shawn Johnson too who I think is 4.10?</p>

10

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<p>Likewise, I’m not sure why I should especially admire someone who is naturally gifted in mathematics. But I admire folks who DO something with it – even when I don’t fully understand what they do. </p>

<p>Most folks who love sports (and I spend way too much time watching them) don’t admire the seven-footer solely for his size but rather for the way he has developed an undoubtedly rare natural gift. And, while NBA scouts will take a look at nearly any seven-footer who can fog a mirror, basketball history is littered with big guys who really <em>couldn’t</em> play because they didn’t have the passion or work ethic to maximize their talents. In that respect, athletics really aren’t that different from many other fields (academics, music, theater) where natural talent is necessary but not sufficient for success.</p>

11

<p>I’m not really proving anything, texaspg. I am just commenting that particular body types confer great advantages in different sports. This is different from claiming that a person of any body type can succeed in a sport at an elite level (Stanford-recruited athlete).</p>

<p>I read Dominique Moceanu’s autobiography a while ago. She remarked that people were often concerned that participating in gymnastics made girls short, but that this did not happen–instead, girls who had grown too tall tended to abandon the sport. I think you will rarely see a high-level woman gymnast who is over 5’5".</p>

<p>You have a good point about talent and its development, SomeOldGuy, but I disagree with you in some respects. From my observations, I think that we start much more equal in the ability to develop mathematical talent to very high levels, than in the ability to develop skill in particular sports to very high levels. </p>

<p>Epstein, in the Sports Gene, remarks that some people respond much better than others to training in terms of cardiovascular and pulmonary capacity, and that at least part of this difference is genetically based. Epstein was a runner at Columbia. He and his training partner (a naturally fast runner) had the same training schedule, but he improved much faster each season. His partner was sometimes thought to be lacking in “heart” or in mental toughness, because he didn’t improve much at all, from the training. But it wasn’t the case. I think that a lot of the big guys who “couldn’t play” have the height, but don’t have some of the other physical elements that go into being a good basketball player–e.g., long Achilles tendons, which help a lot with jumping, distribution of fast-twitch vs. slow-twitch muscle fibers, coordination, visual perception . . . I really do not think it’s generally a question of passion or work ethic–although not improving has got to be disheartening, so the circumstances feed into each other.</p>

<p>I think that everyone has virtually untapped mathematical ability, because we don’t put much effort into developing it (with the exception of a few places, and a few cultures). </p>

<p>The New York Times carried a story the other day about the sharp reduction in the number of teenage grand-slam winners in tennis now, as opposed to 15-25 years ago (particularly among women). They attributed the difference to the increased athleticism of tennis players now, which means that players need to be in their early 20s before they have developed enough to be competitive at the top levels.</p>

<p>If people trained in mathematics with the intensity that they train in tennis, everyone would be astoundingly much better. Then natural gifts might start to differentiate people. As it stands, I don’t think so.</p>

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<p>Also, with regard to SomeOldGuy’s post #125, I admire people (or not) based on their qualities of character, rather than accomplishments.</p>

<p>I am not arguing that Stanford should not admit athletes. Athletics is important to them. Fine. I am just saying that I don’t see anything particularly admirable about athletes.</p>

<p>Even if I am wrong about the role of natural ability in mathematics (relative to its role in athletics), though, I think that developed mathematical talent is more closely related to the role of a university than sports is.</p>

13

<p>^^^If William “refrigerator” Perry had self control with food, Da Bears might have won another title. :p</p>

<p>I still don’t care what body types have advantages. It takes a lot more than body type to make it to the elite level.</p>

<p>I agree with someoldguy. Taking this analogy further, some people have high IQs and don’t deserve an automatic admission to elite schools because they did well in some testing. Lets normalize it back to a standard so we can see who is performing beyond their potential. We need to figure out how geniuses have an unfair advantage over the rest of us and take away some points in their scoring.</p>

14

<p>Yes, and if I had more passion or work ethic, I could add a cubit to my stature, and I wouldn’t need to drag a step-stool around the local bookstore, in order to reach the top shelf. :)</p>

15

<p>Wouldn’t someone with a high IQ have an unfair academic advantage over someone who was born with a low IQ?</p>

<p>What about someone born with a great memory?</p>

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<p>These days, 300+ pound linemen are fairly common in the NFL.</p>

17

<p>In what field does your genetic endowment, and how your parents raised you not matter? Neither of those things is something you control at all, so no one should give you moral credit for them. The best you can do is to take efficient advantage of them, to compensate for any inadequate bits you were handed, and to find precisely the metier in which the light you have will shine most brightly. Of course, we admire people who do that, but we admire most the people who won the genetic/psychosocial lottery at birth and THEN made the most of their head start.</p>

18

<p>As mentioned above (#8), I generally admire people (or not) based on their characters, and not on their accomplishments. Perhaps we are using the word “admire” differently.</p>

<p>I put forward a hypothesis that American students under-train so far in mathematics that natural gifts do not actually matter that much. I am saying this “arguendo” a little bit, to be sure. However, I think that the athletic analogy would be to have an entire nation of couch potatoes, whereupon anyone who actually got out and ran would appear to be very athletic by comparison. It is my impression that enough effort is devoted to athletics that natural gifts have started to matter quite a lot–whereas, so little actual effort is devoted to intellectual development, that one can succeed quite well with modest gifts (yours truly, case in point).</p>

<p>Of course, if a person has an actual intellectual disability, this argument does not apply. But the same would be true of athletics and physical disabilities, in general.</p>

19

<p>It takes all three to be the best at anything: physical or mental advantage, desire and work ethic. I admire anybody who takes what they are given and uses it to the best of their ability whether it be in athletics, art, music, academics, etc.</p>

<p>I’d love to be great at music. I enjoy it immensely but no amount of time devoted to it will make me a musician. I would have made a pretty good gymnast given my physical atributes, but I had no desire to be a dedicated athlete.</p>

20

<p>I would guess about 98% of 7 footers suck at basketball due to lack of speed and coordination needed. Many colleges have tried to develop some of these kids with very limited success.</p>