<p>All part of the very distressing obsession with athletics in college in America, so much so that virtual thugs are enrolled so they can win championships as long as they don’t kill someone or get expelled first.</p>
<p>The Ivy League, Patriot League (and perhaps a few others) model is the “scholar athlete” with the two parts of that name being equally important but this does not appear in most athletic leagues or colleges. If the students playing on a team are not typical students, if they are enrolled only because they can play a sport, you will have trouble – and the students will often not get an education or graduate, so you’ve cheated them. </p>
<p>The coaches of many of these “students” are paid salaries which far exceed the salaries of the college president or professors. They are hired to win games so sometimes anything goes and the athletes they coach are their to win those games, not necessarily to get an education or anything else. </p>
<p>In other countries, high schools and colleges typically do not sponsor sports teams which are completely private, more like “clubs”. They focus entirely on academics. Here in the U.S. we can’t seem to decide if a university is an academic training ground or a sports program. The two can be combined but only with care and supervision. But they usually aren’t.</p>