<p>
</p>
<p>When the Head Coach of Boat Racing gets 30 times a professor salary, you can call it big.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>What I mean to say, overall, even without the issue of sports, is that the fame of Oxford and Cambridge is not really comparable to the fame of any US University. For starters, they’ve got a minimum 427 year start on even Harvard. Their reps were assured long before college sports were a thing, just as Harvard’s was. Obviously that’s not comparable to the Big 10 or the SEC. (At this point, it may also be obvious from my US examples that I know nothing about big college sports in America. I have no opinion on whether or not they should be continued or what they should cost. I just think a comparison to Oxbridge is ridiculous.)</p>
<p>If we’re going to talk about sports and compare Oxbridge, then we should first focus on the fact that Oxford and Cambridge are way poorer than top US schools, and that what wealth they have is divided up (unequally, btw) among their many colleges. Even if they thought they could increase their fame by fielding a world class football team, not even the richest colleges could afford to do it. ManU costs over three times as much as all the money the richest Cambridge college has.</p>
<p>Schools also have these fees which include the student recreation center, of which schools seem to compete for the newest nicest most luxurious. I’ve toured a number of MAC schools (where the author is a faculty member) and the rec centers are much nicer than my local gym. </p>
<p>Also at bigger schools such as Ohio State and umich they have a big revenue stream from football tickets. Not only do they make money from ticket holders but they also charge for student tickets. The tickets were cheaper for students but still expensive. The smaller schools included admission to sporting events. </p>
<p>I know he wants to blame sports for higher fees and that is part of it. But I think that universities are in a race for bigger better facilities to attract students and attracting a better sports team also attracts students.</p>
<p>@Millancad, in your rambling post#42, are you trying to say that:</p>
<p>Schools in the U.S. need Big sports because they haven’t been around as long as Ox/Bridge to build their academic reputation? </p>
<ul>
<li>or -</li>
</ul>
<p>Ox/Bridge would have Big sports if they could afford it.</p>
<p>On this point:</p>
<p>[Myth:</a> College Sports Are a Cash Cow](<a href=“http://www.acenet.edu/news-room/Pages/Myth-College-Sports-Are-a-Cash-Cow2.aspx]Myth:”>American Council on Education)</p>
<p>[The</a> Myth of the ‘Student-Athlete’ - NYTimes.com](<a href=“http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/15/the-myth-of-the-student-athlete/]The”>The Myth of the 'Student-Athlete' - The New York Times) </p>
<p>[The</a> Myth of Profitable Athletics Departments | The American Conservative](<a href=“http://www.theamericanconservative.com/the-myth-of-profitable-college-athletics/]The”>http://www.theamericanconservative.com/the-myth-of-profitable-college-athletics/)</p>
<p>Here’s another:
[The</a> Shame of College Sports - Taylor Branch - The Atlantic](<a href=“The Scandal of NCAA College Sports - The Atlantic”>The Scandal of NCAA College Sports - The Atlantic)</p>
<p>If there wasn’t such big-time money & cult-like worship of BIG sports in college, Jerry Sandusky wouldn’t have been allowed to rape little boys for another decade. You think Penn State would have looked the other way if it was the field hockey coach who was involved?</p>
<p>As international observers have noted, it’s really only in the U.S. that society uses college athletics for major entertainment, with lucrative results for the principals involved, with the notable exception of the players. Contrarily, pro leagues and club teams are the dominant norm in Europe and Latin America. College athletics abroad is just that, “College” athletics and not a major televised money-generating and money-consuming spectacle.</p>
<p>I am reminded of the razor sharp perspective on the purpose of contemporary American college sports, by the comments of former Seton Hall University basketball star Andrew Gaze. Gaze was a top Australian “amateur” player who after leading SHU to the precipice of the NCAA championship, promptly bolted back to Australia a day or two after the championship game, rather than return to school to finish the semester. When seemingly perturbed reporters asked student-athlete Gaze why he didn’t return to his studies, he dryly replied “the season was over, mate.” That about sums up the focus of college sports in the U.S.A.</p>
<p>Gaze immediately resumed his career with his club team in Australia, without further interruption from classroom distractions.</p>
<p>
When they launder the rowers’ practice uniforms, you can call it big.</p>
<p>I really don’t think universities need top sports teams to have a good reputation. Post #43 claims that Universities like Harvard and Oxbridge are exceptions because their reputations were built up long ago. Well to counter that how do you explain how universities like Toronto and McGill in Canada and Melbourne in Australia have such good reputations (obviously not Harvard but still solid schools) despite none of the schools pumping in an ungodly amount of money into their athletics?</p>
<p>I think laundry service for athletes comes up as an issue every now and then not because the expense involved but because having your laundry done for you smacks of being “waited on.” That athletes are so Special that they get relieved of these mundane tasks that are for the little people to do, not for the stars.</p>
<p>What, you think a gladiator should have to sharpen his own sword?</p>
<p>From what I know about the specifics of athletes’ laundry (which is limited to a few colleges), only the uniforms and practice clothing is eligible to be laundered. Athletes must wash their regular clothes like every other peon at the college.</p>
<p>Neither of my kids schools have football.
Underwater basket weaving yes.
;)</p>
<p>Do you seriously want to live in a 12x12 foot room with a huge football player and his practice clothes? I think it’s a gift for the roommate. </p>
<p>Take kids who don’t do laundry very often and add sweaty stinky workout clothes. No thank you. It’s bad enough living with one geezer and his gross sweaty clothes. And I keep up on my laundry. </p>
<p>I think that D1 athletes have enough to do that I can’t believe that laundry of their workout clothes is something to discuss. My S walked on a D2 sport and someone would wash their workout clothes if they wanted. It was a minor non revenue sport.</p>
<p>My SIL put her laundry room on the second floor of their house, next to the master bedroom. She says the stink from her H and boys workout clothes is overwhelming at times. She says she is going to put a washer in the basement just for workout stuff.</p>
<p>The anti- sport sentiment always gets under my skin. If you don’t like sports, go to a school that doesn’t have sports!!! I have one child that is going to school on an academic scholarship and another that will go on an athletic scholarship (non-revenue sport). The discipline that my son has developed because of his sport and his success will make him successful in college - hopefully both with his sport and in the classroom. My daughter (on the academic scholarship) would not consider schools without big sports and school spirit - she considers that a part of the college experience.</p>
<p>The reality is - the revenue generating sports bring money to the ENTIRE university and all students benefit. The University of Alabama has some fabulous new engineering buildings and you can bet the success of the football team has a lot to do with that!!!</p>
<p>Again - go to a school that doesn’t have sports if you don’t like it!</p>
<p>I don’t think it’s an anti-sport sentiment as much as a bewilderment that American schools promote college sports SO heavily as to change the entire application process for athletes and to include such extras as laundry service (which does not bother me in the least). Sports are great. Athletes are great. So are musicians, artists, and scientists, none of whom are courted and recruited in the same way.</p>
<p>As far as the supposed revenue stream that’s created by college level sports, read the above articles. It’s a myth. </p>
<p>I think the thing that gets under my skin is what’s alluded to in the NY Times opinion piece: there’s an undercurrent of anti-intellectual sentiment that goes along with the veneration of athletes. See below:</p>
<p>1.“Football and mens basketball players are admitted and given full scholarships almost entirely because of their athletic abilities. Academic criteria for their admission are far below those for other students (for example, their average SAT scores are about 200 points lower than those of nonathletes). Realistically, given the amount of time most such athletes devote to their sports, they would have to be academically superior to the average student to do as well in their classes. As a result, according to another N.C.A.A. report, the graduation rate (given six years to complete the degree) for football players is 16 percent below the college average, and the rate for mens basketball players is 25 percent below. Even these numbers understate the situation, since colleges provide underqualified athletes with advisers who point them toward easier courses and majors and offer extraordinary amounts of academic coaching and tutoring, primarily designed to keep athletes eligible to play.”</p>
<p>2."The deeper harm, however, lies in the fact that, in the United States, there is a strong strain of anti-intellectualism that undervalues intellectual culture and overvalues athletics. As a result, intellectual culture receives far less support than it should, and is generally regarded as at best the idiosyncratic interest of an eccentric minority. Athletics, by contrast, is more than generously funded and embraced as an essential part of our national life.</p>
<p>When colleges, our main centers of intellectual culture, lower standards of academic excellence in order to increase standards of athletic excellence, they implicitly support the popular marginalization of the intellectual enterprise."</p>
<p>The idea that spreading maybe 100 athletes over 25,000 undegrads will undermine the overall academics is just silly. There are plenty of well-heeled suburban party animals who are worse threats than most athletes who tend to be good kids that work very hard under a great deal of pressure.</p>
<p>[Colleges</a> with party emphasis maintain economic, social inequality, new research suggests | Inside Higher Ed](<a href=“http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/04/01/colleges-party-emphasis-maintain-economic-social-inequality-new-research-suggests]Colleges”>Colleges with party emphasis maintain economic, social inequality, new research suggests)</p>
<p>There are 450,000 NCAA athletes [NCAA.org[/url</a>] out of 21 million college students in the US [url=<a href=“http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=372]Fast”>Fast Facts: Back-to-school statistics (372)]Fast</a> Facts](<a href=“http://www.ncaa.org/wps/wcm/connect/public/NCAA/Resources/Latest+News/2012/September/NCAA+student-athlete+participation+hits+450000]NCAA.org[/url”>http://www.ncaa.org/wps/wcm/connect/public/NCAA/Resources/Latest+News/2012/September/NCAA+student-athlete+participation+hits+450000), so that means about 2% of college students are athletes. The idea that these 2% “marginalize” the overall “intellectual enterprise” is ridiculous.</p>
<p>Where do your numbers come from? Between 25 and 30 percent of my Ds class at her lac were recruited athletes.</p>
<p>Click on the blue words in my post.</p>