<p>barrons - surely you are just being argumentative? Ever compete against top flight athletes from LSU? Ever been there? Know its athletes and culture? Its library has the look, feel and size of a community college. Look at the declared majors of the football players on its website. It is very telling. I can assure that as one of the worst major public universities in the country, it earns every bit of its reputation as an athletic factory with a school attached. Think they turn down any recruited athlete meeting the terrible minimal NCAA eligibility standards? I highly doubt it. Again, I don’t mean to impugn the place entirely - there is a school for everyone - and they have some good programs - but if the relevant topic is how greatly athletics distort the academic mission of a university, LSU is the poster child for this phenomena - and it is decades old - Huey Long had his professional football team at Baton Rouge in the late 20’s/early 30’s, well before the athletic craze set in. </p>
<p>And your argument about the earning power of 10/15 players that will enter the NFL contains accurate facts (LSU is indeed one team with 10/15 future pros - unlike most teams, with just 2 or 3), but it is really an argument that these kids ought to be able to pursue their craft without going to college and without the restrictions inherent in the NFL’s (and for that matter, the NBA’s, although to a lesser degree) collective bargaining agreement. Put another way, your argument augments the view that schools ought to be farm teams for professional sports (which is what they unhappily are), but in so doing it also buttresses the notion that presidents of universities ought to be happily cruising along with the status quo and living with the incredibly corrupting influence that athletics now has on the academic mission. I am a big sports fan - but I think universities have lost their way with sports - and I am not a contrarian or curmudgeon for raising it. The decision of University of Chicago in the late 40’s (a former athletic powerhouse) to abandon big time athletics seems saner and saner all the time. But as I say figure the odds of this changing are near zero. </p>
<p>I agree with the other poster’s reference as a helpful authoritative source on college athletics. But I also recommend googling the term Rutgers 1000, a now defunct group that tried to put athletics into proper perspective at Rutgers, and also attempted (a bit tangentially and non-persuasively in my view) to trace Rutgers’ decline in academics to its misplaced focus on athletics. To give you an idea of how crazy this is, the leader of this group, an English professor, received death threats for his oh so crazy idea that the primary focus of the school should be on academics. Their analysis of how a kid with a 900 score (old SAT’s) could possibly do meaningful college work while being employed full time as a professional athlete is stunningly honest and accurate.</p>