<p>many D1 athletes go for 5 yrs to keep playing not because they fail....they take blowoff clsses 5th, 6th, w.e year just to have student enrollment</p>
<p>Some D-I schools, for example, the service academies, use sports as a means to add diversity to their student bodies. I'm am sure this also a calculation at smaller D-I schools, and at the D-II level. I've read that the average D-I football player spends between 36 and 42 hours a week on their sport, a huge time management issue for the true student athlete. Lastly, at most major colleges, football and basketball tend to fund the rest of the athletic department budget.</p>
<p>It would be interesting to know the percentage of college football players who failed one or more grades. In Georgia a high school player who is not 20 before the school year begins is eligible for the balance of the year. </p>
<p>There is a lot of variation among individuals with respect to maturation rate but generally bodies are changing very rapidly during the late teeage years. A year or two difference in age translates into much greater physical maturity. Older athletes in this age range have an enormous advantage in "power" sports (younger athletes have an advantage in gymnastics and related sports). Football Coaches at all levels have to win to advance or even remain in their profession. Thus they utilize and spend more time on older players.</p>
<p>I know of parents who deliberately retain their children in lower grades to enhance athletic grant-in-aid prospects. Parents with no financial need do this to enhance college admission prospects via athletic preferences. Some prep schools offer a fifth year option.</p>
<p>Incidentally, deliberate retention enhances National Merit program performance because age is not considered, only grade in school. Who at the age when the PSAT/NMSQT is administered would not benefit from an additional year's intellectual maturity? Skipping a grade is the great working class/lower middle class trap. For most students, it reduces prospects.</p>
<p>With the pressure/incentives to produce winning teams, it is no surprise that this (lowering of admission standards) has gone on for decades. Even at Ivy League schools and service academies...</p>
<p>Personally, I'd like to see all programs that compete at scholarship level to become something like an 18-22 Semi-Pro league. Pay the kids a nationally-determined salary, and then give them a few years to attend college, learn a trade, do nothing, work odd jobs, start a small business, etc. I think that a lot of the athletes would be better off if they decided to pursue a career that did not require a 4-yr. degree, plus schools would no longer need to pretend that these are student-athletes. Will schools make this change? I don't see it for some time. But why force someone to enroll in classes that they have no interest in just so they can stay eligible for a sport? Why not let them become, for example, a LPN, Journeyman Tradesperson, Welder, or licensed Truck Driver?</p>
<p>Grade retention happens a lot in the SEC--"academic redshirting"! Not to mention those players that attend local CC just to be able to make grades to be admitted to said schools. I have a feeling that there is a lot that goes on with athletes/grades when it comes to sports/football, esp when a coach wants that player to play for a particular team. Just hope/wish that more schools helped these kids graduate. Retention/graduation rates are pretty low at some schools. Doesn't education come first?</p>
<p>This is the United States. Money comes first, not education. If education came first, high school teachers would make as much money as professional athletes or doctors.</p>
<p>The university sports system is the way it is because that is the way that decision makers and influencers want it.</p>
<p>Its not that hard to believe that an athlete can have ivy type stats. Especially if they are good time managers and primary interests are school work and sports. Also, some people are just naturally smart, so they would spend less time on studying. And, some people are naturally good athletes.</p>
<p>Also, some people have extreme work ethnic and can achieve many things at the same time despite limited talents. </p>
<p>Some people are good at everything they do, or a large portion of it. </p>
<p>Or some people want the added challenge and pursue a sport.</p>
<p>Sports programs generate money for more than just a few schools. Televised broadcasts of the games are huge money for television companies, great places to advertise for manufacturers, and the stadiums make tons of jobs for people. Plus, bowl games and many games in general generate travel, hotel stays, restaurants, and alcohol sales. The indirect effects of the games stimulate thousands of jobs and industries in our economy. I'm willing to sacrifice a lower SAT for extra money poured into our economy.</p>
<p>lebronfor2008mvp's statement is valid and there are indeed Rhodes Scholars who become professional athletes. However modern sports such as college football need thousands of athletes able to compete at the highest level.</p>
<p>Simultaneous optimization of two parameters, even non-exclusive parameters, reduces the population size dramatically.</p>
<p>What's the issue? College is a place for people to develop and maximize their potential. The only difference between a student preparing for a career in architecture and a football player prepping for the NFL is the SAT and GPA are better predictors of success in the former profession than the latter. Other than that, both the architectural student and the football player are trying to hone their chosen crafts to be successful after college. </p>
<p>If we ask football players to take the SAT, why not ask Art History majors to run a timed 40-yard sprint?</p>
<p>^Agreed. Besides the SAT/ACT measures nothing other than how well you can take some stupid test designed to make students miserable and assign a number out of 2400 or 36 next to them.</p>
<p>Anyone else find it interesting that many of the people who find it disgusting that athletes are granted a 200+ advantage on their SAT score are the same people who are completely comfortable with Affirmative Action and allowing people the same type of allowances based 100% on race. Come on, at the athletes generate loads of cash for the universities. Affirmative Action increases diversity for a university but at the cost of higher drop out rates, the need for remedial departments and often lower ranking- all of which leads to a net drain of money from a college. </p>
<p>Note- not all minorities need affirmative action to gain entrance to universities, I know this. I am specifically referring to the affirmative action policies, so don't misconstrue what I am saying.</p>
<p>"The only difference between a student preparing for a career in architecture and a football player prepping for the NFL is the SAT and GPA are better predictors of success in the former profession than the latter. Other than that, both the architectural student and the football player are trying to hone their chosen crafts to be successful after college."</p>
<p>Wrong answer- Architecture majors have almost a 100% chance of landing a job as an architect, the same isn't nearly as true when it comes to athletes. Apples to oranges.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Anyone else find it interesting that many of the people who find it disgusting that athletes are granted a 200+ advantage on their SAT score are the same people who are completely comfortable with Affirmative Action and allowing people the same type of allowances based 100% on race. Come on, at the athletes generate loads of cash for the universities. Affirmative Action increases diversity for a university but at the cost of higher drop out rates, the need for remedial departments- all of which leads to a net drain of money from a college.
[/quote]
what the hell are you even talking about? why don't you post evidence for some of that BS you are spewing...</p>
<p>How about this analogy: Athletes are discriminated against because they cannot major in their sport. Actors, artists and musicians are not academics, but they are allowed to major in Theater, Studio Art and Music. There is no 100% chance that they will be employed in their chosen profession. Athletes are required to spend 3 hours per day, 6 days per week plus away events on their sport AND major in something academic.</p>
<p>Don't claim that a bunch of people share the same opinion tomslawsky. I actually don't support AA, and I am totally against athletes getting preference in admission. That makes me wonder where your getting your facts from. I bet you just made that up on the fly to support your point.</p>
<p>^^^^^
I'm sorry, I assumed that you, as a reader would be able to differentiate between the words "many" and "everyone". Obviously, this was a bad assumption in your case.</p>
<p>"what the hell are you even talking about? why don't you post evidence for some of that BS you are spewing..."</p>
<p>Do you really need proof because you have been programmed to ignore common sense? Wow!
Discriminations:</a> “Diversity” Money — Well Spent?</p>
<p>VDARE</a> - When Quotas Replace Merit, Everybody Suffers by Peter Brimelow</p>
<p>U.S</a>. College Drop-out Rate Sparks Concern
"Just 54 percent of students entering four-year colleges in 1997 had a degree six years later — and even fewer Hispanics and blacks did, according to some of the latest government figures. After borrowing for school but failing to graduate, many of those students may be worse off than if they had never attended college at al.
"His data-driven studies on college athletes, affirmative action and college access for the poor have all sparked nationwide debate in recent years, and he attracted widespread attention last year with a speech at the University of Virginia that called for class-based affirmative action in college admissions."
"Affirmative</a> Action" and College Graduation Rates by Thomas Sowell -- Capitalism Magazine
"A book by former university presidents William Bowen (Princeton) and Derek Bok (Harvard) had made a misleading case for affirmative action that the media have hailed as definitive. Bowen and Bok claim that the mismatching of black students under affirmative action has not produced the dire results predicted by critics. Their evidence? Black students graduate at higher rates at a particular set of elite institutions that Bowen and Bok have chosen to study than at lower ranked institutions in their study.</p>
<p>The real issue, however, is not how highly ranked the institutions are, but how big the racial difference in admissions standards has been. This they never tell us, despite mountains of statistics on everything else. From other studies, however, it is clear that racial differences in SAT scores, for example, are much smaller at Harvard (95 points) than at Duke (184 points) or Rice (271 points).</p>
<p>In other words, where the racial preferences in admissions are not as great, the differences in graduation rates are not as great. The critics of affirmative action were right: Racial preferences reduce the prospects of black students graduating. Other data tell the same story.</p>
<p>Compare racial preferences in Colorado, for example. At the flagship University of Colorado at Boulder, test score differences between black and white students have been more than 200 points -- and only 39 percent of the black students graduated, compared to 72 percent of white students. Meanwhile, at the University of Colorado at Denver, where the SAT score difference was a negligible 30 points, there was also a negligible difference in graduation rates -- 50 percent for blacks and 48 percent for whites.</p>
<p>In short, it is not the relative rankings of the institutions but the racial differential in admissions standards that has been crucial. You are not doing anybody a favor by sending them where they are more likely to fail, rather than where they are more likely to succeed. Critics of racial preferences and quotas have been saying that for more than 30 years, and now the data back them up -- which may be why you don't hear much about those data.</p>
<p>None of this should be relevant to the question before the Supreme Court, which is whether the 14th Amendment's requirement of "equal protection" for all Americans is trumped by the magic word "diversity."</p>
<p>on AA, Athletes earn their way into the school with talent. AA-recipients were just born a different color. color of skin =/= content of character</p>
<p>But once again, athletes are simply using a different means to the end they achieve, whether its to become a pro athlete or your average citizen.</p>