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I think its great that American Universities place such a great emphasis on sports. It's really good for the athletes and it's raised the standards of American

I think its great that American Universities place such a great emphasis on sports. It's really good for the athletes and it's raised the standards of American collegiate athletics to Olympic standards. For this reason American Universities become aspirational destinations for high school athletes all around the world. Why is this bad?

JoeAltmaier 13y ago
Because colleges are supposed to be about something else - skills, education. Sports has taken a disproportional share of the money and attention.
- khitchdee 13y ago
  Who is going to produce the worlds best athletes if the colleges stop their supposedly disproportionate spending on athletics? Athletics standards would go down if they did that. I think athletics has an equally significant role to play in life as mind training and memorization. To be a good coach and to learn athletics requires a lot of skill and a lot of discipline both qualities that the education system is trying to inculcate anyways.
  - JoeAltmaier 13y ago
    True but irrelevant to 99% of the students at any given college. Only the best in their sport get the attention and training. The rest of us look on, maybe cheer them on, then go back to our shabby classrooms and underpaid teaching assistants and try to learn something useful.
    - khitchdee 13y ago
      That means standards are really high so you're spending disproportionate amounts of money to train the cream of the crop. Most universities have programs for the casual sportsman. From a practical perspective, even thinking about sports or watching it is useful because it helps balance you out. Having trained as an athlete is like any other training, like a monk meditating or a more academic student going deep into their subject.
      - JoeAltmaier 13y ago
        Those 'intramural' programs for casual sportsmen are great. But little or no money is spent on them; they pale to insignificance compared to the giant corporation that is college athletics. That's another issue entirely and almost completely unrelated.
  - jackmaney 13y ago
    "Who is going to produce the worlds best athletes if the colleges stop their supposedly disproportionate spending on athletics?" I couldn't care less if 100% of the world's top athletes hailed from Lower Elbonia. So, to answer your question: someone else, I guess.
lwhalen 13y ago
Because it's just another form of bread and circus to placate the masses while Rome burns all around them. Sports, IMO, brings very little long-term benefit to our society, especially compared to the money sunk into it. Who were any of the winners of $main_sports_event back when Bach composed his first works? Who took home the gold in the Olympics when Plato wrote down the Socratic Dialogues? Cultures are not remembered by the sports heroes they produce. Yet Western society puts a staggering amount of money, importance, and social standing into the sports-industrial complex, and I feel that it is to our detriment. I'd much rather see music, art, and even the STEM disciplines take a more equal share of the BILLIONS plowed into 'sports! sports! sports!' I just feel that, like cupcakes, sports is a 'sometimes' thing whose consumption has grown way out of proportion to the value it brings us.

JoeAltmaier 13y ago

Because colleges are supposed to be about something else - skills, education. Sports has taken a disproportional share of the money and attention.

khitchdee 13y ago
Who is going to produce the worlds best athletes if the colleges stop their supposedly disproportionate spending on athletics? Athletics standards would go down if they did that. I think athletics has an equally significant role to play in life as mind training and memorization. To be a good coach and to learn athletics requires a lot of skill and a lot of discipline both qualities that the education system is trying to inculcate anyways.
- JoeAltmaier 13y ago
  True but irrelevant to 99% of the students at any given college. Only the best in their sport get the attention and training. The rest of us look on, maybe cheer them on, then go back to our shabby classrooms and underpaid teaching assistants and try to learn something useful.
  - khitchdee 13y ago
    That means standards are really high so you're spending disproportionate amounts of money to train the cream of the crop. Most universities have programs for the casual sportsman. From a practical perspective, even thinking about sports or watching it is useful because it helps balance you out. Having trained as an athlete is like any other training, like a monk meditating or a more academic student going deep into their subject.
    - JoeAltmaier 13y ago
      Those 'intramural' programs for casual sportsmen are great. But little or no money is spent on them; they pale to insignificance compared to the giant corporation that is college athletics. That's another issue entirely and almost completely unrelated.
- jackmaney 13y ago
  "Who is going to produce the worlds best athletes if the colleges stop their supposedly disproportionate spending on athletics?" I couldn't care less if 100% of the world's top athletes hailed from Lower Elbonia. So, to answer your question: someone else, I guess.

lwhalen 13y ago

Because it's just another form of bread and circus to placate the masses while Rome burns all around them. Sports, IMO, brings very little long-term benefit to our society, especially compared to the money sunk into it. Who were any of the winners of $main_sports_event back when Bach composed his first works? Who took home the gold in the Olympics when Plato wrote down the Socratic Dialogues? Cultures are not remembered by the sports heroes they produce. Yet Western society puts a staggering amount of money, importance, and social standing into the sports-industrial complex, and I feel that it is to our detriment. I'd much rather see music, art, and even the STEM disciplines take a more equal share of the BILLIONS plowed into 'sports! sports! sports!' I just feel that, like cupcakes, sports is a 'sometimes' thing whose consumption has grown way out of proportion to the value it brings us.