Basketball purists - at least some of them - are bemoaning the devolution of college basketball into a long-range shooting demonstration, as all the teams shun the traditional basketball philosophy of working for a "good shot" close to the basket, and simply firing up 3-pointers endlessly, and hoping that your sharpshooters are "on" that day. To which one must quickly stipulate that the shooting talent of today's players is unprecedented. Uncontested 25 footers are almost a given for most of them.
But I digress. Does it occur to any of the rapt onlookers in the "Sports Bars" around the country that these young men are, at least theoretically, college students? Does anyone really believe that anything more than a handful of them has the slightest intention of obtaining a meaningful degree and using it as a credential to start a useful adult life?
Do the players know and/or recognize that only a small fraction of them will ever earn a living at the game to which they have devoted the first 20 years of their life?
Athletic scholarships are a pox on American "higher education." Other countries think we are fucking nuts to devote this much time, money, and effort to an activity that has exactly zero meaning in the Big Picture, and which impugns the academic integrity of every school that actively participates in this MADNESS.
Sports do-gooders like to claim that athletics is a useful social tool that enables thousands of students from poor households to obtain a college education that would otherwise be outside their reach.
Baloney. 90% of such students never acquire a degree, and 90% of the ones that do carry majors that are economically worthless, to both the student and to the overall community. Better if those scholarships would go to poor students who have earned them through academic excellence in high school, and who would likely use those scholarships to enrich the overall society as well as themselves.
The NBA gets a priceless free ride on the backs of the nation's colleges and universities, which provide them with a free "minor league" system that identifies the top-talented players and provides highly competitive preparation for NBA play. You can be certain that if the NCAA universally adopted a "no-athletic scholarships" rule and inter-college competition was simply a matter of students from one college playing students from others, the NBA would establish a network of professional minor leagues in a heartbeat. And those minor leagues would PAY players to go through the learning process, as is now the case in Baseball. And if they also wanted to pursue "higher education," the teams would subsidize their tuition to a reasonable extent, just as MLB does now, on a case-by-case basis.
Basketball is a great game, both to play and to watch, but all March Madness to me is just a reason why a lot of my favorite TV programs are not on the schedule for a couple of inconvenient weeks. Thank God for DVR's.
But I digress. Does it occur to any of the rapt onlookers in the "Sports Bars" around the country that these young men are, at least theoretically, college students? Does anyone really believe that anything more than a handful of them has the slightest intention of obtaining a meaningful degree and using it as a credential to start a useful adult life?
Do the players know and/or recognize that only a small fraction of them will ever earn a living at the game to which they have devoted the first 20 years of their life?
Athletic scholarships are a pox on American "higher education." Other countries think we are fucking nuts to devote this much time, money, and effort to an activity that has exactly zero meaning in the Big Picture, and which impugns the academic integrity of every school that actively participates in this MADNESS.
Sports do-gooders like to claim that athletics is a useful social tool that enables thousands of students from poor households to obtain a college education that would otherwise be outside their reach.
Baloney. 90% of such students never acquire a degree, and 90% of the ones that do carry majors that are economically worthless, to both the student and to the overall community. Better if those scholarships would go to poor students who have earned them through academic excellence in high school, and who would likely use those scholarships to enrich the overall society as well as themselves.
The NBA gets a priceless free ride on the backs of the nation's colleges and universities, which provide them with a free "minor league" system that identifies the top-talented players and provides highly competitive preparation for NBA play. You can be certain that if the NCAA universally adopted a "no-athletic scholarships" rule and inter-college competition was simply a matter of students from one college playing students from others, the NBA would establish a network of professional minor leagues in a heartbeat. And those minor leagues would PAY players to go through the learning process, as is now the case in Baseball. And if they also wanted to pursue "higher education," the teams would subsidize their tuition to a reasonable extent, just as MLB does now, on a case-by-case basis.
Basketball is a great game, both to play and to watch, but all March Madness to me is just a reason why a lot of my favorite TV programs are not on the schedule for a couple of inconvenient weeks. Thank God for DVR's.
