If you asked students why they attend university, their answers would boil down to getting a decent education. However, for a select few students, education may not be the most important priority. Former University of North Carolina football player Michael McAdoo recently sued the school for their apparent responsibility in guiding him and other football players towards “sham classes,” or courses in which little to no work was required, but inflated grades were handed out, usually by department advisors and not faculty members. Of the 1,871 “sham classes” athletes took between 1999 and 2011 at the university, 63.5 percent of enrolled students were football or basketball players. McAdoo was even deemed ineligible by the NCAA because of improper assistance he got writing an African American studies paper. McAdoo wasn’t promised a future NFL career, but the university assured him he would still get the valuable and comprehensive education that he did not actually receive.
I am sure this sort of unfortunate situation is not limited to the University of North Carolina alone. Many schools across the nation value football at the same level or considerably above the sciences and arts. Extracurricular activities such as football can actually take away from an extensive university education. If some students are there solely to play a sport and receive inflated grades, why do they need to be at a university in the first place? It seems as though a separate institution is necessary in order to renew some sort of order in our schools and ensure everyone is receiving the same level of education. It is not as if every university football player will make it to the NFL (only about seven percent do), so getting a subpar education will ensure that these “college educated” athletes are never able to get jobs and actually participate as substantial parts of society.
On many campuses, athletic prowess is valued more than educational accomplishments. As we become more and more competitive in the football realm, we lose our competitiveness in the medical, technological and humanities spheres. Although it is undoubtedly a valuable pastime, football should never take precedence over one’s mastery of important educational subjects. In his State of the Union speech, President Barack Obama said, “we need to teach our kids that it’s not just the winner of the Super Bowl who deserves to be celebrated, but the winner of the science fair.” As a campus community, we should be just as interested in the accomplishments of our vastly intelligent students as we are in the outcome of the next Utes game.
If student athletes are able to balance their commitments to sports and school, I see no problem with it. But as we saw in McAdoo’s case, this may be somewhat of a lofty goal. It must be remembered that students do not attend university to play a sport. International students do not travel to American campuses from every continent because of their college football rankings. Extracurricular activities such as football have long been seen as equal or superior to academic excellence, and although it has its merit, football should act only as an accessory to a university education, not a substitution for it.