At Georgia Tech, where the famous fight song proclaims "I'm a heck of an engineer," nearly 70 percent of the football team (43 of 62 players) has chosen to major in management, a business degree dubbed the "M Train" by those on campus who consider it an easier route to a diploma than the school's renowned engineering program.Raise your hand if you're surprised. In fact, I'd be surprised if this weren't so, and I am surprised that the study didn't find this phenomenon to be more widespread.
But the Yellow Jackets are hardly the only school where players tend to congregate in the same fields of study. There are four others universities where at least half the sophomores, juniors and seniors playing football are pursuing the same degree, The Associated Press found in a survey of the 68 schools in the conferences which receive automatic bids to the Bowl Championship Series, plus Notre Dame and Big East-member-to-be TCU.
At Vanderbilt, it's human and organizational development (35 of 59). At UCLA, history is a big draw (27 of 47). At Wake Forest, there's been a gridiron run on the communications department (34 of 60). At Baylor, upset winners over TCU on the opening weekend of this season, expect to find a lot of big guys in general studies (27 of 53).
Education, politics, and anything else that catches my attention.
Monday, September 05, 2011
Football Players Have Similar Majors?
It might seem so:
I am more impressed that "real" universities offer a degree in "general studies". If an on-line or for-profit did this, it would be accused of being a diploma mill :-)
ReplyDelete-Mark Roulo
And yet some of these players will go on and play at the national level making huge, million dollar incomes, while those who aren't taking the easy route will work their butts off, graduate, and take mediocre paying jobs at best.
ReplyDeleteIf you want to be mega-rich, go into sports or entertainment. If you want to be middle class, get a college degree, and then you can also take care of the so-called "poor", but entitled of our country as well.
Sports in our country has just gotten out of hand. It's all about revenues and making money, network exposure and who has the biggest stadium. For our college athletes, it certainly isn't about their education.
"And yet some of these players will go on and play at the national level making huge, million dollar incomes, while those who aren't taking the easy route will work their butts off, graduate, and take mediocre paying jobs at best.
ReplyDeleteIf you want to be mega-rich, go into sports or entertainment."
Athletics isn't the "easy route." It is a very difficult route with a very low chance of success.
One example that I know a little bit about ... maybe 1/2 of the college baseball players in division-1 baseball schools get drafted. For college baseball players who are drafted by a Major League Baseball team, the odds are about 1-in-12 that they will "make" the big leagues (the odds are better for the ones drafted higher in the draft, and lower for the ones drafted lower).
1-in-12 looks okay (hey, they get rich!), except that this includes the guys who play for an MLB team for all of one month and never play in the Major Leagues again. There are a lot of these. They'll make about $80K for that one month after maybe spending 5+ years toiling in the minor leagues making something like $1K to $1.5K per month.
The odds of a college player "really making it" are probably worse than 100-to-1 against (depends on your definition of "really making it"). And "really making it" may last only be 2-3 years. The average career is short, and they'll be making league minimum for the first 2-3 years. League minimum is nothing to sneeze at (around $450K per year), but these guys *still* need to find a job after baseball. A lot of their money is taxed at the maximum marginal tax rate (close to 50% state plus federal for those living in California). $250K for 2-3 years isn't enough to retire on. And these guys often don't know much more than baseball.
Yes, "some" of these guys do go on to make millions. But it is far from an easy route and the odds are very bad. The middle class, say, engineer or teacher won't make multiples of millions, but will need to have bad luck to avoid a middle class lifestyle.
With 9-to-1 odds of a middle class lifestyle, would you gamble that lifestyle at 200-to-1 odds against of having, say, $5M by the time you were thirty? Most engineers and teachers won't. The 199 times in 200 outcomes are not good financially.
"For our college athletes, [sports] certainly isn't about their education."
This I agree with.
Alternately, we could be honest with ourselves, and realize that for a lot of these kids they are getting a vocational education at college and their degree is "football" or "baseball."
Additionally, we might just pay them. It would be more honest to treat them as the minor league professionals that they are.
-Mark Roulo
A former MN governor tried to close the general studies department (it might have had a different name) at the U of M and he was almost impeached over it; guess where all the guys from the big-revenue sports were!
ReplyDeleteMark, you've made some good points, and I agree, the odds are against these athletes in making it big. So, why do we put so much emphasis and attention on sports at our high school and college levels when so few go on and benefit from their time with that sport? It's the revenues. It's a money making machine that educational institutions not only cater to, but are enslaved by. I'm just disgusted by the hypocrisy of it all.
ReplyDelete"So, why do we put so much emphasis and attention on sports at our high school and college levels when so few go on and benefit from their time with that sport? It's the revenues. It's a money making machine that educational institutions not only cater to, but are enslaved by. I'm just disgusted by the hypocrisy of it all."
ReplyDeleteI think we need to break this up into (roughly) three categories:
(a) High School,
(b) College football, basketball and maybe baseball
(c) All other college sports.
(a) High School sports don't benefit the school from a revenue standpoint. I'd be surprised if more than a handful of high schools make money from football.
I did *NOT* participate in sports growing up (chess and debate were more my interest), but my son is very much into athletics. The benefit (from my viewpoint as a parent) isn't that he may become a professional athlete. The benefit is in all the peripheral "life lessons" he is learning. Lessons like "you need to practice if you want to get better," and "sometimes you have to do the unfun/unglamorous stuff for the good of the team," and "you can be way down, but you keep trying." And, "sometimes you do your best and still lose. Then you get up and try again."
In theory, these lessons could all be learned elsewhere, but in practice they seem to often be learned while playing sports. As non-athletic as I am, I'd be disappointed to see high school sports dropped because I think a lot of the lessons learned there are more valuable, in the long run, than much of the specific academic content.
(b) College football, basketball and (maybe) baseball are a mystery to me. They are expensive. As a group the schools lose money (the best programs make lots of money, but collectively the colleges lose). Revenue/profit is a good explanation for the big name programs (UT, Alabama, Notre Dame, ...) but doesn't explain most of the other programs.
Some colleges find that sports teams provide a common interest/passion/focus for the students to unite around. Michigan is a good example of this (I am not a Michigan alum, but the passion for Michigan football is almost cult-like in its intensity and breadth ... one of the benefits of attending Michigan is this common focus with the rest of the students. No, I'm not joking or being snarky. There is some benefit there). On balance, though, my guess is all but 30-40 colleges would benefit from just dropping football.
(c) Non-big college sports seem to be much closer to high school athletics. They cost the school money, but not a *LOT*, and one can probably argue that the life lessons, on balance, are worth it.
Anecdotally, I've read (but not confirmed) that athletes tend to donate back to their colleges more than other students. If so, then the athletic programs may be a bit more self-funding that they appear.
So ... I think I get the point of high school athletics. I pretty much get the point of the non-high-profile college sports. And college football/basketball/baseball are a bit of a mystery to me.
-Regards,
Mark Roulo
In the '60's, at Brown U., it was rumored that the entire hockey team majored in Classics. (Classics????).
ReplyDelete