Comment by UweSchmidt | Hacker News Reader

Comment by UweSchmidt | Hacker News Reader

The article starts with "College sports create undeniable campus pride and identity" and leaves this sentence unquestioned, as if it was a positive thing.

Regardless of the money spent (or made, if college sports could be run profitable somehow), there seems to be a huge cost for society by setting the focus on the wrong things.

It seems that being a good student is valued highly by society, but the shortcut - becoming a (sports) star is even better! This leads to a large percentage of young people investing significant resources (time, energy, health) into this dream.

Professional sports is just entertainment, and assuming that the enjoyment comes from a relative comparison between players and teams, or the delta between two rather abstract numbers (this performance, compared to a "record"), then it seems that there are some resources not spent well.

I cannot see how sports and educations should be married the way they are at american colleges. Anyone?

I think that at a visceral level we are uncomfortable with education--it is undemocratic, anti-egalitarian, hierarchical--and are happiest when we can turn it into something else: a sports program, a jobs program, daycare.

On the other hand, I suppose it does serve as advertising. Probably a lot more people know of Stanford because of its occasionally excellent football and basketball teams than know of it because of what it has done for computing.

"education--it is undemocratic, anti-egalitarian, hierarchical"

That does not have to be a innate property of education. It's just how science education seems to work, and other education mock science education.

Not saying it's the wrong mode for science education, but.

How is education undemocratic? Just because it's a good idea to defer some decisions or evaluations to people who actually know their stuff, does not mean that individual rights are in danger.

Sports are democratic and egalitarian? Tell that to Messi or Lebron James ;)

Anyway, that sports and education are so tangled is purely a national oddity of the US, maybe stemming from its tradition of great, and expensive, private universities. During the 19th century, if I recall correctly, it was a sign of distinction and wealth to practice sports; I conjecture that's what got it started in the universities, and then it spread in the early 20th century, when those colleges started courting new talent, intellectual or otherwise, from the up and coming middle classes, helped by the New Deal and the GI Bill.

That could also be why Oxford and Cambridge are relatively so keen on sports, i.e. rowing, as compared to other European universities. Sports were quite the posh thing back then. But, of course, I'm just guessing.

I think it can be a good thing, though I'd agree that the way it is right now, it isn't a good thing.

I liked this defense of DIII (and this vision for college sports):

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/04/22/should-colle...

The article you linked vaguely hints at the role of a coach, helping in areas outside of sports (study habits, motivation, team building)

Sounds good. I propose having more real tutors and assistant teachers to get the mentioned benefits directly. Practice team building in, say, engineering competitions.

If you want to offer sports, don't just have an elite team in one of the big sports (telling people they are not good enough to take part, putting people into a spectator role, giving them artificial entities to root for), but offer a wide variety of popular stuff for the whole student body.

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