College Football: Play for Pay?
By chieflevi13, 27th Jul 2012 | Follow this author
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Posted in WikinutNewsSport
It goes beyond the question of which came first, the chicken or the egg. Now-a-days, the question is what is more important, playing college football or getting an education. Are head football coaches (Steve Spurrier) so naive, or better yet, arrogant enough, to think that providing an education through scholarship is not enough payment for young men to play football? Once we start paying these guys to play football, the entire education system will be a mockery; if it is not already.
The Cost of Education
It seems that we have reached a place in society where money, greed, and selfishness seem to be the qualities and characteristics that best define who we are. When I look back at my early childhood days, I remember what I thought was going to be the perfect life. Go through high school and graduate, go to college and graduate, then, start my dream job, all the while finally marrying the love of my life and having a kid or two; maybe even a dog. But then life kicked in. I did graduate high school and marry that love, but that was about as far as it went. One may ask, well why did you not go to college. The reason may or may not be a reason worth any merit, but at the time it was a valid reason. My parents made too much money for me to qualify for loans or grants, but yet on their salary could not afford to send me to school. Life goes on. So one does what anyone would do and join the workforce.
Football or Education?
That brings me to where we are today in college football. Why do athletes, parents, and coaches feel that college football players should be payed to play? Is $30k worth of education not payment enough to play football? I watch and listen to these players, from juniors in high school all the way up to a senior in college, and it's all about them. The media have made these athletes to be bigger than life itself, and in doing so, these athletes, their parents and coaches, feel that they should be paid. What we need to understand is that college serves one tangible, real reason; to provide a formal education outside of high school. Everything else is, in one word, extracurricular. You do not go to college to play sports, but rather, you go to receive an education that will benefit you in life. But somewhere along the way, a large number of these athletes (and I'm sure some number of non-athletes as well) leave college, having graduated or not, and still can not find a "coherent sentence with 2 hands and a flashlight." If you go to college, your first priority should be to get educated, everything else should be secondary. But tell that to the money hungry conferences and schools. They want the best athletes so that their school can win. It really does seem that greed, money, and selfishness rule the day; or at least college football.
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