The Miseducation of the Student Athlete: How to Fix College Sports by Kenneth L. Shropshire & Collin D. Williams

Author:Kenneth L. Shropshire & Collin D. Williams [Shropshire, Kenneth L. & Williams, Collin D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781613630822
Amazon: 1613630824
Published: 2017-11-07T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 4

The Solution: Constructive, Disruptive Systemic Change

You plan your day, your meals, and your study time around it. Everything is based on when I have practice next, what workout I have to be at, what is this going to do for my image as a football player, what kind of things am I going to be participating in, and how is it going to affect me as a football player. It’s always football first, everything else is secondary. Friends can wait. Everything else can wait. You have your whole life to finish school, but you only get five years of eligibility.81

Regularly ranked among the top five public universities in the United States by U.S. News and World Report82 for its selective admissions, progressive financial-aid policies, and groundbreaking research, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is also the home of one of the nation’s most storied basketball programs. The alma mater of Michael Jordan, arguably the greatest basketball player of all time, North Carolina boasts 20 Final Four appearances, 49 Atlantic Coast Conference championships, and 6 NCAA men’s basketball championships, the most recent in 2017.

However, since the 2014 season, the school has been under investigation for what Fox Sports has dubbed the “most egregious academic fraud scandal in NCAA history.”83 Once touted as a pantheon of academic and athletic success, Chapel Hill has had its reputation muddied by an 18-year scandal in which students (predominantly student-athletes) were allegedly enrolled in fake “paper classes” in African- and Afro-American studies to boost their GPAs. Between 1993 and 2011, it is alleged that more than 3,100 students used those courses to maintain their eligibility and graduate.

The reality in sport is that there is always, unfortunately, someone or some enterprise willing to cheat. We do not delude ourselves in thinking that we could ever develop a system that would guarantee that the educational interest of student-athletes would always come first. From Deflategate in the NFL, to the junior tennis player lying about a line call, to performance-enhancing drugs across all sports, the willingness to violate rules for greater success seems to be never ending, and is very likely inevitable. So, we move with caution as we explore some changes that might make the situation better, understanding that there is in fact no ultimate panacea.

Chapter 4 explains how the model can best use increased revenues to benefit student-athletes. The chapter begins by exploring the relationship between sport, education, and opportunity. It then details the Student-Athlete Manifesto, laying out programs for athletes prior to their arrival on campus, during their time there, and after they leave their respective institutions, from preparatory and tutorial programs to funds for the return to college after their attempts at professional careers. We conclude on a cautionary note, addressing the need for academic oversight and external accountability.

Sport, Education, and Opportunity

The student-athlete compensation reform debate is bigger than sports. Since the 1946 Sanity Code legislation allowing athletes to access higher education in exchange for their athletic talents, competitive college sports have become an additional avenue through which the American Dream can be pursued.

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