Decoding the Business of College Sports: Academics Over Athletics

From track stars to lacrosse players, student athletes have long been the subjects of both fanatical admiration and deep resentment. The robust college sports industry, estimated at $749.8 million this year alone (and likely to grow as the back to school season begins), leads many to assume that the life of kids on athletic scholarships are padded and glamorous. Incidents like the 2006 academic scandal at Auburn University, in which student athletes’ grade point averages were inflated, doesn’t help prove them wrong. More recently, Ohio State head coach Jim Tressel resigned after covering for students in violation of National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) rules, once again drawing negative attention to students on athletic scholarship.

There are certainly those students that break the rules or just see college sports as a stepping-stone to professional leagues. However, there are many others who see college athletics as a means to get an education they couldn’t afford otherwise. For those kids, playing sports while trying to thrive academically is no picnic. “We just don’t get things handed to us, we don’t get grades handed to us, they don’t change things up for us because we’re athletes,” says Alterraun Verner, defensive back for the Tennessee Titans.

Verner attended the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) on a football scholarship and graduated with a degree in math. “We’ve got to work just as hard as the next person and on top of that we have to worry about the athletic side and off the field obligations,” he says.

It wasn’t just Verner’s athletic ability that landed him a spot on the Bruin’s roster. He thinks his prowess in the classroom made him an attractive recruit among players that were bigger and faster. “Most people that did recruit

me, recruited me because they felt like I was a safe bet,” he says, “because they knew I probably wasn’t going to get into trouble in school in academic areas because I was successful in [academics] in high school.”

Verner was ranked in the top 10 of his graduating high school class, had a 4.15 GPA and scored over 1,700 on the 2,400 scale SATs his junior year. “A lot of schools were intrigued by that, with me handling the rigors of being an athlete and still being able to perform those types of scores,” he says.

Brandon Bridge, a quarterback at Alcorn State University, says balancing school and class work isn’t the only source of anxiety. “In the university… the coaches jobs are on the line,” he says. “They just push us harder as football players and as students.”

Despite feeling pressure to win, Bridge says that

ultimately his coaches want him and his teammates to leave with a skill set to help them flourish in the world off the field. “They’re making us better men and better individuals,” he affirms. “Not just football players.”

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And it’s not just sports and athletics that take up students’ time. Wood says first year students have mandatory tutoring, team study halls in addition to community service and leadership councils and then, of course, classes and practice. “This can all happen to a student athlete in a day,” he says.

Wood also notes, however, that his students seem to thrive under the pressure. “Our student athletes graduate at a higher rate than the normal student population on most campuses,” he adds.

The NCAA has been making efforts to improve graduation rates, particularly for Black male students. A 2010 NCAA report showed an eight percent increase in graduation rates among Black males in 2003 compared to Black males from 1995 (the first year this data was collected), jumping from 51 to 59 percent. Though the numbers are still well below the overall graduation rate for student athletes in 2003, which was 79 percent, Gail Dent, a spokesperson for the NCAA says they are encouraging. “The [word] ‘student’ is there first in front of the word ‘athlete’,” she says.

Bridge couldn’t agree more.

“To me school comes first so before I start to put in that extra work on the football field, I want to make sure that all my school work is done,” he says. “That’s my first priority to get my education, my degree at the end of the day ‘cause that’s something that no one can ever take away from me.”