Between the upcoming unionization of Northwestern's football team and this damning ESPN segment on massive academic fraud in the African American studies program at UNC, can we stop pretending that college football and college basketball are anything more than minor league affiliates for the NFL and the NBA?
I'm the first to admit that I don't really get college athletics. I mean, I understand the tribalism. And I understand giving kids an excuse to get drunk in the daytime on the weekend, though it's not like they need it. But I don't really understand the appeal of watching mediocre athletes try really hard in the college game when you can watch superior athletes excel in the professional game. And I really don't understand why we are pretending that (most of!) the meatheads who populate our basketball courts and our football fields are there for any sort of academic reason.
I mean, just look at the paper in the image above! That's maybe D-level work in the fourth grade. But apparently it's A-quality work in the African and Afro-American Studies department at the University of North Carolina. This charade needs to end: Either pay the players like they're employees and get rid of the academic requirements altogether or actually treat your scholar athletes like scholar athletes and get rid of the folks who can't hack it at the college level. Frankly, I don't particularly care which.
But the joke that is the current system has to go away. It's a mockery of everything a college education is meant to represent.