Athletes have such an edge

[Anonymous]

From a Smith College study:

For the 65 colleges and universities that participate in the Power Five athletic conferences
(Pac 12, Big 10, SEC, ACC, and Big 12), the football and men’s basketball teams are highly visible.
While these programs generate tens of millions of dollars in revenue annually, very few of them turn an
operating “profit.” Their existence is thus justified by the claim that athletic success leads to ancillary
benefits for the academic institution, in terms of both quantity (e.g., more applications, donations,
and state funding) and quality (e.g., stronger applicants, lower acceptance rates, higher yields).
Previous studies provide only weak support for some of these claims. Using data from 2006–2016
and a multiple regression model with corrections for multiple testing, we find that while a successful
football program is associated with more applicants, there is no effect on the composition of the
student body or (with a few caveats) funding for the school through donations or state appropriations.

https://scholarworks.smith.edu/mth_facpubs/48/

It's an arms race.

And as with an arms race, who ultimately benefits?

Follow the money.

P.S. Look up the highest paid employees in each state.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is nothing wrong with your kid putting hours and hours in to studying and homework, my kid just puts his time into sports. Both can end up on the same school. Colleges want both.

We are aware. Should higher education be focused on admitting more scholar scholars and less on admitting more scholar athletes? Some say yes and some say no.

1 vote for more scholar scholars.

So you want your kid to attend a school of all nerds that spend their hours studying and doing research? IMO college is about developing a person; academics is big part of that but not the entirety. You wouldn’t attend a school that was 100% classes. The college experience is more than studying - there are clubs, greek like, student government, etc.

I know students in other countries. They go to sporting events if they choose. They are admitted into higher academic programs because of academic achievement.

Yet it's this country's higher education system that's the envy of the world. And in many of these other countries that you're referring to, college admissions is determined by cutthroat competition and testing and tracking, and you're told at 16 what your field of study can or cannot be.

No thanks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is nothing wrong with your kid putting hours and hours in to studying and homework, my kid just puts his time into sports. Both can end up on the same school. Colleges want both.

We are aware. Should higher education be focused on admitting more scholar scholars and less on admitting more scholar athletes? Some say yes and some say no.

1 vote for more scholar scholars.

So you want your kid to attend a school of all nerds that spend their hours studying and doing research? IMO college is about developing a person; academics is big part of that but not the entirety. You wouldn’t attend a school that was 100% classes. The college experience is more than studying - there are clubs, greek like, student government, etc.

I know students in other countries. They go to sporting events if they choose. They are admitted into higher academic programs because of academic achievement.

You kid should go to a European school if it is so great. But you won’t because US schools are vastly superior on all levels.

Bull crap.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:From a Smith College study:

For the 65 colleges and universities that participate in the Power Five athletic conferences
(Pac 12, Big 10, SEC, ACC, and Big 12), the football and men’s basketball teams are highly visible.
While these programs generate tens of millions of dollars in revenue annually, very few of them turn an
operating “profit.” Their existence is thus justified by the claim that athletic success leads to ancillary
benefits for the academic institution, in terms of both quantity (e.g., more applications, donations,
and state funding) and quality (e.g., stronger applicants, lower acceptance rates, higher yields).
Previous studies provide only weak support for some of these claims. Using data from 2006–2016
and a multiple regression model with corrections for multiple testing, we find that while a successful
football program is associated with more applicants, there is no effect on the composition of the
student body or (with a few caveats) funding for the school through donations or state appropriations.

https://scholarworks.smith.edu/mth_facpubs/48/

It's an arms race.

And as with an arms race, who ultimately benefits?

Follow the money.

P.S. Look up the highest paid employees in each state.

LOL. Smith is a women's college with its own agena.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is nothing wrong with your kid putting hours and hours in to studying and homework, my kid just puts his time into sports. Both can end up on the same school. Colleges want both.

We are aware. Should higher education be focused on admitting more scholar scholars and less on admitting more scholar athletes? Some say yes and some say no.

1 vote for more scholar scholars.

We say we want scholars but when our kids apply for college, they want the full experience (attend sports games)

When a schools wins a national championship, their college applications get a big bump!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s not athletes that have an advantage. It’s rich and UMC athletes that have the advantage. Do you think all that training and travel is free? Tying college admission to athletics is another way the rich keep a stranglehold on what they view as limited resources. Legacy being the other, of course.

Lot of truth to this.

This is an east coast mentality - the south doesn't have "travel teams" for the major sports like baseball, basketball, soccer, football, and volleyball - you compete against your district all the way to state - that's how you hone your skills - money doesn't matter all that much. The best athletes out of the South aren't coming from money - they are coming from schools with great coaches and great ball programs. That said - for the UMC sports - crew (not even a thing in the South), fencing, golf, tennis - the gear alone requires $$ and the training and/or elite training is $$ and outside of school, so yeah, college recruitment for that is gatekeeping, and I agree legacy status is an excellent form of gatekeeping. Same can be said for performing arts - in the East - so much $$ spent on outside school programs - for dance, film, acting, singing - that doesn't happen as much in other regions of the country - it's through the schools that these kids find their love of music (band programs are HIGHLY important for this - especially since they are very important to HS football programs), arts, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is nothing wrong with your kid putting hours and hours in to studying and homework, my kid just puts his time into sports. Both can end up on the same school. Colleges want both.

We are aware. Should higher education be focused on admitting more scholar scholars and less on admitting more scholar athletes? Some say yes and some say no.

1 vote for more scholar scholars.

We say we want scholars but when our kids apply for college, they want the full experience (attend sports games)

When a schools wins a national championship, their college applications get a big bump!

You need to move away from the sports feed. Hate to break it to you but plenty of college students are not interested in college sports.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:From a Smith College study:

For the 65 colleges and universities that participate in the Power Five athletic conferences
(Pac 12, Big 10, SEC, ACC, and Big 12), the football and men’s basketball teams are highly visible.
While these programs generate tens of millions of dollars in revenue annually, very few of them turn an
operating “profit.” Their existence is thus justified by the claim that athletic success leads to ancillary
benefits for the academic institution, in terms of both quantity (e.g., more applications, donations,
and state funding) and quality (e.g., stronger applicants, lower acceptance rates, higher yields).
Previous studies provide only weak support for some of these claims. Using data from 2006–2016
and a multiple regression model with corrections for multiple testing, we find that while a successful
football program is associated with more applicants, there is no effect on the composition of the
student body or (with a few caveats) funding for the school through donations or state appropriations.

https://scholarworks.smith.edu/mth_facpubs/48/

It's an arms race.

And as with an arms race, who ultimately benefits?

Follow the money.

P.S. Look up the highest paid employees in each state.

LOL. Smith is a women's college with its own agena.

Gee whiz what a humdinger of an argument. Can't argue with that!

Kinda like arguing with applesauce.

Though I might point out that the article was peer reviewed and published in the International Journal Financial Studies.

Are you going to point out the flaws in the authors' regression analysis?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is nothing wrong with your kid putting hours and hours in to studying and homework, my kid just puts his time into sports. Both can end up on the same school. Colleges want both.

We are aware. Should higher education be focused on admitting more scholar scholars and less on admitting more scholar athletes? Some say yes and some say no.

1 vote for more scholar scholars.

We say we want scholars but when our kids apply for college, they want the full experience (attend sports games)

When a schools wins a national championship, their college applications get a big bump!

You need to move away from the sports feed. Hate to break it to you but plenty of college students are not interested in college sports.

Plenty but not most.

[Anonymous]

Interesting article from WaPo 2015 for those interested in following the money

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/sports/wp/2015/11/23/running-up-the-bills/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s not athletes that have an advantage. It’s rich and UMC athletes that have the advantage. Do you think all that training and travel is free? Tying college admission to athletics is another way the rich keep a stranglehold on what they view as limited resources. Legacy being the other, of course.

Lot of truth to this.

This is an east coast mentality - the south doesn't have "travel teams" for the major sports like baseball, basketball, soccer, football, and volleyball - you compete against your district all the way to state - that's how you hone your skills - money doesn't matter all that much. The best athletes out of the South aren't coming from money - they are coming from schools with great coaches and great ball programs. That said - for the UMC sports - crew (not even a thing in the South), fencing, golf, tennis - the gear alone requires $$ and the training and/or elite training is $$ and outside of school, so yeah, college recruitment for that is gatekeeping, and I agree legacy status is an excellent form of gatekeeping. Same can be said for performing arts - in the East - so much $$ spent on outside school programs - for dance, film, acting, singing - that doesn't happen as much in other regions of the country - it's through the schools that these kids find their love of music (band programs are HIGHLY important for this - especially since they are very important to HS football programs), arts, etc.

Football and basketball recruit out of high school. Soccer has these darn high priced travel clubs everywhere. Please....the stupid dollars spent on having to fly south to play in soccer tourneys. Soccer is the worst.

[Anonymous]

Oh, this one is fun!

https://www.chicagobooth.edu/review/who-benefits-not-paying-college-athletes-their-coaches-starters

This is specifically about football and basketball.

College football and men’s basketball players generate millions of dollars of revenue for their universities and athletic conferences from TV contracts, ticket revenue, and merchandise sales. The athletes have been fighting for a share of all that money, disputing rules imposed by the National Collegiate Athletic Association that bar them from any compensation beyond academic scholarships and modest living expenses.

That money, instead of going to the players, is benefiting others in the university community, according to Northwestern’s Craig Garthwaite, University of Michigan PhD student Jordan Keener, Chicago Booth’s Matthew J. Notowidigdo, and Northwestern PhD student Nicole F. Ozminkowski. They find the revenue from football and men’s basketball subsidizes other sports, and leads to higher spending on coaching salaries (not just in football) and facilities.

The researchers reviewed data for college athletics departments between 2006 and 2019, and analyzed roster data scraped from the departments’ websites in October 2018.

They focused on the cream of the crop in the college sports world, the 65 universities in the Power Five athletic conferences that rake in the biggest bucks: the Atlantic Coast, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12, and Southeastern. At universities in this group, which include public schools such as Ohio State and Alabama and private institutions such as Notre Dame and Stanford, football brings in an average of more than $25 million a year and men’s basketball brings in about $5 million, accounting for 58 percent of athletics department budgets, the research uncovers.

US college sports programs would pay more than $1 million a year to each of their top male players if they distributed as much of their revenue to athletes as the National Football League and the National Basketball Association do, according to the study. Star quarterbacks would get $2.4 million yearly, and the best basketball players $1.2 million, the researchers find.

Instead, college football and men’s basketball players received benefits amounting to less than 7 percent of the revenue they generated, according to the research. (Professional athletes in those sports got about 50 percent during the same time period, the researchers report.)

This freed up funds for money-losing sports and facilities construction, as well as for salaries for coaches and administrators. For every additional $1 that came into football and men’s basketball, 31 cents were reinvested in those sports, with the rest going elsewhere in the athletics departments, the researchers find. Twenty cents went to facilities, such as the University of Central Florida’s $25 million athletic compound complete with a lazy river, and Clemson University’s $55 million version including laser tag and miniature golf.

Another 11 cents went to other sports, which as a group lose money. At the 46 public universities in the researchers’ sample, average athletics department revenues rose 60 percent from a decade earlier, while losses in nonrevenue-generating sports increased 71 percent.

Nine cents went to administrative compensation, and six cents went to coaches’ salaries—half of that going to football coaches, and the other half going to other sports. In the researchers’ data, the average salaries of Power Five football coaching staffs at public schools nearly doubled to almost $10 million between 2008 and 2018, while salaries for other coaching staffs rose 70 percent, to $12.5 million. The remainder of each $1, the researchers conclude, was either used in future years or was moved out of the athletic department.

The transfers, rather than promote equity, exacerbate long-standing racial inequities, the study argues. Black players account for about half of football and men’s basketball players in the Power Five conferences but only 11 percent of players in money-losing sports, according to the researchers. Football and men’s basketball players attended high schools with a median family income of $58,400, while players in other sports came from high schools with a median family income of $80,000, they find.

This system “effectively transfers resources away from students who are more likely to be Black and more likely to come from poor neighborhoods towards students who are more likely to be white and come from higher-income neighborhoods,” the researchers write. Coaches and administrators also are more likely than their players to be white.

Here's the study:
https://www.nber.org/papers/w27734

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To be honest, I would be embarrassed if my kid had to take this route to get into a good college.

Plus, I would worry that he would have time and/or the capability to do well there (i.e., that he might eek through, but fail to actually gain a strong education).

Lots of kids are eeking thru at good colleges. Look at the soccer players at Duke - they were middle of the road gpa kids, didn't meet the SAT requirement, tried for ACT and were below criteria. Look at the roosters.

Roosters aside, you are killing me with this “eek through” and “eeking through” repetition. The word you are looking for is “eke,” and the phrases you want to use if you care about how you will be perceived are “eke out” and “eking out.” You should only use “eek” as an expression of alarm, horror, or surprise.

Also, there is not one single person in the universe who would be embarrassed to have their child recruited to play sports at a top university. Only a tiny percentage of college applicants end up in this situation in a given year. It’s a huge accomplishment based on years of hard work, and you would feel exactly the same as the rest of us lucky enough to be in this position: proud.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Most athletes who are successful in their chosen sport spends hours and hours of training and have the discipline & work ethics to be successful.

Having a specific skill - a sport, musical instrument, singing, dancing is MUCH more rare than a kid with high stats.

Scarcity creates demand thus colleges will fight over an athlete much more than a kid with 1600 SAT/4.0+ GPA.

I have one kid who is academic and another who is athletic but I guild them not to be defined by it. You are more than your grades, school or sport.

Be a good person and kind to others!

This x100
My son is a recruited athlete. He also has (at the moment) a 4.43 GPA while balancing studying and at least 22 hours of practice and games a week.
He never says a word but I see some of his peers that pull down just as high a GPA but do not have as a time intensvie extracuricular and think that they have it so much easier.
So, to update the OP's thread title "Athletes have such an edge and so do the kids who do not put in the time away from studying that the athletes do"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is nothing wrong with your kid putting hours and hours in to studying and homework, my kid just puts his time into sports. Both can end up on the same school. Colleges want both.

We are aware. Should higher education be focused on admitting more scholar scholars and less on admitting more scholar athletes? Some say yes and some say no.

1 vote for more scholar scholars.

We say we want scholars but when our kids apply for college, they want the full experience (attend sports games)

When a schools wins a national championship, their college applications get a big bump!

Not all of "us."

Many eschew the rah rah college experience (and opt for brainy SLAC's)