Reply to ‘Playing volleyball here was a nightmare’: Inside the Dartmouth women’s volleyball team’s culture

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Just more evidence of how hard-core competitive athletics really has nothing to do with college.

I think we need to stop pretending that these sports have a connection to undergraduate education.

The sports that people pay to watch are more obviously misaligned.[/quote]

You have no idea what you are talking about. [/quote]

OK, please explain to me why the practice of semi-pro volleyball fits with a liberal arts undergrad education in New Hampshire.

What is the essential connection between these practices that I'm missing?

The modern university started out as theological and clerical training for men.  With a splash of med school at some locations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volleyball

Volleyball seems to have been intended as basketball lite for YMCAs.

There is no necessary reason why NCAA teams need to exist.  It's just "fun" for most and a future career for the top players.  Universities do not need to prepare students for careers as pro athletes.  That could be handled by non-academic minor leagues.

Sports coaching has a lot of body control, abuse, and scandals associated with it.  It's even more shameful at a school where you'd hope for people to be a little smarter than average.

Please explain why these sports are a necessary part of the college experience.  Not about the fun of them, the why they simply must be part of the experience.  What with transfer portals, they are getting even more unhooked from whatever the original goals were.  There was a post on here complaining a few weeks ago about too many European advanced soccer players going to some state college down South where Europeans would otherwise never bother with. That's ridiculous.

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What’s ridiculous is this post. This is a pretty dramatic swing from “there may be a coaching problem” to “why do college sports exist at all?”

They’re not “necessary” in the philosophical sense, neither are theater productions, student newspapers, or a cappella groups. But they are a longstanding and legitimate part of how schools like Dartmouth (and basically every major university) build community, teach leadership under pressure, and yes, give students the option to pursue something at a high level alongside academics.

Calling volleyball “YMCA basketball lite” is like dismissing modern physics because it started with people dropping rocks. ALL disciplines evolve. Collegiate volleyball today is highly technical, strategic, and globally competitive, just like basketball evolved from peach baskets into the NBA. That doesn’t mean they moved away from their original intent.

Also, no one is saying universities are “training pro athletes.” The vast majority of NCAA athletes never go pro. There is even a commercial from the NCAA about this! 😂 They’re students who choose to compete at a high level while getting an education. That’s the key word here: choice.

And that cuts both ways:
* If players are unhappy, they can enter the portal and keep playing elsewhere. 
* If they value the degree more, they can stay at the school and walk away from the sport. (At schools where they are on a scholarship, of course this means they have to fund their education another way. But again this is a moot point for any athlete at an Ivy as they do not offer athletic scholarships.)

The existence of this choices is not a failure of the system, that’s exactly how it’s supposed to work.

As for abuse concerns: those are real, and they should be taken seriously. But that’s an argument for better oversight and accountability, not for scrapping college sports entirely.

Eliminating athletics because some programs have problems is like eliminating labs because a PI runs a toxic research group. The answer is fixing the environment, not pretending the activity itself has no place in a university.[/quote]

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