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][quote=Anonymous][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?

[b]The modern university started out as theological and clerical training for men.[/b]  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.[/quote]

DP. The bolded part cuts into your argument. Just because the modern university started one way, it doesn't mean it cannot evolve into something different. Without evolution, the universities would still be doing theological and clerical training for men. Nowadays, the theological and clerical training for men is a minuscule part of the university (and programs are getting cut). I agree with the PP who wrote that universities offer choices: some of these choices may be great for some students and not that great for others. That's part of how they attract students - they will come if they have the choice they want. [/quote]

PP.  My point was just that the university is an ancient intellectual format with roots in religious education.  And attaching serious, high-level sports to it is quite a graft.  America has grafted more sports onto our higher education than anywhere else in the world and it doesn't fit very well.  Drama, mentioned by a PP, actually is also ancient and evolved in part for religious purposes.  There seem to be a lot fewer drama club "scandals" at colleges...but perhaps that's just because drama is mainly a cost center.  My point about mentioning that the ancient university educated men was just to point out that it's a long way from educating male priests to preparing top quality female volleyball setters.

I'm very tired of pastimes that attract scandalous leaders who claim noble purposes (such as leadership training) and then exploit and degrade people.  And leave them with permanent sports injuries.  It also seems that at many schools the athletes have lower measurable academic qualifications (this may not be true at Dartmouth).  I have a friend whose daughter is dropping out of D3 softball this year.  The 20 hours a week of practice interferes with her schooling and has left her with a shoulder injury that's new since starting college.  She is going to transfer colleges now.

From my perspective, it seems time to throw the baby out with the bathwater.  Colleges do not seem to be producing the noble educational effects they claim by offering these sports.  College football and basketball should go first, but are money machines that are too entrenched to get rid of.[/quote]

And you have the right to have your own perspective. [b]But you didn't address the evolution of universities to keep up with the times and to produce revenue. I would agree that a lot of athletes would not make it to good university based on their academic skills alone. Should there be a law baring universities to give degrees to students who are good at sports, but don't have a strong academic background? A lot of the college sport teams would be decimated. Even though athletes may not be among the best academic thinkers, they are contributing to the society in their own way, so they deserve some sort of recognition / degree.[/b] And this is where universities step in and give them a chance to pursue this recognition. [/quote]

PP.  I regret that universities use sports to produce revenue.  That is a side effect/unintentional outgrowth of our unusual American system.  Originally sports like college football were used to build school spirit and then that took off as a way to ensure the interest and loyalty of local politicians.  In many states with D1 state flagships, the football coaches are the highest paid state employees.  More than the university presidents and more than the governors.

I think college athletics has gotten out of control.  That's all.  I feel bad for the volleyball players in this particular situation.  I would never want to submit my college experience to one person's close inspection and control like that.[/quote]

I also agree that CEOs should not be paid 100x the compensation of a regular employee. A university president should not be paid more than 10x the salary of a university professor. And definitely a coach should not be paid more than the university president. But that's the results of the "community" we are building and the values we have as a nation. Taking competitive sports out of universities will not change that. The money will simply go somewhere else and universities will simply lose their athletic identities. [b]And athletes would lose the option of getting a degree from a good institution, where most of them would not make it based on academic criteria alone.[/b] [/quote]

But why should athletes who can't make it based on academic criteria alone, go to a school where they are at the bottom of the academic ability distribution?  This isn't true of the drama kids, the instrument players, the real or fake non-profit creators.  Athletics is one of the areas where kids with lower credentials get onboarded essentially for business reasons.  I am not saying this is a Dartmouth issue.  I'm just speaking generally.

I rarely hear about admirable scholar athletes like the Indiana quarterback who actually had the drive and academic talent to complete his undergrad degree before moving on to what seems like a potentially sketchier grad school arrangement at Indiana.

I am associated with a school well known and much loved for sports success. And I find the compromise in standards to be offputting and the occasional sports scandals to be enraging.  They seem to be part and parcel of big money sports.[/quote]

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