Editorial: Athletic scholarships should stay

If you follow Pitt sports, then you know very well that Pitt’s athletic department spokesmen… If you follow Pitt sports, then you know very well that Pitt’s athletic department spokesmen like referring to players as “student-athletes.” But have we ever asked what that soundbite-friendly term means? Which component word, student or athlete, deserves the greater emphasis? Specifically, into which role, that of student or that of athlete, do modern colleges expect participants in collegiate sports to pour more of their energies?

One answer is athlete — well that’s at least what Ralph Nader thinks. Nader, a consumer advocate and former Green Party presidential candidate, announced last Thursday that he believes the nature of NCAA Division I sports forces “student-athletes” to focus on sports, at the expense of more important academic pursuits.

Consequently, Nader wants to end athletic scholarships, which he views less as scholarships and more as professional “pay-for-play” contracts that have no proper place in higher education. With the support of the Drake Group, a college athletics watchdog, and the backdrop of the NCAA Tournament, Nader plans to take his proposal to university presidents, Congress and the Department of Education, the Associated Press reports.

According to the Pitt athletic department’s mission statement available on Pitt’s website, the department tries to “sponsor broad-based athletics programs that provide educational and athletic opportunities for all students and equitable opportunities for all students and staff.” What’s evident in Pitt’s program is considerable focus on activities outside of the arena — as seen in the required study hall hours for Pitt’s athletes. But not all universities are blessed with athletics officials who rightly place value on academics.

So in the broad sense, Nader’s comparison of NCAA sports with professional sports has technical merit. Athletic departments award athletic scholarships to students not only as rewards for high school performance, but also in anticipation of future performance on the collegiate field. And in exchange for these scholarships, student-athletes must deliver a predefined level of athletic performance largely independent of what they do in the classroom (unless of course they start failing or missing class).

Considering the large incentive of a full-tuition scholarship and all the perks that come with playing college sports, it’s not hard to see the opportunity for abuse of the system — universities paying students to win championships (which will increase the institution’s athletic standing and revenue) while not preparing them for real life. What Nader has right is that providing athletic scholarships, without the application of overriding academic values like Pitt’s, carries the great risk of degrading the scholarly atmosphere and disserving students.

But we think that risk can be avoided — and at Pitt, it is every day.

What Nader’s plan would do is change college sports as we know it. Sure, the injection of billions of dollars more into college sports probably won’t make our economy more globally competitive, and of course the college-educated should wield far more important skills than free-throw shooting  or catching touchdowns. So could athletic scholarships lead to the commercialization of college sports? Perhaps, to a degree. But the scholarships’ ability to provide educational opportunities to underprivileged students and put college names on the map goes unmatched.