Mind over matter

Being a college athlete is hard. Intense workouts, long road trips and high pressure to perform are just a few of the things student-athletes are forced to deal with in addition to their studies.

Some argue that because college athletes work so hard and bring in revenue for their school, they should be paid for their work.

But it isn’t work. Athletics are an extracurricular activity as part of school. Although being an athlete may seem like a job, it isn’t until someone reaches the professional level — something that is not at all guaranteed to happen.

Which brings up another point. Many universities are failing their student-athletes academically by letting them coast through GPA-boosting but academically unbeneficial coursework.

Sometimes these classes aren’t even real. A CNN article revealed student-athletes at the University of North Carolina were taking fake college classes to stay eligible.

CNN began its investigation when UNC researcher Mary Willingham found some student-athletes were reading at an elementary school level and “could not even read well enough to follow news coverage about themselves,” the article said.

It should be noted most of these student-athletes at UNC played football or basketball, the two most revenue-generating college sports. This isn’t a coincidence. These athletes are valued most because of the obscene amount of money they bring in for their universities.

With this in mind, let’s return to the argument about college basketball and football players being paid.

Student-athletes are paid, in a way, for all the money they make for their school. This isn’t true for all college sports. But in the case of popular ones like football and
basketball, many of these players receive full-ride scholarships. The ones that are not granted full-rides are still given scholarships, and these are quite substantial.

A college education is arguably the greatest payment. It should provide security for the future. But in the case of student-athletes, this is not necessarily true.

Student-athletes taking cushy — or in the case of UNC, fake — classes are not being prepared for the world after sports like they deserve to be. A person whom cannot even read at a middle school level upon graduating college is not prepared for the real world.

Many of these student-athletes expect to have a career in the pros, where a quality education is not required. But this isn’t likely to happen.

According to one study by Business Insider, 1.7 percent of college football players make it to the NFL, and only 1.2 percent of college men’s basketball players make it to the NBA.

IU recently conducted a study that revealed playing Division I athletics could have an adverse effect on someone’s mental and physical health later in life, according to an article in the Herald-Times.

The most important argument here is not about paying or not paying college athletes. It’s about colleges failing the athletes they supposedly value so much.

The Editorial Board calls for a reevaluation of college athletics.

College sports are not jobs, so universities need to stop treating them like jobs.

An education comes first. Ironically, the institutions that are supposed to educate us receive much of their funding from the very student-athletes they are not educating sufficiently.

­Follow the Editorial Board on Twitter @IDS_Opinion.