The Value of College Sports

The Ethics of College Sports

• ”This relationship between sports and higher education is not without its detractors. The list of criticisms is long, from the exploitation of student-athletes to overpaid coaches, from the unfairness of limited opportunities for women students and minority coaches to performance-enhancing drug use. The central criticism is that sports on campus distort the mission of institutions of higher learning.”
• “My view is that many of these criticisms are false or exaggerated, and where they are warranted, strong reform efforts are underway that will, for the most part, rectify the problems. College sport is far from perfect, but it is a popular cultural artifact that serves well both the university community and the students”

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The `Standard View' of College Sports

• `The Standard View conceives of intercollegiate athletics as an extracurricular activity.'
• That is, they might have value for some students, but they are not part of the educational experience.
• If this is right then `Intercollegiate athletics can be eliminated from the campus without in any way diminishing the educational mission of the institution.’

Brand blames professors for spreading this view.

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Analogies to Music

• An important part of Brand’s argument involves comparing college athletics with things like music and other performing arts.
• “When the educational experience of student-athletes is compared with those studying the performing arts such as music, dance, and theater, as well as the studio arts, it is difficult to find substantive differences. Consider, in particular, music students at universities with major music programs. These students must be accomplished before admission. They have to audition, and the best of them receive scholarships. Those with exceptional talent are often admitted even if their purely academic credentials, demonstrated by their grade-point averages and SAT scores, are below the range of normally admitted students.”

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Analogies to Music

• Many of the music students admitted to the best music departments and schools have ambitions for professional careers. Once admitted, they practice innumerable hours…They perform with these groups on weekends and evenings during the semester, and, on occasion, they miss class to perform at off-campus locations. These performances often involve paid admission…Participation is similar to working a full-time job.”
• “Of course, the vast majority of music students never have a significant music career. Even in the best university music departments, the proportion of students that become international stars is infinitesimal.”

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Analogies to Music

• Brand says that this is very similar to college athletes.
• “These similarities point to a convergence of educational experiences between student-athletes and others engaged in certain preprofessional courses of study. Given this convergence, it might be expected that the student-athlete experience and that of students in the performing arts would have similar academic standing, but that is not the case.”

Music students, for example, get credit for their performances, athletes do not.

So, should we give college athletes credit? Should you be able to major in basketball, for example?

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Receiving Credit

What’s the justification for this difference in credit?

Perhaps it’s that athletes don’t really gain a body of knowledge. So they should earn credit.

Two responses:

1. They do learn knowledge
2. More importantly, they learn skills -- `know-how’ – just as music students do.

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Receiving Credit

Perhaps the justification is that coaches aren’t qualified in the way that professors are.

Brand thinks that this is not right. Sure, coaches typically don’t have formal qualifications or PhDs. “Rather, in these disciplines, the underlying requirement is that there is a track record of excellence, verified by peers, of teaching the skills appropriate to the activity. Peer judgment in the cases of skill instruction plays at least as important a role in asserting qualifications, and likely more so, than it does in factual knowledge instruction.”

Coaches he, thinks, are just as skilled and qualified as professors.

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Why do People hold the Standard View?

Brand claims that the standard view is popular among faculty because: `for the most part, faculty members hold intellectual powers in higher esteem then they do bodily abilities. Put provocatively, the American academy is prejudiced against the body.’

Isn't this though in tension with his analogy with performing arts? Since those are often bodily abilities.

Also Brand does admit that `Academic fraud; academically underperforming student-athletes; growing athletics department budgets; large compensation packages for some coaches; student-athletes, coaches, and even presidents misbehaving; and many other issues fuel this discontent.' What is the evidence for his diagnosis of the standard view?

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The Standard View and Finance

“On the standard view the athletics department should be treated separately from other departments.”

“Because according to the Standard View athletics departments are not taken to be central, or even part of the academic mission of the institution, the tendency is to not make budgetary decisions within the overall institutional context. The autonomy of the athletics department at some institutions enables the department to make its case directly to the president or even, in some cases, to the universityʼs governing board.”

Is it really the standard view that leads to this autonomy of the athletics department????????

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The Standard View and Finance

• Brand thinks we should drop the standard view and think of athletics as another department. And that motivates subsidizing athletics.
• `Based on the economic studies, it may be more reasonable to believe that fewer than two dozen Division I-A schools, perhaps as few as one dozen when everything is taken into account, actually meet the principle of self-support.’
• `Is that bad? It is only if one is committed to the Standard View that athletics lies outside the central mission of the university. If the Standard View is relinquished, and with it the principle of self-support, then subsidizing athletics becomes acceptable’

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The Integrated View

• Brand thinks that the standard view should be replaced by the `integrated view’.
• “The primary and defining feature of the Integrated View is that athletic programs are made part of the educational mission of the university. Although they are not part of the liberal-arts core, they play the same type of role as music and art and, perhaps, business and journalism.”

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The Integrated View

• `The Integrated View raises a provocative issue. If athletic participation is relevantly similar to music performance with respect to content—namely, in knowledge of skills—as well as instructor qualifications, then if academic credit is provided for music students, should it not also be provided for student-athletes? There are some obvious limitations in providing credit to student-athletes. We should not offer majors in basketball or other sports.’

Wait, what? Why is Brand pulling back on his analogy with music now?

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The Value of College Sports

• `Intercollegiate athletics, at its best, demonstrates positive values. These values include striving for excellence, perseverance, resilience, hard work, respect for others, sportsmanship and civility, and losing—and winning—with grace.’
• `In general, it would be good if the positive values exhibited by student-athletes were learned and adopted by the general student body.’
• `The role of intercollegiate athletics in universities has been undervalued. The problems surrounding intercollegiate athletics, often sensationalized, should be kept in perspective.'

The Integrated View

• Brand thinks we should integrate athletics into the university as if it was another department, like music.
• But what would that look like? What would change if we did treat athletics like music?
• Buzz Williams makes over $4.8 million per year (plus bonuses). In 2025 the highest paid person in the music department got $170,822.
• Treating football like music would presumably change the budget. And it would give much more power over football to other professors.

The Integrated View

• A few years ago ESPN reported on the culture in the UMD football program:
• “The belittling, humiliation and embarrassment of players is common. In one example, a player whom coaches wanted to lose weight was forced to eat candy bars as he was made to watch teammates working out.”
• “Extreme verbal abuse of players occurs often. Players are routinely the targets of obscenity-laced epithets meant to mock their masculinity when they are unable to complete a workout or weight lift, for example. One player was belittled verbally after passing out during a drill.”
• What would happen if coaches were treated like professors?

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