Christine the Lioness (3123)
Christopher the Pyro (1988)
ProphetJoe the Irreverent (1265)
Trouble the Pirate (604)
Keith the Director (573)
Mara the Peacemaker (533)
eric the Lil' Devil (352)
AJ the Zen Master (305)
Ben the Kingpin (213)
Haas the Addict (187)
Christine 2 the Mercenary (131) Lei the Mercenary (124) Katie the Mercenary (115)
Ben2 the Soldier (56) Ben the Kingpin quibbed this
Wait, the whole nation knows that UCLA is a red/commie/terrorist cell network pretending to be a university.
Why do we need this pissant to “prove” it?
It’s like proving that water is wet.
Christine the Lioness said this
Yeah! And their football team sucks! Beat the Bruins!!! 
Ben the Kingpin added
Sports should be outlawed in every place of learning. It is a mindless distraction that hampers the intellectual development and drags the school into a mire of “jock think”.
Christine the Lioness stated
Ben… the integration of spirit, mind, and body has proven time and again. If one is neglected, the other two suffer… we need all three to be complete human beings. Now the body part of that can be just taking care of your body… eating right, working out, etc. But that is all a part of athletics and competition is key to bettering oneself in most aspects of learning…
By the way… what is “jock think?”
Christopher the Pyro uttered
I think congrats to Andrew Jones for doing something about an issue that he obviously see’s as a problem, while I’m not sure I agree that teachers shouldn’t teach with commentary he is certainly entititled to have that opinion, it is afterall a free county. I also have to admit I’m impressed his creativity.. basically he saw a problem and found a profitible way for himself to attack it… I really don’t see much differnece between what he is doing and a million other watchdog groups include PETA, ACLU and NRA more power to him. Christine will argue that because he doesn’t have a “board” it’s a little iffy but the truth is all organizations start out small without a board and then eventually hire a bunch of their friends to be their board and it’s really in the end not a whole lot different the not having one at all. As for this being typical behavior by “bush supporters” I don’t know about that, I really doubt we want to get into compairing wacky behavior by supporters of any political group.. (remember Farienheit 911 a movie that was basically one big long fabrication and manipulation of video and audio) and just because MM is a nutjob that doesn’t mean I would group all liberals into the MM nutjob catagory most saw right thru that bull shit, some extremist didn’t but hey they really don’t matter anyway.. and I think this might be the same type of situation.. if a professor is so outragious that what this guy is doing actually ends up matter then it is good, but for the most part I think it will be ignored because the professors probably arn’t that outragious anyway.
Ben the Kingpin hunt n' pecked this
Christine,
The average university student is required to complete 1 or 2 credit hours of physical education to graduate. The *VAST MAJORITY* of university athletics programs focuses on an extremely small minority of students.
In fact, it is much more a matter of money, business and cashflow than it is about learning or education.
“Jock think” is best exemplified by the operating of universities who use their sports programs to draw in a huge amount of cashflow so the administration can have high salaries and they can build massive stadiums and sports programs, but end up spending more than their income on said programs until they totally eclipse the academics for which the school was constructed.
Christopher the Pyro spake, and sayeth
Ben, most schools with bigtime sports programs actually use the revenue say from football to fund the other 300 sports that lose money every year, they build new EDUCATIONAL buildings and when they do need something for the major sports programs then it isn’t comming from tuition becuase teh sport actually pays for itself. It’s a win win for everybody.
Christine the Lioness remarked
And this is bad how???
Ben the Kingpin chimed in with
Christopher,
Not according to the documentation I’ve been researching lately. Most big universities invest more in their sports programs than they bring in. They originally were lulled into the “easy money” idea of sports programs, but as programs became more competitive, they soon found that the $5,000,000 they got for broadcasting rights needed to be spent on upgrading their electrical systems to handle all the cameras, added security, construction and advertising and discovered (whoops!) they just spend $6,500,000 to do all that.
It’s a lose/lose proposition.
Large sports programs cost more to operate than they bring in revenues. They tend to attracts students on the lower-end of academic performance. There are huge drop-out rates amongst those taking a “heavy phys ed” list of classes. There is an extremely small percentage of jobs available for phys-ed graduates. (side from jobs with the phrase: “Do you want fries with that?”)
Large sports programs are counterproductive to an educated and productive populace. Period. They consume more than they provide. They are entertainment–”bread and circuses”. They don’t just have zero value to our society, they provide NEGATIVE value.
Christopher the Pyro said this
Ben.
Not sure where your getting for facts.
Let’s use Penn State as an example because it is close to my heart.
All Athletic Income: $39,682,389
All Athletic Expenses: $39,349,249
Football brings in: $28,005,252
Football costs: $5,771,342
So basically in many ways football is picking up the bill from a whole lot of sports losing money.. but it is basically covering all the spending at the school on sports.. now $39 million sounds like a lot.. but only until you actually look at the overal budget for PSU.
Total operating income: $3,044,868,000 (yes that is 3 as in BILLION)
Expenses:
Instruction: $566,382 (million)
Research: $489 104 (million)
Public Service: $126 802 (million)
And a hole bunch of others that I didn’t feel like posting the point is, $39 million for sports is a like 1% of total budget.
It also sounds like you were implying that students that are in athletics only choose phyisical education degree’s that is asnine and you would have to show me some supporting data. As for graduation rates: Penn State has Graduation Success Rate of 84 percent, significantly above the national GSR average of 65 percent.
Also, have a “negative” value is worst then having zero value… maybe we need to sign ya up for complex numbers 101.
Christine 2 the Mercenary spake, and sayeth
Hahah..yea I have to agree with Chris here on this one. I went to University of Georgia, which has a HUGE football program. A lot of the other sports get overlooked, but I think the key to a good university is variety. I am the furthest thing from athletic, major in journalism, and can barely force myself on a treadmill. I like things like poker, pool, and playing soccer with MY DOG. Yet, I still think a very important aspect to education is providing opportunities for people to be well-rounded. Although UGA tends to show a lot of favoritism for the athletes, the requirements for the football players are also extremely strict. I have met more than a handful of football players that are actually Pre-Med (from different schools, not just UGA). The point is, if you are destined for a professional sport, yay for you. But if you just happen to be a damn good football player, there is no reason that you shouldn’t be able to use a physical talent to give you an opportunity to pursue a higher education. I think that stating that Football schools attract students on the “lower end of academic performance” is not only closeminded, but a little hostile. Yea, maybe not all the football players are brain surgeons, but using that stereotype to support a poorly founded argument just doesn’t work. That’s like saying that people who are insanely good at art should only go to art schools, because they didn’t get a 1500 on the SAT. And btw, UGA also has one of the best business schools in the southeast, so I’m pretty sure their figures show a postive value after football season. We even had a friggin LOTTERY to get tickets, because so many other people were buying them. If you were a student on campus, and didn’t win the lottery, you couldn’t buy the tix from the school. They had a whole ranking system with alumni at the top, last year students, and so on for the priority of who got tickets. I smell money. Lots of it.
Christine the Lioness scribbled
I think you’re alone on this one, Ben… I haven’t been able to find anything to support your claim that college athletics costs more than it’s worth. College athletic programs bring in money… period. As a matter of fact, it seems that it not only supports the athletic program, but academic programs and necessities like student centers, dorms, campus upgrades, and the like.
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