Being a student athlete has many perks but many fallacies as well. Most students do not realize how much time a sport can take up of an athletes’ college career. Almost every student athlete is going to be doing something professional besides his or her sport.
College sports create substantial revenue for the university. Look at the University of Oklahoma; how much money do you think the university makes off of one football game? There once was a rumor that they make $1 million a game off of just concessions.
With sports playing such an important role for the school’s finances, would you not think that the university would want the best team they could have? Having a good team requires many hours of practice; hours that these athletes could be spending doing homework.
Student athletes are under an incredible amount of pressure to excel at their sport. Therefore these athletes put in hours of extracurricular time, working to get better at their sport. Now, let’s throw in some added pressure for these athletes. On top of these countless hours spent trying to excel at their sport, these athletes have to be able to keep up with their schoolwork as well.
While these athletes are being told by their coaches and other outside influences how they need to work on getting stronger, faster and quicker, they also have to come to realize the truth that they probably are not going to play professionally in their sport. These athletes have to be able to receive good grades, so that they can graduate and start a career other than their sport.
For the sake of the argument, let’s go through a student athlete’s day. This athlete is a baseball player, and he has weightlifting in the mornings. So at 5:30 a.m. his alarm goes off to wake up for his 6 o’clock workout. His workout ends at 7 and he now has to get ready for his 8 a.m. class. He surely rushes to take a shower and finds a way to shovel some breakfast into his mouth.
This athlete has class up until chapel, which is at 11 a.m. After chapel he finds time to eat lunch before his next class at 1 p.m. Practice begins at 3, so he practices until roughly 5 o’clock. The cafeteria closes at 6:30-7 p.m., so he eats before the cafeteria closes. After this the athlete is expected to log in his own hours of extracurricular work to improve his skills on the game. Let’s say he hits in a batting cage for an hour and a half after he eats. Now it is roughly 9 o’clock. After physical activity in the morning and physical activity in the afternoon and late evening, this athlete is now expected to go back to his dorm and complete his homework, and then wake up the next day and do it all over again.
Here’s my question for you. Should a student athlete be held to the same academic standard as a non-student athlete?
Cody Rosecrans is a senior at Oklahoma Christian University
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