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Rutgers Prof: "Sports stars should be recruited as athletes not as jocks masquerading as scholars."

Maybe it's time for the "haves" to help fund the have-nots... More than they do now.. More directly. The "haves" need to play someone. And if there were a single conference only for "haves", half of them would be .500 and under... And might not be " haves" for long.
 
Seems an appropriate statement from the Academic side of the University.

However, D-1 athletes invest a lot of time and often $ to excel in their chosen sport. Those athletes that also excel academically are unique and should be celebrated.
 
Sounds like this professor should be writing about the state that does not support the university.
 
Sir ScarletKnight said:
Here's the original article, Targum September 25th.

http://www.dailytargum.com/article/...oo-much-money-to-athletic-programs-facilities

This was in the paper yesterday.

http://www.dailytargum.com/article/...s-on-u-athletics-prove-to-be-misguided-simple

Ugh. Can't believe this guy teaches at Rutgers. Then again, most student reviews seem to say he doesn't teach at all.
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I didn't read the article but athletes should be allowed to major in athletics. Why make them take classes they have no interest in. College is suppose to prepare you for your future job and making guys like Bossa take classes he is never going to need or use is doing this kid a disservice.
 
ruhudsonfan said:
The professor's piece is not well researched or thought out. And frankly, it's ignorant. If one of his students turned in such shoddily researched work, I'm sure he would fail them.

That said, we, as die hard fans, can't expect the faculty, staff or general public to dig down into the true financial footing of the program. They see a 9 figure stadium expansion and are sitting in offices with no heat. One isn't the result of the other, but as someone who sat with them for two years (with my jacket on during office hours), it's frustrating. In 2 years on Douglas, my office never had heat, flooded 3x, had ceiling tiles fall on my laptop while I was teaching and the AC ducts had visible mold on them.

Decades of delayed upkeep have put a faculty already against big time athletics in an even worse mood.
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Maintenance isn't sexy. Funding is an issue, but one must wonder if union contracts and high cost of doing anything in this state is largely to blame. Example: the profs should be complaining about a 25M expansion, not 100M.
 
This is an old argument at RU and probably at lots of other schools. I didn't like the substance of the prof's article at all. I think he's wrong in what he has to say about RU and athletics.

But what bugged me even more was just how poorly written the student's response was. Grammar mistakes, run-on sentences, and poor overall structure are not great things to have in a written response about the subject of higher learning.

Might not matter here on a message-board (I kind of think it does a little though). But it matters a lot, IMO, when writing a persuasive essay that is going to published as this one was.
 
mildone said:
This is an old argument at RU and probably at lots of other schools. I didn't like the substance of the prof's article at all. I think he's wrong in what he has to say about RU and athletics.

But what bugged me even more was just how poorly written the student's response was. Grammar mistakes, run-on sentences, and poor overall structure are not great things to have in a written response about the subject of higher learning.

Might not matter here on a message-board (I kind of think it does a little though). But it matters a lot, IMO, when writing a persuasive essay that is going to published as this one was.
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You're more bugged by grammatical errors from a Sophomore in college than by a faculty member insulting our big ten peers and the students that work hard to represent us on gameday?
 
ru109 said:
I didn't read the article but athletes should be allowed to major in athletics. Why make them take classes they have no interest in. College is suppose to prepare you for your future job and making guys like Bossa take classes he is never going to need or use is doing this kid a disservice.
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Maybe 1 out of 50 college players end up with a pro career that sets them up for life. Maybe even higher odds then that. And do you realize that our football players nearly gave a combined 3.0
Ivan vouch for one player who earned his degree, played in the NFL and now is using his education for the real job it prepared him for.
Your statement is ignorant
 
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yesrutgers01 said:
Maybe 1 out of 50 college players end up with a pro career that sets them up for life. Maybe even higher odds then that. And do you realize that our football players nearly gave a combined 3.0
Ivan vouch for one player who earned his degree, played in the NFL and now is using his education for the real job it prepared him for.
Your statement is ignorant
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Agree with some of this, but who are you to tell the other 49 out o 50 that they can't major in football? How many theater majors at Mason Gross go on to an acting career lucrative enough to sustain them? Are we going to cut theater as a major and make it more like a sport, where you have to major in something deemed more "useful"? How many animal science majors go on to be vets? (Not many ,by the way.) Just saying...if a kid wants to major in football, and that is his chosen career path, it's no crazier than when some moron let me major in exercise science, looking into pre-med. Nobody regulated that.
 
I would agree with the professor if we were in the patriot league. College athletics at this level is about athletics first and academics a distant second due to its revenue generating power. I don't like it since a lot of athletes at the P5 level are not really students in the academic sense since they opt to take joke majors and courses to stay eligible. But it's just the way it is. That's the power off money.
 
Blitz8RUCrazy said:
I would agree with the professor if we were in the patriot league. College athletics at this level is about athletics first and academics a distant second due to its revenue generating power. I don't like it since a lot of athletes at the P5 level are not really students in the academic sense since they opt to take joke majors and courses to stay eligible. But it's just the way it is. That's the power off money.
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There are a lot of athletes at Patriot league schools who aren't "scholars", too. You're kidding yourself if you think otherwise.
 
mikebal9 said:
Agree with some of this, but who are you to tell the other 49 out o 50 that they can't major in football? How many theater majors at Mason Gross go on to an acting career lucrative enough to sustain them? Are we going to cut theater as a major and make it more like a sport, where you have to major in something deemed more "useful"? How many animal science majors go on to be vets? (Not many ,by the way.) Just saying...if a kid wants to major in football, and that is his chosen career path, it's no crazier than when some moron let me major in exercise science, looking into pre-med. Nobody regulated that.
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My point was the post I referred to was really looking down and lumping football players all into a "dumb jock" picture.

.
 
yesrutgers01 said:
Maybe 1 out of 50 college players end up with a pro career that sets them up for life. Maybe even higher odds then that. And do you realize that our football players nearly gave a combined 3.0
Ivan vouch for one player who earned his degree, played in the NFL and now is using his education for the real job it prepared him for.
Your statement is ignorant
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I'm not saying that shouldn't major in something else I'm just saying they should be able to major in athletics if they want to. Okafor from Duke should not have to pretend to take introductory english lit or some other BS course. He should have been allowed to take public speaking (to help with interviews) personal finance (to help with his money) maybe even an intro to law or some class to help him read contracts so he knows what he is signing. I'm not implying that just anyone should be allowed to do it, but for top 25 basketball players and top 50 football players I think the option should be available.
 
Sir ScarletKnight said:
You're more bugged by grammatical errors from a Sophomore in college than by a faculty member insulting our big ten peers and the students that work hard to represent us on gameday?
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In this context, yes. Because, like I said, it's an old argument. The faculty member is one of many whose minds are not going to be changed because they flat out don't get collegiate athletics. It's much too late for him. And anyway, if I were to take such things personally, I'd be one miserable person. So I ignore him and those like him except when I have a chance to poke them w/a coaches salary or something fun like that.

But this kid is a sophomore in college and it's not too late for an intervention. If that professor had any kind of ethics at all, he's contact this kid and help him rewrite his essay w/corrections.
 
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mildone said:
But this kid is a sophomore in college and it's not too late for an intervention. If that professor had any kind of ethics at all, he's contact this kid and help him rewrite his essay w/corrections.
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Isn't that Flood's job?

And for the record, I'm 100% in agreement. The writing on this board, as composed by people who allege themselves to be college graduates, makes me cringe on a daily basis.
 
wow...when I was at Cornell there were profs that didnt like sports but they rarely said anything about it. There was a BIGGER group of profs that made football games and EVENT,,wearing epic heritage garb......waving small banners and having a GREAT time.........

I cant imagine the college experience WITHOUT sports......
 
To be fair, I imagine that it was different at Cornell for a few reasons.
 
RU4Real said:
And what would you imagine those to be?
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I'm half-awake, so sorry if this is a rough read.

Without knowing when mikefla was an undergrad there (based on his earlier posts, I'd guess sometime in the 1970's, but I'm not so sure), I'd mostly wager it has to do with Cornell's Ivy League pedigree. I'm not implying that they didn't have ringer athletes, but rather, the Ivy League schools, even now, seem to uphold the traditional "college experience."

If he was at Cornell during the timeframe that I guessed (or earlier), then that was before the mass commercialization of basically everything, including college sports.

Rutgers might have been that way at some point, but probably hasn't had that atmosphere since before I was born. It's unfair of me to say that Rutgers as a whole isn't a place where the "traditional college experience," football games, fraternity parties, etc. is dead. I personally know more than a few students that do indeed partake in the traditional college experience. However, being a non-isolated state university, there is a significant population of students that simply don't participate.

Another issue that can't be ignored, even though it sounds like a cop-out, is endowment. Rutgers does everything on a shoestring budget, which I imagine frustrates researchers.
 
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RU4Real said:
And what would you imagine those to be?
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Hey wait. Aren't you guys well into your tailgate already? Is tailgate texting (okay, message board posting, but I wanted to go with the alliteration) allowed at a tailgate where serving things like Lobster Bisque is not unusual?
 
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mal359 said:
Wait they have lobster bisque at their tailgates?
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It wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility based on the menus they've posted up here over the years. These are some very accomplished tailgaters we're talking about. And the fact that they are able to do all that while not stepping on a napping @RUScrew85 is testament to their incredible tailgating dexterousness.

I don't easily admit to being impressed by things, but I confess that I'm impressed by that.
 
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