Commercialization of College Sports
Watching college athletes play sports is one of America and Canada's favorite pastimes. People love the thrill of hard competition and the fact that these athletes will always give 100% effort. College athletics has always been at the heart of this. It has always been something more pure than professional sports. Unfortunately, college sports today is a business and college players and coaches have drifted away from what it used to mean to play college sports.Every individual on a team is expendable, and every individual at one point or another will be replaced. Coaches will typically form relationships with their players on an authoritative level. The coaches sometimes control every aspect of the player's life. It can be anything from eating habits, extra curricular activities, and training for the particular sport, to such things as dating behaviors and other social characteristics of the normal life of a college student. Basically, it is just a trap. Take for example a high school student with great athletic talent and good enough grades that is recruited to a division one school with a large scholarship. Let's say he or she plays basketball. They will accept the offer and sign a National Letter of Intent, which declares that
Another example of how college sport is a business, is the example of the University of Central Florida football program in 1997. Some schools are going beyond the limits of offering scholarships to athletes, and allowing alumni to present athletes with gifts. I would have to agree with Elliot Gorn and Michael Oriard, in that sports can tell a lot about culture. College sport has grown from simple intramural and recreational parts of life to large scale, commercial entertainment. The commercial gains athletics have become excessive over the past decade. People who follow sports, all share something in common and can express their thoughts and opinions openly when they interact with one another. Universities definitely don't hide the importance they place on successful sports programs. Student athletes endure many hours of practice and athletic competition to earn pride, respect and most importantly money for their schools. Major college institutions now have merchandising contracts, television contracts, and the success of the team lures more students to the schools. This is not allowed and is illegal under NCAA rules. The players were treated merely as expendable units, or as simply a "means to an end". Since that specific athlete signed the letter of intent, they have no chance at playing basketball for even a division two or three school. Sports arise in about every conversation people have. Add in revenue from other sports and the NCAA took in $267 million in 1997-1998.
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