The NCAA News - Comment
July 1, 1996
Student-athlete view -- Athletes' image suffers from unfair stereotype
BY JAY LARRANAGA
Bowling Gree State University
After three years of being a student-athlete at the Division I level, I feel that I am finally beginning to understand why so many people have developed a negative opinion about college
athletes.
Despite the excitement, entertainment and publicity that college athletes provide to their university and surrounding community, the general public still seems to regard athletes as greedy and spoiled children who try to use the system to get as much money as they can. Men's basketball players in particular have been criticized for accepting money from agents or leaving school early to join the NBA.
The main reason athletes have been getting such a bad reputation is that the public is confusing the statements and actions of a few people with the beliefs and actions of all student-athletes.
Recent reports involving college basketball stars who received money from agents have brought about even more questions concerning the morality of college athletics. Many people have begun to believe that a large majority of college basketball players (and other athletes) are on the take. This is just not the case. Only a few elite players are assured of making millions of dollars in the NBA. Other college athletes simply are not in similar situations.
In men's basketball alone, there are more than 300 Division I teams, with 13 players on each team. Out of these 3,900 basketball players, maybe one percent will be approached by agents and offered money and other illegal inducements, and even fewer will ever actually accept anything.
Since I attend a school that is not in one of the media-dominated conferences, I am able to see what most college athletes go through on a daily basis. Most athletes have never even met an agent, much less been offered thousands of dollars by one. Unfortunately, the public does not get to see this side of athletics. They do not get to read about the basketball player who went from being academically ineligible as a freshman to graduating in four years or about the swimmer who
spends every Saturday helping out at a retirement home. Instead, the public usually sees stories about the one percent of the athletes who either break the rules or turn professional.
Another issue that has caused many uninformed observers to view athletes as greedy and spoiled is the issue of paying athletes. Many media personalities have urged the NCAA to pay athletes a stipend so that fewer players will leave school early to turn professional. As a college basketball player, this topic is especially interesting to me because I believe the general public feels that sportswriters and television commentators are merely voicing the opinions of athletes.
In reality, however, athletes have a very different opinion on the matter of a stipend.
We understand that a few hundred dollars a month is not going to stop someone from turning pro and making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. The reason that athletes feel a stipend is a reasonable idea is that many athletes come from low-income families and are not able to enjoy the true college experience because they simply do not have enough money. These athletes are not only football and basketball players, but they are also people who compete in sports that are not in the limelight.
Obviously, 20-year-old college students are going to make mistakes. An ordinary student might neglect to study for a midterm exam and fail a class. But that does not mean that all college students are lazy and irresponsible. It does not even mean that the specific student is lazy and irresponsible. The only thing it means is that the student made a mistake.
Likewise, student-athletes make mistakes and will continue to make mistakes. However, people should not allow the statements and actions of a few student-athletes and media personalities to detract from the reputation of the majority of student-athletes, who are not only hard-working and generous, but also a positive influence in their communities.
Jay Larranaga is a student at Bowling Green State University, where he competes on the men's basketball team.
Letters to the Editor -- Fiscal restraint leads to moral leverage
Letters to the editor
James E. Delany outlines a compelling brief (The NCAA News, June 3) for colleges and universities to reject the idea of paying athletes for competing in intercollegiate athletics.
While Mr. Delany argues this point by suggesting that "paying student-athletes to play is not supportable within the context of Big Ten intercollegiate athletics -- now or in the future," it would appear that the horses have already left the barn on that issue.
Inducements are currently made to student-athletes by way of grants-in-aid, special assistance funds, summer employment opportunities, catastrophic injury plans and insurance plans. Call it what one will, Division I athletes do receive some form of compensation for play. It seems that the question is not whether students receive compensation but how much.
From that perspective it is understandable that Mr. Delany would resist "the market forces that drive professional sports, or any other private-sector activity" in determining the value of a student-athlete in what is, in effect, a cartel: the NCAA.
More importantly, despite the reasoned logic of Mr. Delany's argument, it lacks moral suasion as long as coaches continue to earn extraordinary salaries and perks from their coaching activities, and as long as so many of those dollars that could be earmarked for broader-based programs are directed toward grandiose practice facilities, too-large coaching staffs and inflated recruiting budgets for some programs, despite their revenue-generating capacity.
Mr. Delany makes a passing reference to the unique way our country has chosen to provide for this kind of athletics competition (a system radically different than most of the rest of the world, where such competition is not so directly linked to higher education). Ours is an educational/athletics system founded upon the broader educational value of athletics competition as one of its rationalizing principles.
Because we believe (uniquely) that athletics competition has the potential to be an important part of our notion of the liberally educated man or woman, our system does indeed merit support in defending it from those who want it to be treated as just another economic activity, but it will be increasingly difficult to defend as long as we fail to exercise proper fiscal restraint and lack the firm moral footing from which we can make our case.
Tom Weingartner, Chairman
Department of Physical Education
and Director of Athletics
University of Chicago
Indian mascots unacceptable
I have recently taken a human relations class at St. Cloud State University. In this class, we have discussed how the status quo of our government and other institutions have been glorified and have manipulated the people of this country.
One particular area of concern is the problem of stereotypes placed on Native Americans by the use of mascots. In this letter, I will briefly explain to you how stereotypes of Native Americans, through mascots, create problems in our schools, in non-Indian people's views of Indians, and why we need the NCAA as well as other institutions such as high schools and professional sports teams to ban these mascots altogether.
Mascots create poor attitudes among Indian students. They have the highest dropout rates, highest suicide rates and a lack of motivation that can be traced in great part to the feelings of disgrace and humiliation that Indians suffer from their continual confrontations with negative stereotypical thinking about them from non-Indian students. This phenomenon is not unrelated to the mascots and nicknames put on them.
Stereotypical views of Native Americans have been placed on them since we can remember. Indians have been looked at as being wild savages who scalp white people. That kind of attitude is exploited throughout most of our history books in our schools.
It's about time our children, as well as most adults, learn the truth behind our stereotypes.
I believe that Christopher Columbus didn't discover America. How could he discover something that was already civilized? The Pilgrims didn't have a Thanksgiving feast to celebrate the blessings of a good harvest. They celebrated because they had battled a bloody war to obtain lands from the Indian peoples who had lived there for countless centuries before that time. That is why Indian people are portrayed the way they are: because they opposed white settlers taking their sacred lands. If your home was being taken from you, wouldn't you put up a fight to keep it?
A seasonal insult is witnessed every year as fans of Indian mascots take to the fields to cheer on their teams. Indians, Chiefs, Redskins, Warriors and even Savages are just some of the degrading nicknames used to root on teams. When was the last time you picked up the sports section of any paper and saw that the Kansas City Coons defeated the Syracuse Spicks or that the New Jersey Jews upset the Chicago Chinks?
That is the kind of humiliation Native Americans live with every day.
Is it that hard to change your school or professional team's mascot to an animal or any number of nonhuman creatures and things? Native Americans are human beings just as much, if not more, than we are. They have their own cultural values, so why do we still encourage these mascots?
As of today, there are no specific laws prohibiting the use of Native American mascots. This issue affects everyone. I see no reason why there should not be laws made to remove these mascots altogether.
Donald W. Albertson
St. Cloud State University
Opinions -- NCAA amateurism rules: Justified or just unnecessary?
Editorial
USA Today
"If 14-year-old swimmer Amanda Beard wins medals at the Olympics in Atlanta, she could lose her shot at a college scholarship.
"Gold medals in swimming are worth $65,000 from the U.S. Olympic Committee and U.S. Swimming. Accepting the money, though, jeopardizes an athlete's eligibility to compete as an amateur at the college level. And goodbye scholarship.
"The dilemma confronting Beard and other young U.S. Olympians exemplifies inequities caused by the NCAA's well-intended but too rigid adherence to amateurism. The Olympic Committee has abandoned all pretense of amateurism, but the NCAA prohibits its student-athletes from making money at their sports."
Thomas V. DiBacco, guest writer
USA Today
"Athletes get a fully paid ticket -- tuition, room, board and books -- an amount that in four years could easily reach six figures at some institutions. And they don't even have to excel in their sport to keep their scholarships. Moreover, the NCAA special assistance fund is available for athletes who have emergencies, to say nothing of the federal Pell grants that provide certain athletes with additional assistance.
"Then there is the special treatment requested of professors. After 31 years of university teaching, I'm an expert on the subject.
"Early each semester, coaches inform instructors of athletes in their classes, urging them to keep the coaches informed of academic or attendance problems that might jeopardize satisfactory grades. There's nothing unethical about such requests, but no other group of students, anxious about passing grades, is routinely brought to the instructors' attention.
"Sure, collegiate athletics is a stressful, competitive world, but relaxing NCAA rules to permit students to earn money from sports-related activities such as endorsements clearly goes beyond amateurism. No matter that the earnings would be placed in trust funds, the proposal is a form of cashing in on playing ability.
"Loans to athletes based on future earnings are even worse because they would tie the recipient to the lender, most likely pro leagues with unlimited money machines.
"The NCAA's major problem is with superstars, namely their withering ranks. Some athletes get caught violating the no-pay rules. Larger numbers of exceptionally talented high-schoolers are forsaking a free four-year college education to sign professional contracts immediately. Or college greats play a year or so and then go pro.
"All this may be regrettable, but the remedy is not to bury existing standards or make college athletes like the pros. Rather, it's for the NCAA and coaches to play their best game in convincing athletes to appreciate their good fortune and make the most of both sports and academics."
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