The current scandal takes place at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It seems that for decades students have been able to take classes that didn’t really exist in order to beef up their grade point averages so that they could continue participating in top tier athletic programs. This is the most extensive scandal of this type, but by no means the first time we’ve heard about athletes skating through academia. In my high school graduating class, several of the football players graduated without being functionally literate. This isn’t uncommon.
Here’s the sad part, though. What these dumb jocks don’t seem to realize is that they’re being used. They are merely the protein being fed into the academic meat grinder, and money is pumping out the other end. Sports are a huge source of revenue for any college, so it’s in their best interest to keep these students sports-worthy. But in the end, what does the athlete get? A very small percentage move on to the professional arena with over-inflated incomes, but even they usually spend the rest of their lives physically ruined. But the vast majority of these students graduate, having not had the benefit of a decent education, and may as well not have gone to school at all.
By getting sucked into these scandalous frauds, the athletes are the ones who are truly being cheated. Maybe someday some of them will wise up enough to be morally outraged and take legal action. Maybe someday the rest of us will stop supporting our favorite college teams and instead support our favorite college students.
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