Ralph Nader Wants To Put An End To Athletic Scholarships

Sheesh, all those silly Tea Partyers out there doing silly Tea Partyer things, and he is picking on scholarships.

Some schools do need based, Dartmouth (an Ivy League school) for one. Yet athletic scholarships encourage people with less focus on academics to concentrate on academics, at least in high school, sufficient to get them to college. What happens after, well...

We can talk a lot about athletics, in the same way we can talk about beauty contests and such for young kids. Gifted athletes are spotted at a very early age, and people start lining up to hitch their wagon to that child, it is inane. How about that issue, Ralph - you know, helpless, exploited child, versus big adult getting scholarship?

And if it is college athletics he wishes to take on, where was he when Title IX first passed in 1972, when 300,000 women played vs 3,000,000 million men? Wouldn't that have been a major issue to tackle? Wouldn't equalisation via scholarship have been a wonderful issue for him to sink his teeth into?

Or, if gender doesn't stir his college passion, he can take on the exploitation of athletes by the big time Division I football and basketball schools, who use these gifted athletes (only a fraction of whom will play pro) yet look the other way on some of them getting a real education, the NCAA making billions in TV revenue.

Oh well. We all find issues that tweak us, not necessarily because it is a big issue overall, or in our lives. I guess more people hear him rant than most of us. '-)

nellewrites ( http://nellewrites.wordpress.com/ )

As I live just east of Columbus, deep within OSU territory, I've been following the NCAA drama with Coach Tressel and the players who accepted money for memorabilia. So, yes, I recognize that the system is kind of wonky and needs some changes, but I don't think Nader's plan is the appropriate course of action. Unfortunately, I don't quite have the answer either, but I know that offering less educational opportunity won't serve the public in any real way.

Contributing Editor Jenna Hatfield (@FireMom ( http://twitter.com/FireMom )) blogs at Stop, Drop and Blog ( http://stopdropandblog.com ) and The Chronicles of Munchkin Land ( http://thechroniclesofmunchkinland.com ). She is a freelance writer and photographer.

The promise of athletic scholarships goes even further. I remember Sherron Collins, former point guard for the Kansas Jayhawks (and key member of our '08 championship team), telling about growing up in Chicago. He said that it was an unstated agreement among the competing gangs that he was off limits, that he wouldn't be recruited to any gang, because he had mad basketball skills. The fact that he had college recruiters watching him from a young age and had a clear path out kept him safe from gang wars. And as a result, in 2010, his mother got to realize her dream of watching her son graduate from college.

Preaching to the Choir ( http://rantsofapublicdefender.blogspot.com/ )