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Rewarding College Athletes

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All over the United States, seniors graduate high school looking forward to the next step of their lives at college. For some, they reserve the privilege of receiving large amounts of scholarship money for athletics; for others, they receive a much lesser monetary award for grade point average and ACT or SAT scores. All over the country, college students are praised for being great athletes but are expected to do less academically. For many reasons, collegiate athletes should not be awarded so much individual scholarship money or appraisal for being athletic.
Every year, the recruitment of collegiate athletes takes time and effort because coaches have to carefully hand pick the most talented players to represent their university. There are …show more content…
At the expense of the players’ education, the athletes face an important decision that shapes the rest of their life: overcome challenges in education or overcome them in athletics. In the top grossing sports in college, “graduation rates for college football and basketball players are sixteen percent and twenty five percent” (Kronstadt); these statistics lie below the national average. Additionally, the academic standing of student athletes exists as a secondary priority to a majority of athletes, which hinders athletic individuals from receiving a full and appropriate higher education; moreover, the university encourages their athletes to slack off and focus on winning rather than taking challenging classes to build rapport and intelligence in their desired field. Even more disturbing, the university attempts to keep these players in the game by having their “academic advisors… point...towards the easiest classes, all with the goal of maintaining their grades to keep them eligible to play” (Kronstadt). Young adults attend college for a higher education to acquire a degree to improve their standard of living in the near future. Unfortunately, the students who choose to participate in sports fail to challenge themselves academically as per advice from the advisors at the college or university. Because of an imbalance of time between classes, practice, games, etc., student athletes “will experience issues related to adjustment problems, emotional concerns, and psychological distress as a result of their participation” (Watson). This is prevalent in freshman athletes who are not yet adjusted to the collegiate dual life of an athlete and student. Collegiate athletes, coaxed by universities to do so, value athletics more than their education and are still rewarded with scholarships and

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