Big Time College Football: An Introduction

Like a segment of the US population, I love college football. I grew up watching that indomitable UTEP (University of Texas-El Paso) football team lose most of their games; how they tried to win and how the city of El Paso cheered for victories, but it was rarely to be. The most exciting game each season was when UTEP played New Mexico State during the, ‘Battle of I-10’. This rivalry was exciting because whoever won would have bragging rights for that 40 mile section of I-10 between El Paso and Las Cruces and during particularly difficult years, it might be the only win of the season.

As I grew up into young adulthood in the 90s, I stood by my beloved college football and watched it every Saturday. When Sunday arrived I loathed the NFL; bloated salaries, lack of subtlety, and overt, in-your-face capitalism. As a student of the fine arts I could not support an organization that was only about one thing, making money. But how I loved college football; the young men that played college football played it for the love of the game; each player had a fierce passion, enthusiasm, and a deep commitment to their team and their school. I felt a kinship with these players because I felt the same passion and commitment for classical music; all was perfect.

                                          

But then something changed. I got a little older and started looking at higher education as the place where adults, young and old go to be transformed through academic learning and first-hand experience. If a student goes to college they go to improve their life through academic enhancement, skills acquisition, and career preparation. Ideally this preparation is grounded in a solid liberal arts foundation with a core program that allows them to be successful at whatever they do after college.

This brings me back to college football. According to the NCAA, 1.7% of senior football players will be drafted into the NFL. This laughably small percentage is well, small. In any highly competitive field, and I mean highly competitive, only a small percentage of people actually get ‘jobs’ but this tenuous reality is not the case for the vast majority of students who get degrees at America’s colleges and universities. Do only 1.7% of MBA graduates get jobs? Do only 1.7% of MDs or JDs eventually find employment? Of course not. The comparison is apples to cannon balls. If a student becomes a student-athlete for a football college program, they have a 98.3% chance of not being drafted into the NFL (it is understood that different colleges and conferences have different stats).

Most college football players know that the likelihood of getting into the NFL is slim, but do they know the chance of them finishing an undergraduate degree is also diminished by playing big time college football? I am going to ignore the NCAA’s Graduation Success Rate because in my opinion, it is pretty goofy. There is nothing like creating some metrics to make yourself look good, no matter how well meaning. I am going to strictly look at outcomes, and the 2012 Adjusted Graduation Gap (AAG) Report, provided by Dr. Richard Southall, delivers. According to the Adjusted Graduation Gap, the SEC is minus eighteen and the PAC-12, which is the worst of the worst, is minus twenty-seven. This means that when you take the Federal Graduation Rate (FGR) for these conferences and add the Adjusted Graduation Gap you will have the graduation rate for big time college football programs. This shows that student athlete graduation outcomes at big-time football programs struggle because of the demanding requirements of playing Division I football and the variety of student specific issues that contribute to this struggle.

Now do most athletes who play college football expect to get drafted into the NFL? No. Do most of them study hard to attain their degrees? Yes. But the reality is that many big time college football programs are businesses that have nothing to do with the colleges they are attached to. Although BSC schools are some of the most highly regarded research institutions in land, what do research dollars, mostly driven by graduate students, have to do with undergraduate football student athletes besides getting alumni to donate money?

College football, specifically big time college football, does did not meet the needs of the student athletes who play the game. To make things worse, high profile colleges programs make millions of dollars on the talents off these young adults and pay them a pittance, sorry, give them scholarships and grants for their efforts. Administrators talk about student athletes and drop names such as Robert Griffin III and his impressive academic accomplishment at Baylor, but in reality, a noticeable percentage of student athletes go to big time programs only to prepare them for the NFL.

With so many fond college football memories, I, like many, am concerned about the countless football controversies. Besides the acute trauma that occurred at Penn State, most football controversies are about money (on the back end, Penn State is also about money once you get past the horror). How many years did it take for the powers-that-be to agree on a playoff system in college football? This type of ‘controversy’ takes the attention off the real reason students go to college, to get an education and prepare them for the future.