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Thoughts on Higher Education:
A fellow Colgate coach said to me the other day, complaining about the effect classes resuming has on his players after the winter break, “I wish they realized they don’t have to be great at everything.”
I chuckled and we finished our chat and moved on with our day. I was reading the paper after dinner that night when it hit me…we work for an educational institution! It is one thing to ask students to be great students, but another thing to ask them to be great athletes at the expense of their studies. I know this coach didn’t mean his students should be the worst of the stereotype and ignore the books, but the wording, the literal meaning of his words belied a belief that we can, as coaches, overlook the fact that we are beholden to the mission of the institutions…which is to produce students who excel in the classroom. By definition, athletics are extra-curricular. As in: outside of the curriculum, not inherently part of the academic education. Look it up in Websters.
I’m the first person to claim sports are essential to a youth’s education, any group-oriented activity, really, competitive or otherwise. But I worry about the many coaches who fail to thoroughly support and advocate excellence in the classroom. Just the other day a Florida State football assistant caught some heat for telling Myron Rolle he was making a mistake going to Oxford to study as a Rhodes Scholar instead of entering the NFL draft. Huh? How many people study at Oxford?! What are the contributions to humanity by Oxford graduates? I’m guessing slightly more impressive than the corresponding body of work by NFL alumnus. If you haven’t heard of Myron, Google him; he’s the best example of a student who plays sports in a long time.
Look, if someone coaches a school team, of any sort, they should know the mission of that institution and support it. There are ways of winning games without compromising the education, and there are ways of being great that needn’t conflict between the classroom and the playing arena. If I’m a parent, I’m looking for coaches who educate according to, or beyond, the standard of that institution. If I’m a student being recruited, I’m looking for coaches who encourage study abroad, classes that have labs (which invariably conflict with practices!) and other extracurricular activities. There is way too much interesting and beneficial stuff going on on the average college campus for a student to spend the four years shuttling between sports and classes. Play for a coach who supports, in actions as well as words, the variety of activities on the campus they work on.
It’s estimated that 60% of NBA players are broke, chapter 11, within five years of retirement. Average salary, in case you were wondering, is around 4 million dollars a year. I bet some of those guys could have benefited from an honest college education, a complete education. Maybe if they’d been encouraged to be great off the court, as well as on, they would have been capable of more than anyone gave them credit for (usually the case, in my experience) and been wiser about how to manage their lives and finances. Perhaps not. Either way, if they had the education, at least they wouldn’t be able to look back at their share of the 4 million dollar average and regret they hadn’t done everything possible to keep it.