For Love of the Game
There’s more to college athletes than just toned abs.
Written by Riane Menardi
They’re the royalty of college campuses. Gifts rain down on them, and crowds pump their fists with every win and sob with every loss. Student athletes seem to get all the perks—easier schedules, excuses for missing class and homework, free stuff, and most importantly, scholarships. Rumors fly about the special treatment of these celebrated heroes, but off the field, they’re just regular Joes.
A day in the life
David Schmitt’s day starts at 5 a.m. when he hits the freezing pool. Then it’s on to breakfast, classes, another four hour practice, “and then eat and study, study, study,” he says. Schmitt is a first-year swimmer at the University of Wyoming. “The whole sports thing plays a role in how much you can handle in school,” says Schmitt, who hasn’t decided his major yet. “You might not be pursuing a really hard major because you have to balance sports too.”
Being an NCAA athlete isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, Schmitt says. “Playing a sport makes things really difficult,” Schmitt says. “Sometimes things go by so fast and it makes it hard to have a normal college life.”
Kayla Hodgson, a first-year softball player and occupational therapy student at the College of St. Mary’s in Omaha, Neb. agrees. “An athlete takes about 12 to 15 credits because doing a sport is really difficult,” she says. Hodgson is taking 17 credits this semester, but says that’s only because the professors for her major made it easy for her by planning her schedule around softball.
Most state schools require athletes to maintain a 2.0 GPA. St. Mary’s, a private school with about 1,000 students, requires its athletes to be passing 12 credit hours a semester. If they drop below that, they lose scholarship money and aren’t allowed to compete. Jared Bruggeman, assistant athletic director for Northern Arizona University (NAU), says that academics always trump athletics. “Sometimes to get an athlete back on track, a coach might tell them to take some time off and focus on their studies,” he says. Even though an ineligible athlete can’t compete, they must still attend classes and practices with the team. Bruggeman says athletes are held to a higher standard than normal students because they represent their school on a national level and are always in the spotlight.
The A-team
Advantages abound when you’re the pride and joy of your university. Athletes get big bucks for their mad skills. Many schools pay for at least half of all school-related expenses through the athletic department, with most shelling out for full-rides. NAU pays for every athlete, almost down to the last text book. “The only things we don’t cover are the class fees,” Bruggeman says. “And next year, we’ll start covering those too.” Many schools find ways to pair their athletic scholarships with academic scholarships so the check gets even fatter.
The freebies don’t hurt either. Lana Christensen, a first-year diver and biomedical and microbiology magjor at NAU, says perks make competing on a college team a little sweeter. She says there are bonuses besides scoring the latest shoes and workout clothes for free. “We get institutional excuses to miss school, and the professors have to let us make it up,” Christensen says. But not everyone sees eye-to-eye with the athletic department. “You can definitely tell that some teachers hate athletes,” she says. “They hate acknowledging that you have to be gone and it’s sometimes a disadvantage.”
When athletes struggle, they don’t have to wait long for help. Most state universities keep special academic tutors and advisors on hand to help balance athletes’ sports lives with their class work. Erik Nyre, a first-year landscape architecture student at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, works in the student athlete academic center. “Having separate advisors could be considered a perk,” he says. “There are close to ten advisors reserved only for athletes, so they probably get more attention than a mainstream student.”
At most schools, athletes are required to attend study tables. “The advisors and the tutor coordinator work to provide the athletes with tutoring sessions on a regular basis,” Nyre says. Wyoming is the same way, and Schmitt says he’s required to spend about eight hours a week at study tables. And when he or his teammates need some extra help, the athletic department takes care of it and schedules a tutor.
Though private school athletes don’t get as much loot as those at state schools, there are still perks. Hodgson says she gets free clothes and gets excused from classes for games. “We don’t get as much funding as big schools,” she says. “They take a charter buses to games and stuff, and we have to take a school bus or a mini van.” But she says she never hears anything negative about athletes getting special treatment at her school.
But all the money, free stuff, travel, class exemptions, and easy access to study help is enough to make any regular student turn green with envy.
Great expectations
Some folks are blinded by the glitzy glamour of college stars and try to pin them as unable to do it without extensive aid from their schools. “As far as special treatment goes, I don’t think they get a lot of it, or at least not as much as some probably think they do,” Nyre says.
In class, basketball stars are just like normal students, with the same expectations. Sure, their college experience comes with a big, fat scholarship, but they’re paid for their skills just like other students are paid for their smarts.
“I’m generally happy with the way Madison treats athletes and non-athletes,” Nyre says. “I really believe that the school, and the NCAA for that matter, has found a pretty fair way of treating us.”
Working it out
The NCAA has recently started cracking down on their athletes by implementing a program designed to keep them accountable for their studies. It requires universities to report the graduation rate of athletes and remove scholarships for a year if athletes are in poor academic standing. And, if a school gets a bad track record, they could be punished with scholarship reductions, recruiting restrictions, and limits on preseason and postseason competitions.
Perks or not, students athletes aren’t the campus royalty you might expect. Most of the special treatment they receive is available for any college student. Let’s face it—if they’re going to keep us entertained, we can afford to let them have a free sweatshirt or two.
