It's pieces like this that make me wish you could upvote front page posts.

Between pursuing sports and pursuing say, musical studies, is that poor people also like sports practically no one under a certain income level cares too much for that form of music.

Aka, the only reason not to allow athletes to pursue their sport the same way musicians and drama students can pursue their study is just straight up classism. Yay that's valid.

If any of the ivory tower types would bother to study Howard Gardner's theories on multiple intelligences (one of which is kinesthetic; i.e., athletics), then they would have no problem with this.

Smart people are that way because they've read a lot growing up.   Great musicians because they practiced a lot.  Great athletes, same thing. 10,000 hour rule applies across endeavors and no group should be discriminated against in spite of it.

but I see he's dragged out the venerable old trope that UM Music students don't need to have the grades that other UM students need to have, they just need to be able to display sufficient musical talent, by referring to this:

"We have a model for this: music. Applicants to Michigan's School of Music have to submit a headshot, a resume, a "repertoire list", and submit to an audition. Also this:

Pre-screening recordings, portfolio, video interview, studio teacher preference, and/or writing samples required by your Department"

The fact is that the application process to the UMSMTD is a two-step process, with the first being the same thing that all other students have to complete:

"There are two parts to complete to apply to the School of Music, Theatre & Dance (SMTD): Complete the Common Application."

I'm friends with a long-time faculty member of the UM music school, and he just finished up a several-year stint as an associate dean there. I asked him straight out last year about the admission requirements for incoming freshmen to the music school, and mentioned the widespread notion held dearly by UM athletic fans that UM music students didn't have to have the same general level of academic credentials that the general student population needed, that if they were sufficiently musically talented, that was enough for admission. He categorically stated that notion was complete hogwash. In other words, you're not getting admitted to the UM music program if your GPA, ACT/SAT scores, and extracurriculars aren't good enough on their own to get into UM.

scott matzka?

YUPP.  It's just like my grandma always told me.  "You can't eat pudding AND play".

and academics is hard. It's been a longstanding problem. I don't think there is an easy solution and whatever is done there will always be someone placed at a disadvantage. There will always be temptations to cheat the system and to cheat the players.

Having said that, I think is a really terrible idea. I mean really, really terrible.

Yes, it would make life easier for athletes while they're in school. That in itself is a good thing. Much is demanded of them. But it's nothing less than a total surrender of the goal of giving every athlete a worthwhile education. If football players are allowed to major in football, they will be practically forced to do so. Anyone who doesn't is putting themselves at a great disadvantage in getting playing time. Coaches are going to push every possible player there.

In my opinion, this would simply lead to more players being cheated out of an education. By institutions that are paying them with little else that's unconscionable. Wouldn't every school in Div 1 follow suit? I don't get the value of these degrees in the aggregate. The NFL isn't going to create more jobs because there are more good players. They will assign a value of zero to any such degree. 

I'd like to see some proposals to help players who are academically unprepared when they start school. Not everyone who meets the NCAA minimums is ready, but they get pushed through anyway.

I like the direction Schlissel seems to be going, keeping our athletes from being pushed towards a single major or individual classes. When Michigan signs young people to scholarships they're making a bargain. The player will represent the school in their sport with all the commitments that entails. The school is promising a top class education and high level athletics, along with the support to help them succeed in both.

 

 

 

 

 

I know that back when I was at U-M, before the Supreme Court eliminated the strict point-based admissions scheme, you could get a bunch of points for "extraordinary talent" or something like that. If I remember right, you needed about 120 points to get accepted, you got like 80 points for a 4.0 GPA, 40 points for a perfect ACT score, underrepresented county got you 10 points, etc. The extraordinary talent bit netted you like 30 points, almost enough to offset standardized test scores. In theory, that talent could be many things: athletic ability, musical virtuosity, scientific genius. Idea being that a richer intellectual and social environment results from having a bunch of people together who are the best at what they do.

Sounds fine to me.

When I was in Japan, I regularly attended alumni association meet ups and had the privilege to meet a gymnast who graduated from the school or art and design. He was (and still is) a performer for Cirq du Soleil - apparently they recruit collegiate gymnasts. It seems that Michigan Athletics prepared him for his next career despite the fact that he wasn't a professional gymnast.

"...people are admitted to a University because they have a particular skill, are expected to hone that skill upwards of 40 hours a week, and also get a meaningful degree in something totally unrelated..."

Not necessarily disagreeing here, but, music students get a degree in music. It's entirely related to their field of study.

Music gets "lumped in as an acceptable academic pursuit" because music is academic. Music degrees are not entirely about performance on ones major instrument. Music students do not just practice their instruments, take a few unrelated classes, and graduate with a degree. The list of related academic music classes is long and challenging.

Advanced degrees (as well as experience) are required in order to teach music at the highest levels. The academic rigor required for Masters level and PhD/DMA students, as well as applicants to the highest music teaching jobs worldwide, are constantly increasing. As far as I know, high level coaching jobs require little in the way of academic rigor and lean heavily on experience.

All in all, a thought provoking post. Not sure the music degree analogy is exactly perfect, but, it's a good place to start. Some parallels there, to be sure.

How do you define and measure intelligence?

I guarantee you I could never have done the kind of things on a football field that Anthony Carter, one of my contemporaries, did.  I also guarantee you he could never have solved vector calculus partial differential equations that describe fluid flow like I did.

The ancient Greek ideal of healthy mind and body recognized physical prowess on par with intellectual prowess.  We know enough about brains today that, what AC could do, and what I could do, both had to do with specific neurological abilities, which I argue can, therefore, both be called intelligence.

Or Beethoven could do with the piano.

Or Van Gogh could do with a paintbrush.

For a University that supposedly embraces diversity, they sure don't include people with athletic intelligence.

And to illustrate Brian's final point, I met people like Marlin Jackson and Vincent Smith at the charity tailgate MGoBlog emceed prior to UTL III.  Both are outstanding men who didn't fit the snootified mold.

QED

Great post.  I expect this will gererate a lot of needed conversations and coverage.  

Essentially, that's what UNC did. It wasn't accredited and was done on the sly, but those sham academic classes existed b/c the athletes were too busy with football, basketball etc -- in essence, their "real" field of study.

Beyond that, how would future employers (i.e., not the NFL or other football leagues) react to a "BA in Football"? I would assume sales organizations would be excited (as they are already -- athletes are typically self-starters, outgoing, hard working) and a few others, but what would happen if "job placement" was bad? Would a school shut down it's "football department" b/c it's degree wasn't valued, even if they did fine on the field? My guess is they wouldn't.

Additionally, what about the (presumably) thousands of athletes who are more typical students -- who literally go to Michiga to get a (traditional) education? Would they be forced by their coaches to say, "You know, if you really cared about the team, you'd drop this engineering nonsense. That way you could spend more time in the gym"?" For sure, they would. They already feel that pressure now, but I assume it would be immense in the future. I'm not sure I'm OK with that.

Interesting idea, but I'm not sold yet.

....and that's why I read this blog and few others. That was pretty freaking awesome.

Bravo, sir. 

"Hey, we didn't come to play.....music?"

I don't want to make Sclissel into some caricature of a harumphing tweed wearing easterner, so I'll try to keep an open mind on that.  

But, if the proposal is to restrict Michigan to more people like him, I'd ask who benefits from that?  Is it for the good?

 

Craig Ross approves of this post.

We accept kids that wouldn't make it in otherwise... As we do with brilliant musicians, dancers, and I suspect the occassional illiterate physics genius.  There are however minimums that must be met and these minimums appear to be somewhat above bare NCAA minimums based on our general avoidance of criminals, "academic risks", and JUCOs.  These kids elevate themselves, with the help of their coaches, teammates and the university, to guys like Vincent Smith who is doing a hell of a lot more good in the universe than I am.  We're doing it right.  We just need to start winning. And someone needs to alert Schlissel to Brian's post.

and as requirement to graduate, every academic student must swim a mile, run a mile in less than 6  minutes, do # pullups, situps, pushups etc, bench press X, have a body fat ratio <10%......

I am a music major at U of M, though obviously not an athlete.

To solely consider being a music major a performance-based pursuit is incorrect, as a few informed individuals have pointed out. I have homework to the same extent that my peers in the other various schools do. I just also have to practice and perform on top of that. I would argue that my time is just as restricted as an athlete's, because music students, by nature, have to be pursuing a TON of out-of-class pursuits, both academic and performance-based. Furthermore, music majors are often taking more academic classes per year (I take about 9 per semester) than the typical LSA student, because each class is 0-2 credits for the most part, due to the fact that there is simply that much to learn in the same 4-5 year span that a typical LSA student would have in his/her major.

This is not a perfect parallel at all, though a venerable, virutuous, and valiant attempt. There is simply nothing exactly like college athletics.

Hey Brian,

I'm a big fan of yours and consider several of your works over the past decade to be among the best pieces of writing (sports/non-sports related) I've encountered during that time.  

But you are wrong (or, at least, misleading) in your comparison to the School of Music.  

Yes, prospective students need to submit headshots, videos, recordings, etc. as part of their "DecisionDesk Profile" but they also need to submit a Common Application like everyone else at UM.  And as a graduate of the School of Music (BFA Theatre Performance, 2001), I can tell you that my SAT score and GPA were absolutely factors in my admission to UM.  I also attended classes that were academically rigorous and required critical thinking and analytical writing far beyond what is expected of most athletes.  

I also think the idea that music is "lumped in as an acceptable academic pursuit" ignores the historical tie between the arts and higher education.  They are called "liberal arts" for a reason.  Arthur Miller, as one example, is considered one of the important moral voices of the 20th century due to his work as a playwright.  I know lots of UM football players have accomplished lots of good things beyond the gridiron (Gerald Ford comes to mind) but it's hard to make the connection between their athletic accomplishments and the goals of academia.

In other words, the idea that football is equal to the arts because they both require "hard work" is not enough to justify football's existence as an academic subject.

I don't think you are wrong in criticizing the current role of athletics in education (and, in fact, I agree that it is idiotic to expect athletes to perform at the same academic level as other students) but I think you chose the wrong comparison.  

The School of Music is an apple and Football is an orange.