OSU Providing iPad to Student Athletes

Submitted by Huntington Wolverine on

Doc Saturday with the scoop can be read here

How is this not a violation since it's the very definition of providing athletes with a benefit not available to the normal student body?

Purkinje

May 24th, 2012 at 2:11 PM ^

Doesn't Michigan do this as well? They're on loan; they don't get to keep them. Lots of schools out there give their students iPads. It seems kind of unfair that only the student athletes get them in these cases, but meh.

Purkinje

May 24th, 2012 at 4:13 PM ^

One of my friends goes to a school that gives every student an iPad, but it turns out it isn't really a "gift"... They just tack the extra $500 onto the technology fees included with tuition and everybody gets really happy because they think it's free; they don't realize they're being forced to buy the thing.

Maize and Blue…

May 24th, 2012 at 2:44 PM ^

he donated Ipads to the football team.  They had to attach them to their football lockers so as not to provide an extra benefit.  I don't know if the has changed or not since then, but it was illegal a couple years ago.

For compliance reasons, the iPads will be mounted into each player's locker. The football staff will have the ability to send messages to the players via their iPads. The players will be able to acknowledge and respond, but their messages will be limited to football and academic personnel only.

www.huskers.com/ViewArticle.dbml?DB_OEM_ID=100&ATCLID=... - Cached

 

RationalBuckeye

May 25th, 2012 at 4:19 AM ^

Idk if you've ever been on our campus, but I'd take a segway for much needed relief. But in all seriousness, I don't think I agree with athletes getting ipads at any school, seeing as I have a tiny scholarship, and have to work for every privelege I have, but while I was not blessed with any extraordinary athletic ability at birth, the rich just keep getting richer.

denardogasm

May 24th, 2012 at 2:39 PM ^

As others have said the iPads are on loan and if you look back at the stud about the opening of the bball pdc you'll see that our players have iPads with mounts for them built into their lockers. They were raving about them when the locker room was finished. The onl issue I really have with this is that they say they're for academic enrichment purposes. I guess I dont know what else they would say and we probably sai the same thing but it's clearly a recruiting tool. If anything an iPad will hurt a kids academic success by providing constant access to angry birds and twitter.

CRISPed in the DIAG

May 24th, 2012 at 2:29 PM ^

If Braxton Miller can use the iPad to become more accurate when throwing a foward pass, I might become concerned as a Michigan fan.  Otherwise...whatever.  I dumped my first generation Ipad when it became clear that it was a better couch-toy than productivity aid.

wolverinestuckinEL

May 24th, 2012 at 2:34 PM ^

I am already jealous of the day when my daughters enroll at college and download all of their textbooks to their ipad.  I will have to tell them all about the good old days, lugging 50 lbs of books in my backpack across campus.

MaizeAndBlueWahoo

May 24th, 2012 at 4:32 PM ^

Prediction: iPad textbooks will offer bookstores even more opportunity to screw you - they'll still sell them for just as much as before but won't ever have reason to buy them back.  That ten cents on the dollar will start to look pretty good.

michchi85

May 24th, 2012 at 2:35 PM ^

I don't know why everyone is making this a big deal.  The basketball team had iPads in each locker last year, using them to become a paperless team.  I'm sure M will be issuing them to the football team in the very near future.

MaizeAndBlueWahoo

May 24th, 2012 at 2:44 PM ^

If you take the "benefit not available to the student body" too far then you'll forbid teams from handing out playbooks.  And there are a LOT of other things not available to the student body that are perfectly legal and within the realm of reason.  My football-playing housemate got free milk and other "nutrition" staples from the team supply, most of which went into White Russians for our house.

JHendo

May 24th, 2012 at 2:49 PM ^

It's a non-issue.  It's not necessarily permanently their's and it comes preloaded with standard student material.  On top of that, it's not being give to just football/basketball players but all athletes incoming and one's already there.  I just don't see a dang thing newsworthy about this even though it's OSU. 

Let us know when a Ohio booster starts handing out iPads with a pretty bow on it to just star players and then we'll have something to talk about.

maracle

May 25th, 2012 at 1:30 AM ^

It's clearly not a violation or anything, but it is kind of a funny illustration of how crazy the rules are.  No cream cheese with your bagels, but have an iPad.

 

I am curious how far you could take this.  Could you give an athlete a $6000 Alienware desktop to do homework on, as long as they had to buy their own games and give it back once they left the program?

 

Lets be honest...a laptop would be more useful for academics.  These are going to be used mostly as toys.  Sure, you can use laptops frivolously but at least they're also perfectly suited for some heavy duty work processing, can have academic software that comes with many class textbooks installed (chemistry, math, physics, etc etc)...

 

Anyway, I guess Michigan needs a few million dollars for some iPads now!

oriental andrew

May 24th, 2012 at 3:12 PM ^

On a random sidenote, Doc Saturday is boring now.  It's basically become Entertainment Tonight or Access Hollywood for college football.  Gone are the days of any meaningful analysis.  Or any analysis at all, I should say.  Waiting expectantly for the day Matt Hinton resurfaces.