Higher Standards for Student Athletes

Sports have been around for years. In 1636, lacrosse became the first sport in America. Later on in 1837, education came along which led to high school and college and of coulp[rse sports got bigger as time went on which led us to student-athletes. In today's modern society, being a student- athlete is popular. Being a student-athlete is about being a student first; therefore, keeping up good grades should be a top priority. To be a student- athlete, it requires a trained or skilled person to be fit in exercises, sports, or games. A student- athlete is a person that competes in organized competitive sports sponsored at an educational institutional in which he or she is enrolled. The United States have had organized sports in schools since 1903, thanks to Luther Gulick who established the public Schools Athletic League (PSAL) that caused similar leagues in 177 cities by 1915. A sport is an activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others for entertainment.

The year of 1891, basketball was invented by James Naismith in Springfield, Massachusetts. On June 6, 1946, the National Basketball Association (NBA) was founded, on April 24, 1996, the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) was founded. On November 20, 1869 football was created by Walter Camp in Canton, Ohio. On August 20, 1920, the National Football League (NFL) was founded. High school student- athletes schedule and standards are not as stressful as college athletes. Being a student- athlete in college and a student - athlete in high school are similar with some differences. Being an athlete period comes with many different responsibilities than just being a normale student. Athletes are set to a higher standard than the average student in high school and collegiate level.

One major area student- athletes are held to a higher standard academically. According to Clyde Benton Jr, Damion Baugh, and Jahleel Billingsley, all student- athletes representing LeMoyne Owens, Memphis University, and the University of Alabama agreed that being a student- athlete in high school is a little lighter than being an athlete in college, but with similar responsibilities with less time. Freshman shooting guard Clyde Benton Jr on LeMoyne Owens men’s basketball team, said as student-athlete his main focuses are being on top of his classes and maintaining a 3.0 grade point average as a student but, from a basketball standpoint, his responsibilities are keeping his body in shape, eating healthy, and getting enough rest with having 9:00 am classes which causes him to wake up two hours early for breakfast.

Benton implied that his life as a student-athlete is based on the clock due to his early mornings and late nights with classes ranging from 9:00 am to 12:15 pm with lunch, getting an hour of rest before a three hour practice on a good day, having individual workouts, and still having homework when coming back to his dorm. He also believes being a student-athlete in high school v.s a student-athlete in college is similar because his responsibilities does not change when it comes to staying on top of his school work as well as staying in shape; however, Benton believes that because athletes are now on their own they have more freedom in the outside world because “you don't have anybody watching over you (parents, grandma, etc) but with freedom comes more responsibilities as an adult and higher standards as an athlete”.

Freshman Jahleel Billingsley who is a tight end on the men’s football team at the University of Alabama believes that athletes are held to a higher standard when it comes to being a student and even an athlete although athletes have more lenient when it comes down to their professor because his professors understand his daily schedule with 8:00 am and 9:00 am tutoring sections Mondays and Wednesdays, 8:30 tutoring sections on Tuesdays and Thursdays with a 9:30 English class and another class at 11:00 am following two to three hour team meetings back at the complex before a two hour practice and another tutoring session for an hour at 7:00pm. However, Billingsley does not thinks it’s a massive difference from high school because he has been playing football for the past 14 years and based off of his experiences he had times when he had to be alone and take care of himself.

Many athletes are so focused on their sport and performing well athletically that they only worry about maintaining their eligibility. Many of these students choose easy majors, take easy courses, etc. Many stereotypes exist about the academic success and failure of student-athletes. The idea of the “dumb jock” is often promulgated, unchallenged, by the general academic community. In order to determine if athletes do worse because of the time commitment of athletic practices, games, etc., a study was conducted by Maloney and McCormick to compare the grades of athletes during and out of season. If athletes performed worse during their sport season, in terms of GPA, then it would make sense that it is indeed the time of college athletics that hinders their performance. In football, the in season coefficient was -0.543. This number shows that football players receive a full letter grade lower in half of the classes they take during their season. In their offseason, their grades are better than non-athletes but are not high enough to negate the effects of their lower in-season grades.

In the other seven sports with seasons that are well defined, the results showed a coefficient of -0.312. This coefficient shows that athletes get a letter grade worse than their non-athlete counterparts in 30% of the classes they take during their sport season. An interesting finding of the study, however, was that in the six nonrevenue sports, the coefficient was a mere -0.012. This coefficient means that nonrevenue athletes receive a grade lower only roughly 1% of the time, a very small difference. In the offseason, these same athletes received a grade letter higher than their peers 5% of the time, making their GPA’s higher than their fellow undergraduates over the course of a year. In addition, these nonrevenue athletes had no significant grading differential between their on-season and off-season grades. For the purpose of the study, the sports with well-defined seasons were those where there was one semester (Fall or Spring) where there was significantly more practice times, meetings, etc. In this study the sports with well-defined seasons were baseball, football, golf, soccer, tennis (men’s and women’s) and volleyball. Both football and the seven well defined sports had positive coefficients in their offseason but not high enough to counter their negative coefficients during the season.

Some variables pertaining to these results were whether athletes take harder courses, larger course loads or came to school less prepared. The results found that athletes in revenue sports do not take larger course loads during season; in fact, they take much lighter loads. Therefore, course load is not a determinant of the different grades in and out of season. In addition, the study found that in terms of course difficulty, athletes tend to take courses of similar difficulty during their season and in the offseason. Therefore, the difficulty of the course is not a reason for lower academic performance. Lastly, it was suggested that maybe athletes are less qualified entering students because of poorer high school educations. However, the results show that, in general, athletes come from high schools that are educationally equal to those of regular students.