Читать книгу Alternative Models of Sports Development in America. Solutions to a Crisis in Education and Public Health онлайн

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As a society, we continue to cling to the notion of playing for the love of the game in American educationally based sports, but ultimately it does not seem that the public would mind if college athletes became overtly professional, as they just want to watch the games.⁶ That might be an inaccurate view on my part, but it doesn’t seem to be, as the games themselves are what attract the fans specifically at colleges, universities, and primary and secondary schools. We are cheering for the names on the front of the jersey—the institutions—and for the names on the back of the jerseys chiefly as representatives of the institutions that hold our loyalty. Consequently, if we were watching sports where the participants were real students, competing as an avocation, we would likely be just as happy and cheer the same way as we do under the quasi-professional athletic model that exists today in the upper reaches of the American educational system. Regardless of where we end up with sports development in America, it is clear that this “educational ideal” is dying, because we simply are not doing what we claim and are often not providing athletes the education that is cited as being so valuable to them. Meanwhile, college athletes—and, to a lesser extent, other amateur athletes—are restricted, in many ways unlike any other American citizens, from monetizing their economic utility when it is at its peak earning potential. I predict that, if so many continue to profit from college athletics, but not the athlete labor themselves, the current model in America will ultimately cease to exist in theory or practice.