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

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Incidentally, this basketball development system is both cost-free to the NBA and a massive revenue source for the NCAA, considering that almost 96 percent of the NCAA’s national office budget comes from television and corporate sponsorship revenues generated from the hugely popular NCAA Division I men’s basketball tournament, also known as “March Madness.”¹⁰ How the absurdity of a rule like this impacts elite sports development and what little integrity may remain in American educationally based sports, while at the same time preventing an athlete like Parker from being able to maximize his earning potential, is discussed more fully in later chapters. In my opinion, rules like this are a major example of why our current systems need to be changed, to evolve, and to provide more choices for both the elite athlete and our citizenry.

Schröder, on the other hand, developed his skills through the German club sports system, not in his local school system, on a path similar to what is offered elsewhere in Europe and in other countries. Identified as a potential elite athlete shortly after taking up basketball at a young age, he moved from the mass-participation sports clubs in the area around his hometown of Braunschweig, Germany, to the elite developmental basketball teams that serve as feeders for the top divisions of Bundesliga basketball. As an elite athlete he was able to focus on basketball at a time when his skills were at their peak. He still attended school while working his way up through the feeder clubs, and advanced schooling was often provided on-site at his clubs (a very common arrangement in Europe for higher-level clubs). Thus, education was still an important part of his total development package. For Schröder, the main difference from the US model was that he was not constrained by arbitrary academic standards that could have limited his ability to compete, or that could have led him into a substandard educational experience just to maintain his eligibility. In European systems, success (or failure) in academics is really up to the individual. There is no motivation on the part of either players or teams to violate academic standards because academic eligibility is not a requirement—nor is it needed, as the bulk of the sports development system lies completely outside formal educational borders.