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

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Academic scandals and improprieties regarding athletic eligibility are not just the domain of intercollegiate athletics. Unfortunately, this has been happening not only at the commercialized level of NCAA Division I sports, but at the high school and youth sports levels. Middle and high schools are not immune to the desire to keep athletes on the field no matter what the cost, and scandals have damaged school-based sports in America for many years. A recent example is the private, football powerhouse Bellevue High School in a suburb of Seattle, Washington. It was alleged that the remarkable success of the school’s football program, considered one of the nation’s elite high school programs, having produced several NCAA Division I players, depended on players who weren’t actually Bellevue High students. As strange as that may sound, according to the Seattle Times it appears that up to seventeen of the athletes became eligible to play “by traveling to a Bellevue office park for classes at an obscure, 40-student private school: The Academic Institute, Inc.,” which many Bellevue faculty stated did not adhere to basic educational standards. The high tuition to this storefront school was often picked up by the coaching staff or wealthy boosters (Liebeskind and Baker 2015). This is just one of many examples of high school programs rivaling their college counterparts as to how far some institutions of learning will go in abandoning their educational mission to gain a few wins.