Sports will not always be here

I read what Scott Van Pelt had to say about how college football/sports NIL is not sustainable and i agree with him like alot of people probably do.

However I started thinking how old are most of the modern sports, i was surprised to learn modern soccer is not that old 1863, baseball the oldest american sport 1876, football 1869 (college pre dates pro football) so you could argue college football is the oldest and most popular major sport in america. James Naismith a canadian-american christian invented basketball at the university of Kansas for the purpose of physical fitness.

As far as the oldest sports (known) overall wrestling and running about 5 thousand years ago.

Sports has been great fun in my lifetime and alot of that is clemson sports, but i believe sports in general not just college/NIL has reached a tipping point, i kind of see it as a gross excess, a symptom of a roman style empire in collapse, meaning its just so out of touch with reality it feels wrong giving too much energy to it. I think its important to remember not only is the product in our face unsustainable but is it worth saving at this point, for most of human history these sports never existed and they may go away even in some of our lifetimes depending on world circumstances as hard as it is too imagine.

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Re: Sports will not always be here

Feb 1, 2024, 4:00 PM

Really a thoughtful post, so thank you for that.

I don't really visit TNet all that much anymore as I have reached an interesting time in my life in my mid-30s with small children but did spend much of my 20s chasing the roller coaster of Tigers Football finally climbing the mountain top. That said, your post really resonates with me in a very deep way.

I can only speak for myself, and what I am seeing is an arms race, driven by school administrators to bring excess to our educational institutions outside of the main reason that these institutions exist. While I do see the importance of school athletics, I often feel that we have lost sight of the fact that our educational institutions are above all, meant to prepare our students to be functioning, additive members of society.

Back in 2018 (Pre-2020s inflation) my brother-in-law and I were sitting around looking at a comparison of the rising costs of items in society compared to the CPI from 1989 to 2018, which was just in excess of 100%, i.e. $1 in 1989 has the same buying power as ~$2 in 2018. As you would expect, food, housing, etc., increased at a reasonable rate above inflation, but the staggering stat was that college education had increased over 4X in just under 30 years. Why? Are the professors more qualified? Is the library bigger? Has the campus been completely overhauled? I don't masquerade as an expert of collegiate economics, but I can 100% attest to the fact that I lived in the same crummy dorm in 2008 that my uncle occupied in the mid-70s. I attended calculus classes in the same ugly buidling (Martin) where my mom studied actuarial science in the 70s, yet my tuition was maybe 6-times as expensive as my mother paid. (I recognize that there have been a great deal of new buildings since I graduated, and do not take this lightly but bear with me).

I do recognize that collegiate athletics can be a catalyst for many universities to attract a higher echelon of student (see Florida/Alabama/Texas in particular in the trailing 20 years), I also recognize that the influx of capital that is tangentially related to sports can filter to academia. But I see these new athletic facilities and have very sour emotions. Is this really what is needed at our educational institutions?

Bringing this tangent back to my point, with all that changed on college campuses, the glut that no one seems to get worked up about is the added number of college administrators. Assistant Deans, Executive and Administrative Assistants, different departments that are justified in the name of this cause or that cause. Support staff out the wazoo that never teach any of our students, and finally, turing our colleges into country clubs with every amenity imaginable. These are the real reasons that education is becoming less and less affordable and somewhat why I see the amount of glut put into athletics and have a similar reaction that comes back to one question: Are these people and is this spending better preparing our young people to achieve and innovate to move society forward?

TL/DR: Does spending on athletics, and employing more and more support staff at an academic institution partially at the expense of the students, better prepare our young people for society after college?