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Alabama tracking students' locations to penalize them for leaving games early

nytimes.com

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Re: Alabama tracking students' locations to penalize them for leaving games early

#41

Post by pitt1980 »

qws wrote: post #22
impendia wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why can't the American football industry run itself more like the American baseball industry? I am a very strong opponent of the overwhelming sports culture at American universities, and of the absurd sums of money spent to sustain it. (Example: Dabo Swinney was just given a $93 million contract to remain the football coach of Clemson.) This >Defenders of the current system will often claim that football is profita…

Is it really still profitable in e.g. that case of Dabo Swinney landing a 93 million dollar contract?

The places where the profitability of football is in question is basically everything lower than the 5 main conferences (Big 10, SEC, ACC, Big XII, and Pac 10), and especially the schools lower than that level which aren't reliable winners. (Think the San Jose State's of the world)

Clemson football generated 50 million dollars last year

https://www.greenvilleonline.com/story/sports/college/clemso...

While 93 million over 10 years works out to being a pretty sizable chunk of that for one employee,

yeah, its still a profitable enterprise

Re: Alabama tracking students' locations to penalize them for leaving games early

#42

Post by humbleMouse »

Ethical concerns aside, why didn't they do some simple load testing before putting the app in production? Seems like it would be obvious that your api needs to handle 17,000 requests at a time if your making "fan" software for college football games.

Re: Alabama tracking students' locations to penalize them for leaving games early

#43

Post by magduf »

harryh wrote: post #35
ramphastidae wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If one simply takes the behavior of the vast majority of universities in the US at face value it should be quite clear. Their priority is not education, it is profit. That's really it. Believing otherwise is like believing the priority of health insurance companies is public health or the priority of for-profit prisons is rehabilitation.

The vast majority of universities in the US are non-profit institutions.

"Non-profit" doesn't mean that profit isn't the primary motive. It just means you can't show any profit, or return it to shareholders, as in a corporation.

Instead, you do things like giving the University President an absurdly enormous salary, plus put him up in a lavish mansion, or go on a construction spree, building more and more very expensive buildings and stadiums, or give a 7-figure salary to the football coach.

Re: Alabama tracking students' locations to penalize them for leaving games early

#44

Post by jly »

impendia wrote: post #10
partialrecall wrote: post #3

It's not at all clear to me why we allow American football and universities to have such a perverse relationship, when it's plain to see that football itself has nothing to do with education, except insofar as it's an activity that many students enjoy (but there is no shortage of other non-academic activities that many students share, such as baseball...) And in cases like this, where students are leaving the game ea…

> Why can't the American football industry run itself more like the American baseball industry? I am a very strong opponent of the overwhelming sports culture at American universities, and of the absurd sums of money spent to sustain it. (Example: Dabo Swinney was just given a $93 million contract to remain the football coach of Clemson.) This >Defenders of the current system will often claim that football is profita…

I don't mind the strong sports culture. College football has an immense history dating back to the late 1800s as an organized national collegiate activity. I'm a fan and I enjoy the history and pageantry of the sport. Athletic departments are self-funded by donations, TV rights, ticket sales, and merchandise, and they take no money that would otherwise be allocated to academics. They also can increase the brand of a university, as you pointed out.

I take issue with a couple things: First is that unpaid 'workers' are responsible for driving an industry now worth billions of dollars. Second is that some scholarship athletes are admitted to schools they have no business attending on academic merit, and end up in essentially remedial education. This is true even at prestigious schools with high-level academics.

Re: Alabama tracking students' locations to penalize them for leaving games early

#45

Post by endorphone »

partialrecall wrote: post #3

It's not at all clear to me why we allow American football and universities to have such a perverse relationship, when it's plain to see that football itself has nothing to do with education, except insofar as it's an activity that many students enjoy (but there is no shortage of other non-academic activities that many students share, such as baseball...) And in cases like this, where students are leaving the game ea…

"Defenders of the current system will often claim that football is profitable for universities and provides funding for academics"

It is spectacularly profitable at some schools, and often provides funding for the entire athletics departments (every scholarship for every fringe sport, etc).

https://www.forbes.com/sites/chrissmith/2019/09/12/college-f...

Of course it isn't profitable for all schools, but it certainly is for Alabama, and for most of the other schools that generally come up in the "football is expensive" discussion.

It isn't academic, but at the same time neither is music, or the arts, or many other essential elements of many post-secondary experiences. It has always been about more than the pure sciences or maths.

Re: Alabama tracking students' locations to penalize them for leaving games early

#46

Post by reroute1 »

magduf wrote: post #23
linuxftw wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason is money. Where I'm from, only the rich kids do after school sports. The poor kids have two working parents and they can't afford to miss work to pick them up after school. We're subsidizing the rich kids to play sports with public funds, and that's total BS. Not everyone lives in a city, so they can't just take a public bus home after school and the after-school activity buses were canceled.

In better-run countries, poor kids don't need to be picked up by parents, or take a bus home; instead, they just walk home.

WOW! What a well run country where people walk home...

Re: Alabama tracking students' locations to penalize them for leaving games early

#47

Post by partialrecall »

linuxftw wrote: post #14
harryh wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should schools only provide a basic education? There are a great many reasons to participate in after school sports: general health and fitness, teamwork, confidence, community. Schools can't do this too?

The reason is money. Where I'm from, only the rich kids do after school sports. The poor kids have two working parents and they can't afford to miss work to pick them up after school. We're subsidizing the rich kids to play sports with public funds, and that's total BS. Not everyone lives in a city, so they can't just take a public bus home after school and the after-school activity buses were canceled.

That doesn't really fit my experience. Both my parents were working hard hours when I was in highschool and my participation in after-school sports meant that I was occupied until they finished out their work day (which ends in the evening, contrasting with the schoolday which ended in the early afternoon.) Practice before school was convenient for the same reason; my dad had to leave for work at 4:30am, and my practice started at 5am, so that worked out well.

Re: Alabama tracking students' locations to penalize them for leaving games early

#48

Post by wnevets »

partialrecall wrote: post #3

It's not at all clear to me why we allow American football and universities to have such a perverse relationship, when it's plain to see that football itself has nothing to do with education, except insofar as it's an activity that many students enjoy (but there is no shortage of other non-academic activities that many students share, such as baseball...) And in cases like this, where students are leaving the game ea…

>It's not at all clear to me why we allow American football and universities to have such a perverse relationship,

Money, lots and lots of money.

Re: Alabama tracking students' locations to penalize them for leaving games early

#49

Post by partialrecall »

reroute1 wrote: post #46
magduf wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In better-run countries, poor kids don't need to be picked up by parents, or take a bus home; instead, they just walk home.

WOW! What a well run country where people walk home...

The notion that there's anything inherently wrong with walking is really bizarre.

Re: Alabama tracking students' locations to penalize them for leaving games early

#50

Post by headcanon »

partialrecall wrote: post #3

It's not at all clear to me why we allow American football and universities to have such a perverse relationship, when it's plain to see that football itself has nothing to do with education, except insofar as it's an activity that many students enjoy (but there is no shortage of other non-academic activities that many students share, such as baseball...) And in cases like this, where students are leaving the game ea…

I hate it too, but its clearly profitable - people want to watch football and spend money on tickets and merchandise, and universities ended up being a good vehicle to drive fanbases. Its not realistic to ask people to not want to be football fans and not spend money on that interest, and not realistic to ask universities to not take that money.

The most realistic potential improvement I can see is requiring public universities to reinvest some percentage of sports program profits (mostly coming from football/basketball in the US) back into academic programs and tuition assistance for non-athletes. Currently many unversities have academics and sports existing in separate financial universes.

Edit: The same universities do reinvest football/basketball profits back into other sports programs, which is great. Athleticism in general is IMO an essential part of education. But universities need to remember their core mission is education, and everything that a university does needs to feed that mission somehow.

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