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Welcome to the end of college football as we know it

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Re: Welcome to the end of college football as we know it

#61

Post by cafard »

dgoldstein0 wrote: post #39
dgoldstein0 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

College football and basketball seem mainly to function as publicity for the schools and, when the teams are winning, help them to get the alumni to donate more. And serve as entertainment for the non athlete students. It's profoundly weird and completely unrelated to the academic functions of the university. Lots of people confuse schools with good sports teams for schools with strong academics.

Also fun random fact, but at a lot of major US public universities, the highest paid employee would be the men's football or basketball coach.

A cousin mentioned that the basketball coach was the highest paid employee at her (private) university. I said that he was also likely to be among the easiest to fire. Even an adjunct is likely to have more chances than a coach who doesn't meet expectations.

Re: Welcome to the end of college football as we know it

#62

Post by BobaFloutist »

dgoldstein0 wrote: post #30
kashunstva wrote: post #19

As an outsider with close to zero knowledge of American football, the spectacle of college athletics seems bizarre. I mean, I understand the old principle of _mens sana in corpore sano_ but it’s a stretch to imagine college athletics serving that goal for all but a very few students. I don’t doubt that the system has produced some academic success stories but it must be the exceptional case. Instead, the whole system…

College football and basketball seem mainly to function as publicity for the schools and, when the teams are winning, help them to get the alumni to donate more. And serve as entertainment for the non athlete students. It's profoundly weird and completely unrelated to the academic functions of the university. Lots of people confuse schools with good sports teams for schools with strong academics.

> when the teams are winning,

Trust me, this qualifier is completely unnecessary. See: Cal football's inexplicable perennial popularity.

People just like having a team to cheer for, regardless of that team's success.

Re: Welcome to the end of college football as we know it

#63

Post by cafard »

mattikl wrote: post #37

I was just wondering the other day, are any of the top college athletes majoring in something demanding (in a way that it requires one to spend countless of hours learning new mental models) like CS or physics? As a European, my exposure to college sports is pretty limited, but I've never seen a major like that listed.

There have been men who earned PhDs in mathematics during or after NFL careers--quite recently HN had links to an obituary of Frank Ryan, who led the Cleveland Browns to their last NFL championship, and who taught at Case. More recently, John Urschel, a lineman for the Baltimore Ravens earned a Ph.D. and according to Wikipedia teaches at MIT.

I have the impression that college football was much less of a full time job in Ryan's day, but Urschel graduated from Penn State in 2012.

Re: Welcome to the end of college football as we know it

#65

Post by saveferris »

cafard wrote: post #61
dgoldstein0 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also fun random fact, but at a lot of major US public universities, the highest paid employee would be the men's football or basketball coach.

A cousin mentioned that the basketball coach was the highest paid employee at her (private) university. I said that he was also likely to be among the easiest to fire. Even an adjunct is likely to have more chances than a coach who doesn't meet expectations.

They can be fired but if so the school is still on the hook for paying out the rest of their contract....so, maybe easy to do but painful financially.

Football coach but the same principles apply: https://www.texastribune.org/2023/11/12/jimbo-fisher-buyout/

Re: Welcome to the end of college football as we know it

#66

Post by wolverine876 »

roenxi wrote: post #31
wolverine876 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> faith has been lost in institutions, and society in general, and rightly so in many respects. But I think instead of feeling agency to fix the issues, people feel they have to either capitulate, break the system or work outside it entirely. Yes, but it's bizarre to feel so hopeless. In this example, it worked (and we worked) far better for decades until a few years ago.

Broadly speaking, it is illegal to fix things. If there is a problem that could be fixed with industrial processes, it is a common requirement that any attempt cause no pollution and be perfectly safe. If there is a problem in the medical system any attempt at a solution must be proven to be safe and effective. If there is a social problem, any scandal will have the government move in to license and regulate it. Some…

Yet we have been doing it successfully for generations. And then people started making up theories to explain what clearly isn't true - that we somehow can't do anything. You're just not doing anything (if you actually believe this stuff). We know exactly what to do; let's get going.

> They have noticeably bettered their society in a way that the Anglosphere has not.

In what way is it better to live in China? The economy there grew faster for awhile, which is the norm for successfully developing economies, but wealth and standard of living aren't at the level of the West. Why are so many in China moving to the Anglosphere these days?

(I'm not wishing anything but the best for people in China, who should have freedom, self-determination, and continue to grow in prosperity.)

Re: Welcome to the end of college football as we know it

#67

Post by wolverine876 »

shermantanktop wrote: post #12
wolverine876 wrote: post #7

This conference realignment is obviously a bad outcome. The leaders of the universities and American academia are delivering very poor results: education is too expensive, academic freedom is limited by outsiders, and now this. What good do the conference realignments do for anyone? Who is happy or better off? The Big 10, in particular, used to be both an athletic association and an academic one, sharing resources be…

What was the norm for generations was and has always been laughable. College football has been a cancer for academia, at first fed by the deep pockets of alumni who were the real audience. The business side grew up and realized that tv rights were an even bigger prize, but along the way somehow failed to recognize that they were greasing the wheels of their money machine with the distant hopes of a pro career held by…

I agree about the long-term problems (and I'm very happy the students are finally getting paid, and they should get normal market salaries), but it's still much worse now. It's too easy to say, 'everything in the world in imperfect, and therefore all the same'.

Re: Welcome to the end of college football as we know it

#68

Post by cafard »

saveferris wrote: post #65
cafard wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A cousin mentioned that the basketball coach was the highest paid employee at her (private) university. I said that he was also likely to be among the easiest to fire. Even an adjunct is likely to have more chances than a coach who doesn't meet expectations.

They can be fired but if so the school is still on the hook for paying out the rest of their contract....so, maybe easy to do but painful financially. Football coach but the same principles apply: https://www.texastribune.org/2023/11/12/jimbo-fisher-buyout/

Fair enough.

Re: Welcome to the end of college football as we know it

#69

Post by Beldin »

listenallyall wrote: post #23
kashunstva wrote: post #19

As an outsider with close to zero knowledge of American football, the spectacle of college athletics seems bizarre. I mean, I understand the old principle of _mens sana in corpore sano_ but it’s a stretch to imagine college athletics serving that goal for all but a very few students. I don’t doubt that the system has produced some academic success stories but it must be the exceptional case. Instead, the whole system…

College athletics is a pretty good system for promoting lesser-followed sports that would have difficulty maintaining an organized league -- team volleyball, swimming, field hockey, rowing, etc -- because it provides infrastructure and funding that would unlikely be available if reliant on revenue. On the other hand, "amateur" leagues for popular sports (football, basketball) being associated with colleges is extreme…

> College athletics is a pretty good system for promoting lesser-followed sports that would have difficulty maintaining an organized league -- team volleyball, swimming, field hockey, rowing, etc -- because it provides infrastructure and funding that would unlikely be available if reliant on revenue.

And yet, outside of the USA, these sports do manage to exist, leagues and all, outside universities.

Re: Welcome to the end of college football as we know it

#70

Post by shermantanktop »

wolverine876 wrote: post #67
shermantanktop wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What was the norm for generations was and has always been laughable. College football has been a cancer for academia, at first fed by the deep pockets of alumni who were the real audience. The business side grew up and realized that tv rights were an even bigger prize, but along the way somehow failed to recognize that they were greasing the wheels of their money machine with the distant hopes of a pro career held by…

I agree about the long-term problems (and I'm very happy the students are finally getting paid, and they should get normal market salaries), but it's still much worse now. It's too easy to say, 'everything in the world in imperfect, and therefore all the same'.

Fair enough. I don't care about college football, and I see it from a distance. That might give me a less accurate perspective, or a more accurate one, depending.

But large-scale situations result from norms, incentives and behaviors. Looks like the incentives are about the same, while the behaviors are now worse and are causing norms to drift. We can shame people into better behavior in the short term, but the incentives are still there.

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