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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

#81

Post by basementcat »

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?

University athletic departments have to compete with NFL salaries in much the same way that university CS departments have to compete with FAANG salaries.

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

#82

Post by selectodude »

cafard wrote: post #74
bgilroy26 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we will look back on this period of American universities (between say the 1980s and whenever the NFL gets a basic minor league) as a great aberration. College sports were meant to be clubs of enthusiasts from the student body, not a parallel big business. Maybe as an intermediate step, you could have schools that sponsor the teams and offer scholarships for when the players leave professional sports. That wo…

I would not bet against the NFL. Still, the very short life of the XFL suggests to me that Americans want to see their minor league football with college branding.

College football is not a quality product. The kids are young, the vast majority aren’t going to even sniff a pro career, there are hundreds of teams to dilute all the talent and most of the games are blowouts. The entire business model is the personal connection with your school. There’s literally no other reason to watch.

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

#83

Post by s1artibartfast »

aripickar wrote: post #68
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…

Football in general provides massive benefits to Universities. 1. Football (and mens basketball) are forced to pay more or less for the rest of all the other sports on campus[0]. Because of Title IX, student athletes/scholarships provided need to be equal across gender, which means that there need to be women's teams, which almost always lose money. You can make an argument that there shouldn't be other men's sports…

Regarding 1) Can the title IX issue be resolved by separating the sport budgets from academic budgets? If the football programs receive no money from the general budget, is their mere existence discriminatory, assuming equal numbers of scholarships are given to female athletes?

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

#84

Post by s1artibartfast »

irrational wrote: post #26

Next step is tracking students' locations to penalizing them for not attending the games at all. I attended a Division 1 school and in the six years I was there (bachelors and masters) I never attended a sports event. It seemed (and still seems) like an incredible waste of time and money to me.

If that was your experience, then you probably wouldn't mind the "penalty" of deprioritized football playoff tickets.

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

#85

Post by vonmoltke »

grogenaut wrote: post #67
journalctl wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

College football players need a union. The upper echelons make millions, and the students get a free ride and traumatic brain injuries. Hardly a fair deal.

A lot of students don't really get a free ride. They get a free ride to be on the team, like an unpaid internship. The realities of a D1 team is that, depending on the school and the player, barely go to school. In D1 the priority is Sports, Academics. I played in D3 where the priority is Academics, Sports. We calculated we spent at least 800 hours per season on the sport. About 3000 hours over 4 years. D1 sports is…

> In D1 the priority is Sports, Academics.

That is an uncharitable overgeneralization. There are 345 D1 schools. Many, if not most, do not have that prioritization.

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

#87

Post by rhinoceraptor »

aripickar wrote: post #68
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…

Football in general provides massive benefits to Universities. 1. Football (and mens basketball) are forced to pay more or less for the rest of all the other sports on campus[0]. Because of Title IX, student athletes/scholarships provided need to be equal across gender, which means that there need to be women's teams, which almost always lose money. You can make an argument that there shouldn't be other men's sports…

> probably the most underpaid state employee

What about the athletes themselves who are taking years off their lives, while getting absolutely no compensation?

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

#88

Post by EpicEng »

stirbot wrote: post #7

Towards the end of my time as a student at the University of Michigan I stopped buying tickets to the games. Between the crowds, security, drunk strangers, the sun in September or the cold rain in November - it's just more fun and more comfortable to watch at home with friends.

>it's just more fun and more comfortable to watch at home with friends.

For you, but obviously many people disagree.

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

#89

Post by klenwell »

tlrobinson wrote: post #37

Alternative less-clickbaity headline: Alabama incentivizes students to stay at games by offering improved chances of getting playoff tickets. When I first read the headline my mind naturally jumped to the most extreme interpretation: Alabama was using some sort of involuntary tracking technology to lower students' GPAs if they don't attend football games. Obviously very far-fetched, but knowing how much Alabama loves…

The current NY Times headline (did it change?) doesn't mention penalties but emphasizes the creepy tracking part:

Orwellabama? Crimson Tide Track Locations to Keep Students at Games

But for that gross invasion of privacy, I'd say this was a pretty clever solution.

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

#90

Post by dragonwriter »

slg wrote: post #69
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 plain to see that football itself has nothing to do with education, except insofar as it's an activity that many students enjoy Sports are part of a traditional old-school liberal arts education. That is why the Ivy League schools have some of the largest athletic departments in the country even though they don't generate revenue anywhere close to schools like Alabama or Ohio State. It is really no different th…

> Sports are part of a traditional old-school liberal arts education.

A traditional, old-school liberal arts education consists of exactly the seven liberal arts, divided into the trivium ([Latin] grammar, logic, and rhetoric) followed by the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, theory of music, and astronomy.)

The slightly less old-school version takes the old trivium deemphasizes formal logic, and adds Greek, history, moral philosophy, and poetry.

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