Intramural, participatory sports are a wonderful thing. I have never heard anyone argue against them.

They don't require stadiums with amenities that would make royalty blush, nor seven-figure salaries paid to coaches.

Do you know what revenue the Florida State, Alabama, Texas A&M football programs bring in? The head coach if Texas A&M brings more revenue and prestige to the school (and thus higher student demand, more donations, and more licensing deals,) than some professor of gender studies does. The head coach of a top tier BCS school probably is responsible for more revenue than even the president of the university. Nobody would have ever heard of Clemson or Gonzaga without sports and most of the big state schools like Michigan would have a far lower demand without their sports programs.

There is some argument that colleges shouldn’t be a feeder for the NBA or NFL. Couldn’t we say the same about Google or any other tech company? Why should the universities be feeders for talent for private business? It’s ridiculous when you consider it that way. Why should Google benefit from a San Jose State University computer science graduate if the 49ers shouldn’t benefit from a UCLA student athlete?

Professional sports is a significant part of the US economy. [1] We could argue that programs such as gender studies, anthropology, or Classics are both heavily subsidized and pretty useless from an economic standpoint. Yet, we pay five-figure salaries to professors and six figure salaries to administrators affiliated with those fields.

I am not arguing against the value of those fields per se, only pointing out that sports are a very significant part of society and the economy, like it or not. From the benefit of the university standpoint, sports have a tremendous impact. Not many people are proud of and donate to the University of Texas because of a world-renowned ancient literature program — but because of football.

I don’t particularly like college football — I prefer baseball, however it is an exciting part of the year, especially if you are a student or alum. We waste billions of government money on ridiculous projects all the time. I think the price tag on California’s high speed train to Bakersfield is in the multi-billions? There is government funding to study the sex habits of tsetse flies? $38 million in federal money was wasted on a Ted Kennedy institute? We subsidize NPR and the National Endowment of the Arts. To be clear, I am not arguing against the National Endowment generally, only suggesting that most people don’t care about the next Mapplethorpe as they care about the next Tom Brady. Giving $5 of government money to subsidize an exhibition of Andres Serrano whose art featured a crucifix submerged in his own urine or $5 to a high school or college athletic program? Or $5 to a gender studies program? What choice would most people make? Personally, I would vote to just keep my $5 and let the people that wanted those programs to pay for it out of their own pocket.

So why are we complaining about college sports again — something tens of millions of people care about. NPR has about 30 million listeners. College football has an audience of over 160 million people. [2] The LSU-Texas game last weekend had over 5 million viewers. That’s about 6 times as many viewers as CNN gets during prime time.

[1] https://www.thestar.com/sports/football/2011/09/09/how_the_n... [2] https://footballfoundation.org/news/2019/6/11/2018-19_Attend...

> Couldn’t we say the same about Google or any other tech company? Why should the universities be feeders for talent for private business? It’s ridiculous when you consider it that way. Why should Google benefit from a San Jose State University computer science graduate if the 49ers shouldn’t benefit from a UCLA student athlete?

I've been saying precisely this. The public is footing the bill for training employees for corporations.

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.

That's a nice anecdote.

In the real world, though, athletics keep at-risk kids in school and trying to get grades because they want to play and need to make satisfactory progress in order to do so. Athletics have helped a ton of kids grow into prosperous adults because it kept them invested in their educations until they realized that it's what they needed to do anyway.

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.

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

Of course that is bizarre.

It is also bizarre to make a claim about "better run" countries where people just walk home instead of other transport methods

Edit: You seem to be having a conversation with yourself and making points that no one is arguing with. Maybe try replying to what people say instead of forming a different argument and then attacking that.

I don't think it's bizarre to say that urban planning that prioritizes walkability is 'better'. Sure it's opinionated which may be taboo these days, but is it a bizarre opinion? No, I don't think so.

Of course there are plenty of American communities that I'd describe as highly walkable, but even then you have social matters to contend with, such as rampant "stranger danger" paranoia and lawsuit culture that, in America, have some school district in walkable communities forbidding students to walk to school for liability/paranoia reasons. I don't think it's bizarre to describe communities without those two issues as 'better.'

You've completely changed your argument. First it was "sports have nothing to do with receiving a basic education." Now you concede that participating in sports can be a big positive, but in some cases a positive only available to the children of richer students.

To that I say:

1) Plenty of poor kids do find ways to participate in school sports. Let's not throw that baby out with the bathwater.

2) Where this is not possible, it would be better to find ways to make it possible than to get rid of something good for everyone.

I never said sports were bad. Organized team sports after-school are not part of a basic education. Since after-school sports activities favor the well-off, we should not use public funds for such activities. Those education dollars should be spent to help the education part, not the rich-kid sports part.

If you want to have public sports programs, that's fine. It has nothing to do with school, should be an entirely separate pool of money, and IMO, should be entirely self-funded.