The original idea was a good one: a healthy mind in a healthy body. With higher education for the former and sports for the latter. The point wasn't to make people fit for a particular job, it was just to make well educated and fit people for the elites of that time.

But things have become twisted along the way. Higher education is still there, and it has become a bit more practical, which is not bad. However the "sports" part became completely broken. Instead of giving students a good body (a noble goal), it shifted to competition, taking subpar students with great athletic skills just to beat the other college team, and overworking and ultimately breaking them. The complete opposite of the original idea.

“a healthy mind in a healthy body”

If that were the goal then they would offer daily aerobics or yoga classes and not engage in competitive sports. For most students college sports is a spectator sport and an opportunity to get drunk.

And, of course, some sports, like football, are arguably worse for your health than simply not participating in sports at all.

I wouldn't say that the "whole concept" of college sports has been detrimental to education. As a college athlete, sports allowed me to go to a school I otherwise wouldn't have been able to afford. It also taught me valuable lessons and it had no impediment on my education there.

With that said, the current system sucks. Many athletes have lost their scholarships due to injury and were then on the hook for the costs of school, requiring some to transfer or drop out. There are some sports and programs that expect most of your time to be dedicated to the sport rather than your academics. The culture around some programs is toxic.

But none of it is inherent to the idea of "college sports". Would you argue that other extracurricular activities like clubs, student government, etc., are detrimental to education? Or would you say that they provide education in other areas of life compared to pure academia?

With regard to your last paragraph. I believe it is the amount of money that is the corrupting influence. It's not college athletics per se but rather the massive amount of money spent on certain sports that generates problems. The extracurricular activities you mentioned aren't bad or detrimental to the institution's purported goal of education because there's no money corrupting those activities.

The issue here is that people are forced to play sports as essentially slave labor to afford university. University tuition should be free or cheap for everyone.

Yes, let's rip out the one major contributor to school spirit. As a non-athlete, sporting events contributed greatly to my college experience and love for my alma mater. I am lucky to have that experience rather than say in Europe where the schools are basically stale, glorified paper mills.

schools in Europe are setup completely different then american schools.

for one, people rarely live on campus and people are not connected to their educational institute asmuch as Americans. a lot of students are part of associations (some with large legacies. mainly Germanic ones). but these assosiciations are not directly linked to a particular school.

also, the major difference between american colleges and European ones in my experience is the control the school has over people's lives. American schools seem to treat their students as kids in a bigger body, and they have sometimes insanely strict rules about behaviour, student housing etc.

most European school I have experience with couldn't care less about what you do in private, and besides some support networks for mental health, think of their students as adults who should fix their own housing, income, sports etc.

Europe is not a single country where all education systems work the same.