When people first hear about the name Penn State, what is the first thing that comes to their mind? Perhaps they think of the nittany lion statue or the beautiful scenery that our campus has to offer, but most of the time people bring up one thing in particular. FOOTBALL. It is no secret that Penn State is most commonly known for our D1 sports and our reputation relies heavily on the athletics that we have to offer. If we didn’t have the sports that we have now, I wonder how different our experience at Penn State would be.

It seems as though students are becoming more focused on the social aspects of college and the campus sports than they are about academics. Growing up, all throughout middle and high school, if you were in varsity sports, that sometimes came before your academics. Constantly traveling, meeting with scouts, and always practicing. A sport is a huge time commitment. The term “student athlete” was developed to emphasize that people can balance doing a competitive sport while also being a full-time student. However, a sport is more likely to get you into a better school now a days then your grades will…unless you have perfect scores. So my question is…has the culture around college sports misshapen student’s priorities?

View on the Penn State football field

Let me also add that Penn State is not the only school that has fallen under this category. In fact, a number of universities across America integrate athletics into their schools. If we were to take away intercollegiate sports from universities, a number of factors would change. For starters, the student body would change drastically. I am sure that the number of people that attend a university like Penn State would decrease greatly because many people chose a school like ours because of its reputation. In fact according to niche.com and the “Top Party Schools of 2019”, Penn State ranks #1. I’m not sure if this is something to be proud about, or worried. The reputation of the student body would change as well, for the mindsets of the students would be different. Students would choose their university based solely off the academic life instead of focusing on the college culture as a whole. However, this is something that our school would never dare to give up because our sports, especially football, brings our school and immense amount of profit.

This brings up another concern about  sports on a college campus…money. I briefly mentioned earlier that it is easier to attend universities if you are an athlete than if you are a non-athlete, especially from a financial standpoint. Most of us will go into thousands of dollars in debt once we go to college. I had a 4.0 in high school and fairly high SAT scores, but I will still owe over 100,000 in loans at the conclusion of these four years. A number of students who come to universities for sports recieve scholarships or large amounts of money. In fact, most if not all come here on a full ride. Should student-athletes receive a financial stipend in addition to scholarships? In 2013 survey expert John Dennis found that 69% of the public is opposed to paying student-athletes. This means additional money separate from the amount of scholarships they are already being “awarded”. If payments were to get involved, the athletes would be incentivized to commit to the college or university with the highest offer. The next year, they may choose to transfer to another school with an even higher offer, to get more money. Before you know it, these college sports would be 100% a business. So what direction is this going?

If students know that they can go to a more expensive and well off school if they focus on sports, then why wouldn’t they put their athletics above their academics? Is the culture around college sports confusing what students priorities should be? The NCAA reports that fewer than 2 percent of NCAA student-athletes go on to be professional athletes. It proves that academics will take you farther than playing a college sport will. If universities stopped giving such immense amount of money to athletes and took the social emphasis off of it, then maybe students would choose their school for better reasons. In the end, this will benefit the student population, the school, and the world later on at their workplace.