Today I’ll examine some other countries sports systems, and how they differ from American college athletics.
An article on postandcourier.com states that “In Europe, Canada, and Central and South America, the notion of playing for your local high school or even a university is, well, foreign. The United States is one of the few countries in the world where athletes play for their respective schools with the hope of earning college scholarships or even professional contracts” (Miller). The reason for this is because in most countries in the world, besides the U.S, athlete development is started at a young age and then develops into local or national proffessional clubs (Miller).
Many colleges in America place as much emphasis, if not more, on their athletic programs as they do on education. In other countries, this is not the case. Most countries around the world focus their universities around education and only education. If a student in high school – or younger even – shows promise for athletics, they are placed in special programs to develop those skills and move on to become professional. That path is separate from the ones that other students take to achieve higher education. Countries in Europe have much more separate athletic and educational environments than Americans do. This puts a lot less stress on those who choose the sports path, and those who choose to pursue further education. This is not to say that there are no sports in other countries, but simply to show that they are much less emphasized and certainly not a large part of the university’s programs, especially compared to American colleges.
The focus on either sports or school also allows for other countries to have much better sports players (especially in soccer) than Americans. Because the players can devote most of their time to their sport without having to worry about their education, they excel at it. Mastersoccermind.com shares that “if you take sports like American football, basketball, and baseball, you have to go to college for you to be part of a professional team in the future. Clearly, this is something that you don’t expect to see in European soccer. Time to balance the two isn’t available” (mastersoccermind.com). This goes back to the stress that is placed on most American college athletes, because they have to keep their grades up, while still doing well and improving in their sport (which takes a lot of time away from their education).The level of committment and time that European soccer players must demonstrate removes their options of attending universities (mastersoccermind.com). 
Is the emphasis that the American education system puts on sports taking a toll on both the education systems and the athletics programs? Some believe that Americans should follow suit and remove the high importance that is placed on U.S. high school and college sports (Miller). For more information on American’s education system in relations to sports, see this article on The Atlantic.
Works cited:
https://mastersoccermind.com/8-reasons-why-soccer-players-dont-go-to-college-in-europe/
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/10/the-case-against-high-school-sports/309447/
Picture links:
https://humankinetics.me/2019/07/11/most-popular-sports-in-europe/
This is a really interesting post and I honestly never thought about the differences between sports in America compared to other countries. I cannot imagine the stress that college athletes must feel in order to keep up with their school work and improve in their sport. I wonder if the US would benefit from changing our educational and athletic programs to mirror the mechanisms used in other countries across the world.
I think this post does a great job of comparing american sports to those overseas. Especially at big schools like Penn State, I agree that sometimes too much emphasis can be put on athletics, which forces athletes to lack in schoolwork. I never realized that we are one of the few countries to have such a strong association with schools and athletics; I thought this was a worldwide thing. This being said, I definitely think administrators should look at how athletics work in other countries so that we can revise the system here and provide athletes with more opportunities outside of the athletics that are dominating their life.
I never really considered that playing for your high school or college as an American experience. This really makes a great argument for the continued push for the NCAA to improve the way that is treats the athletes that they profit off of.
This post was very interesting. Personally, I absolutely do agree with the fact that American schools should give students who demonstrate an exemplary athletic prowess an option as to whether they would rather continue forward with their education, or continue on as an athlete- and as an athlete alone. America does make it especially difficult to be an athlete since a caliber of success in both spectrums are demanded. This is definitely likely to create a dissonance and you did a great job of indicating that.