Abuse in Intercollegiate Sports

On March 7th, 2013, we discussed the topic of abuse in intercollegiate sports. One of the major problems in intercollegiate sports is where illegal recruiting violations have occured. College athletes are ammatures and are not allowed to receive any money for participation. Some division 1 schools have been caught violating this rule by giving money to athletes encouraging them to come to their school to play a sport, this is an unfair advantage. Another form of abuse that has been noticed is the alternating of grades and transcripts so the athlete can be eligible for a sport. Another thing is that easy majors are being made so that classes are easy enough for the athletes to pass all their classes in order to have a high GPA.

Reggie Bush is one of the top athletes
 to be caught in illegal recruiting violations and was stripped of
his heisman trophy.

Also mentioned in class, exploitation of athletes is another form of abuse in intercollegiate sports. The school uses the athletes image to promote selling tickets and merchandise in order to make money. The last issue discussed was pressure to win. The athletes get a lot of pressure from coaches, teammates, classmates, etc, to play at a high level day in and day out. Found again in Coakley's text on page 504, the lives of many intercollegiate athletes are controlled by coaches who's careers depend on making sure that athletes are completely dedicated to their sports. If they have an athletic scholarship, they are at the mercy of coaches who determine whether their scholarships will be renewed each year (Wolverton, 2008). Because of this, athletes are put in a tough position to focus mainly on their sport because they dont have control of their scholarship, and if they speak out or have a problem with the coaching or faculty staff it is possible that they could end up losing their scholarship if they are not 100% fully devoted to their sport.


http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023%2FA%3A1025477824078?LI=true#