Do college football and basketball players get

[ikojo]

preferential treatment?

My roommate thinks pro footballers are a different breed from major league baseball players because for the most part, baseball players tend to go from high school to the majors whereas pro football and pro basketball players claim to have attended college. I am of the opinion that even if the pro football and pro basketball player played in college it doesn't mean they got an education and are any more well educated than the major league baseball player who started out of high school. My roommate said that the college atheletes don't receive preferential treatment when it comes to grades, particularly at universities such as Stanford and Duke. My opinion is that it doesn't matter how high quality one thinks a university is, if an athelete can play well enough to help a team win and bring in millions of dollars, as does college football and college basketball, then that university will find SOME way to keep that athelete in the school.

What thinks DU? Do I hate sports so much that I am blind to the geniuses playing on the fields and on the basketball courts of our universities?

[Oeditpus Rex]

1. This calls for too many generalizations

and no generalization is worth a damn — including this one (Oliver Wendell Holmes).

However, college football and basketball being money-making sports, there is more pressure on the faculty at many colleges to let those athletes skate. I trust they also get more "perks" as well. College baseball — inexplicably to me — doesn't enjoy that status, nor are its fans as rabid, so it gets second-level status.

But the idea that most baseball players sign right out of high school is archaic. Particularly with the cuts in the minor leagues, baseball prefers college to serve as part of its player development system.