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Archive for the ‘Athletics and Admissions’ Category

College Recruitment and Sports Scholarships: What You Need To Be Doing Right Now

Thursday, July 16th, 2009

Your an athlete about to enter your last year of high school and training is probably set to start sometime in the next few weeks. Playing college sports is an incredible opportunity. As an athlete you are challenged at an entirely different competitive level. As a student, you are automatically enriching your college experience with college sports in a way that most people never have the chance to.

Getting into the college of your choice by levering you athletic skills requires some self-marketing. Yes, there are recruiters, but you may not be on their radar. Yet. There are also thousands of sports scholarships out there to help you pay for college. Here are a few tips for college sports  that you can get started on right now, if you haven’t already.

Put together a highlights tape. You should do this after your junior year. Good highlight tapes display your versatility during play and at practice. There’s probably someone at school who’s offered his services in putting these videos together. Whether you outsource or cut and edit the video yourself, you should be integrally involved in its creation. You want the tape to show your most impressive plays but not you doing the exact same thing over and over. Make it compelling to watch. Include stats, or any pertinent and impressive information that you think colleges should know. Show it to your coaches for feedback. He might have some good insight. Post it on your Takkle account and on YouTube. You can’t have too much exposure.

Another reason why you should show this tape to your coach is that he is going to be very important for connecting you with college recruiters. Start talking to your coaches now. Make sure your on good grounds with them. If there are new coaches coming in for this season, make the extra effort to get to know them. Hopefully in the last few years of play you have established a relationship with your coaches so when it comes to asking them for help applying to college and getting scholarships they’ll be more than willing to.

Do scholarship research. Find out when the applications for all the scholarships you may be eligible for are due and put them in your calendar. Once you have your highlight DVD, start preparing packages for the college coaches and for scholarships (if applicable). Having all of these things prepared will allow you to pursue the more important tasks of establishing connections with coaches at different universities.

One last piece of advice: keep your marks up. Off the field is just as important. College coaches and recruiters look for individuals who are well-rounded. Show that you’re good for something other than scoring goals, or whatever it is that you do. You can lose NCAA eligibility if your college marks are no good. Recruiters don’t want to waste space and scholarship funds on someone who won’t even be able to play. Your job is to be amazing. Now you just have to market yourself so that everyone knows you are.

POSTED BY Bloggin' with Robin IN Athletics and Admissions, College Baseball, College Basketball, College Conferences, College Football, College softball, Scholarships, Uncategorized
07.16.09
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College Sports Draft Rules Stir Debate

Thursday, July 9th, 2009

One of the college sports topics that we keep seeing come up on our radar over and over again is the debate over different policies for drafting young athletes into college sports. Specifically, our college sports search tends towards the theme of whether or not the NBA’s 1 year-of- college requirement is legit. But the argument goes deeper. Here’s the gist of the problem people have: college sports

So, both the NBA and the NFL have a requirement that an athlete needs to be out of high school for a certain number of years before they can be drafted and turn pro. For the NBA this minimum is one, although some people in the NCAA are trying to make it 2. For the NFL, this minimum is three. The other two major North American team sports (in terms of revenue) are hockey and baseball. The NHL and MLB respectively do not have any such requirements on years out of high school for the athletes they draft. As a result very few players and managers and coaches (since most of them started their careers as players) have a college degree.

On the surface, the reasoning behind the requirements in the NBA and NFL is that its a good thing because it forces athletes to get an education. Second, it lets the players get better and play in a more competitive environment so that a pro team drafting them will feel better about investing millions in a rookie. If the college- drafted player can’t cut it at the pro level, at the very least, he can fall back on a college degree.

This hints at the real reason for minimum requirements for drafting into these two sports. College athletes, poised from the start to turn pro are essentially celebrities. Their skills can give the team an entirely different competitive edge. Some of these guys are as close as it gets to celebrities, with the eyes of national sports fans avidly watching where they might end up (especially in basketball). Having these stars on their teams brings in millions of dollars for the institutions involved and the coach. Think of all the merchandise sold for USC with OJ Mayo’s name emboldened on back. The players don’t make a dime. Entering here is the whiny response, that at least they get a free education. Besides the fact that restricting players from turning pro violates a slew of anti-trust laws about fair competition, these policies really speak to mechanics of professional sports, which, for those in charge, is driven by money (not that we blame them, this has been the prevailing ideology of our society).

People take up a lot of blog and print space discussing if and how to change the one-and-done system for college sports in football and basketball. Many are against the idea of paying the players while they’re in college because that would even further remove the traditional idea of a college athlete (by the way, what exactly is the typical traditional college athlete? Just out of curiosity?).

One blog writer Clay Travis at Fanhouse.com suggests that the reason for the draft age requirements in the NBA and the NFL have to do with the deep rooted racial paternalism. Where 65 to 80% of players in both sports are black, compared to about 2% in hockey, his argument goes that the rules were put in place due to a paternalistic view that black athletes should go to college first because they weren’t prepared enough to make career decisions yet. Of course this ties in nicely with the whole indentured labor concept of NCAA athletes for soon-to-be pros. I think this argument is spurious, however thought provoking it may be.

This is an issue with no obvious solution. And the beast that has become football and basketball college drafting has proven to be a tough one to tame. Even when the NCAA decides to involve itself in various scandals and schools suffer penalties, those receiving the penalties are the other team members. Without looking too deeply into it though, I’m inclined to say, let’s keep the status quo. It’s hard to feel bad for unpaid college athletes who essentially get a free ride and unparalleled career opportunities. Either way, we’d love to hear what you think.

Next up, we’ll discuss the bowl championship series. This serious issue was recently brought up at a senate hearing. It’s just not fair that the financial crisis should take away from this defected championship system.

POSTED BY Bloggin' with Robin IN Athletic Associations, Athletics and Admissions, College Baseball, College Basketball, College Football, Race and Sports, Sports News
07.09.09
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Title IX: The Battle of the Sexes Over College Sports Funding Rages

Thursday, June 18th, 2009

 Title IX is a law that requires, among other things, proportionally equal funding to men and women’s college sports. At face value, this law sounds like a great idea for women and for college sports. You’d think opposition to Title IX would be hard to find. When many college sports like football and basketball generate millions of dollars with players who use college as a springboard to get to the pros it would be hard to disagree with the concept of throwing a few bucks to the ladies. But it’s not.

For some, Title IX is at its best a dictation of resource spending to guarantee fair access to sports to half the population who tend to be denied athletic opportunities. Others says its an idiotic law that deprives deserving male athletes, specifically minorities. Or, is it a righteous civil liberty that should be honored at all costs? Well, which one is it? You know, I’m not sure.

Sports were integral to me growing up. Seeing Gloria Steinem speak when I was ten, in addition to a Nike poster that lingered in my bedroom for years about letting girls play sports, I can’t deny my leaning. A law that codifies the concept of fair and equal access to athletic opportunities seems pretty legit to me. Title IX of the Civil Rights Act’s contribution to women’s athletics in the last 30 plus years has been significant.

According to the Women’s Sports Foundation, females have 1.3 million fewer high school and 56,110 fewer college sports participation opportunities than males and receive $148 million less in athletic scholarship funds each year. Women’s sports accounts for only 8% of all print and television sports media coverage (just exceeding horses, dogs and fishing). Why? Well according the Yahoo Answers, it’s because women’s sports suck and the outfits aren’t sexy enough (except tennis and volleyball). I raise this stat because generally only popular sports get funding and support; hence the need for gender parity collegiate athletic spending.

But many opponents see Title IX as an affirmative action program that robs deserving male athletes. Somewhat ironically, the argument is that where affirmative action favors women, it hurts other minorities, like black male athletes, in greater proportions. The growing gender disparity between male and female enrollment in college, most prominent among the black population, could be remedied by offering more sports opportunities to men. An oft cited example of Title IX’s irrationality was Howard University’s, a Historically Black College, addition of women’s bowling at the expense of the men’s baseball and wrestling teams. As a former coach at Howard University put it, “The impact of Title IX’s proportionality standard has been disastrous because . . . far more males than females are seeking to take part in athletics.” When colleges need to arbitrarily create sports teams and cut more popular ones to avoid a lawsuit from rabid women’s groups, something is whack.

Still I can’t help but throw (and probably miss) something in that argument’s face. Far more males than females are interested in sports because they’ve had more opportunities and resources to be engaged in sports throughout their education. The older you get the fewer opportunities there are for girls to play sports, less women can participate in competitive athletics, making women’s professional sports a smaller industry than it could be. Coming full circle, there are fewer famous female athlete role models for young girls, who then decide to be stupid bimbos like Miley Cyrus. Basically, creating more opportunities for women in sports can only lead to more women participating in sports. Hopefully this doesn’t come at the cost of deserving men’s teams, because denying buff young athletes their skin tight baseball uniforms doesn’t just hurt them, its hurts all of us.

POSTED BY Bloggin' with Robin IN Athletics and Admissions, College Baseball, Gender and Sports, Race and Sports, Uncategorized
06.18.09
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