School Funding of Sports - Comments

Yahoo just came out with a new article over this very subject, stating that athletes on average have a 0.55-0.75 higher then non-athletic students...it's at http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/highschool-prep-rally/study-shows-school-sports-improve-grades-while-more-221934443.html if you want to read it yourself, it just made me wonder why we would cut something that actually helps out students?

Dude. Not to sound harsh, but 100% DISAGREE with you. The world is not only about academics. I myself am a serious athlete, and sports keep you in shape, teach you about motivation and team spirit, and give unfortunate people a chance to change their lives. Do you know how many athletes were once poor, living in a run-down house or completely HOMELESS? Do you? Sports were their ticket out of the dump and into something they love to do and play. Sports are also fun and is a fast way to relieve stress. Who wants to be under stress all the time because they have some academic to do? Not said in the best way possible, you know damn well what I mean. This article, this was just awful to me. Sports, it's such a wonderful thing. Without sports, I believe this plant would be in more mayhem than it already is. Oh, and if you're so worried about academia, did you notice you were supposed to put a question mark in the first sentence of paragraph 3? Yeah, that's right. I noticed.
Check your grammar.

I wont say how well this article was researched, or how well it was written, but what I will say is this; I am a tri sport athlete for a small town. Sports not only keep me in shape, they are the sole reason I am school. Without sports, I tend to skip school, but since you have to be at school to go to practice, and you have to practice to play, I have to go to school. I am a gifted student, but do not maintain that 3.8 gpa because I take such demanding classes while being an athlete, my GPA is a 3.6. Besides that, there are relatively few scholarships, for the number of athletes out there so not very many people are just getting into college. I also feel that while there are some downsides to athletics, there are numerous upsides to it, one being it creates a since of unity in the community, have you ever seen a more proud community,than when a team comes home from going to a state tourneyment and doing well? I havent.

This article was written poorly. It's so judgy. Yes, some athletes just skate by, doing the bare minumim in class so they can preform on the feild. But most of the athletes I know are actually very smart, and the college scholarships that they work hard and earn enable them to go to great schools so they can go into a career, not go into professional sports for a living. Get to know the subject of your writing and do proper resherch before bashing a group of people.

This article was not researched well, no counter argument, and shows you didn't even look at the other side. i don't play sports but I come from a town where sports are important to the community. I know for a fact that many of the star athletes at my schools have very high GPAs (by the way a 3.8 is unrealistic to say the least). Take for example swimmers, we had a school new broadcast showing how early they wake up every morning, the extra work they put into their schoolwork and an overall well rounded person the sport has made them. However I agree, we should put the focus on the education itself but there has to be a happy-medium. If you did more research, showed some sign that you even considered the student athletes side, and maybe even had an interview or two of some people at your school it would have been a much stronger argument. If you were trying to rant, you win but if you wanted a stronger article you need to put a little more effort into it. Sorry for sounding so harsh, and I would look forward to seeing how you improve on your next article because you do have passion for this topic which is the spark that ligths off a great article. Good luck

In my city they have to have a C- or above to play sports and thats not fair, that means they are barely passing.

I third Kurtri but I would also like to state that if you toned your voice down a bit and explained more into both sides of the argument that, then people would be more likely to take your side then your voice saying "I'm right I'm right I'm right" What about the students whose sports would be cut? How many people would go to depression? How many kids would stop going to school because they have no reason to go anymore? How many lessons do you learn from raw hard work at something you love? How many life lessons does a sport teach a person? How many lessons does being on a team teach a person? None of this stuff you can learn sitting in a classroom with individual work and no motivation.

I was going to state how the GPA is a requirement for athletes in order to maintain on a team and they are not just skating by on their talents, but Kurtni has already done that for me. So I must just say that I second what Kurtni has said.

I didnt mean to say that sports are all bad, sorry if I put it that way. Just that why are we spending all this money on sports when we can barely afford to pay teachers and buy new school supplies.

This seems a little harsh, but to each their own. I will say that a 3.8 or higher GPA standard is completely unrealistic. Honors at my college cuts off at 3.5.

This strikes me as a very poorly researched article. For one thing, you didn't cite any sources, and I really question the 17 trillion dollar number, and if includes money that comes from private donations, and you also didn't include the fact that most taxes for school improvements are put on voter ballots and approved by the public because school improvements are important to people. The image you paint of the disenfranchised tax payer is just plain inaccurate.

Additionally, I don't think you understand how student athletic programs in college actually work. In their off season of whatever their sport is, most student athletes take an extra one to two classes to stay on track to graduate, and an extra six hours of college credits is a mind boggling amount of work. And all college athletic teams have minimum GPA requirements, and most of them are between 2.5 and 3.0, and which means they have to make Bs or better. I noticed you listed your age as 15, so you probably don't realize how unrealistic a 3.8 GPA is for the majority of students, athletes or not. I'm in my universities honors college and our minimum GPA isn't even that high (and in spite of the picture you paint, a LOT of my universities athletes are incredibly smart and in the honors college)

Participation in sports during high school and college actually correlates with higher GPAs, leadership abilities and team skills, all invaluable whether you end up becoming a professional athlete or not. As someone who played sports in high school, I'm completely offended by the "dumb athlete" image you're perpetrating, but I take satisfaction in knowing it's not accurate at all.

And additionally, with childhood obesity becoming such a growing problem in America, investing in things that lead to exercise and physical involvement from kids is one of the smartest things we can do.