> 1. Most athletes take fewer and easier classes during their season

This only makes sense if the goal of academia is to get students to pass tests, rather than to get them to learn.

...but not in education.

The US system of making athletes waste time in university is quite unique and ridiculous.

Because they are not semi-pro athletes. They are university students first and amateur athletes second. Or at least that's what's being claimed. And as students, they have to pass the same general education curriculum as every other student in the university, and to the same standards.

> If, as adults, they choose not to pursue academic studies, and instead choose to focus all of their energy on sports, then they should be allowed to do that without putting their sports career at risk.

Sure. But this should be done outside of a university environment. The problem is not that athletes expected to be good students. The problem is that in the US they are expected to be students at all.

And so are music departments.

Which I think is part of the point here. I firmly believe that playing right tackle can teach you just as much as playing the oboe, yet intellectuals tend to look down on former and praise the latter. Organized sports are not only a hobby and social gathering, but they can also serve as part of a greater learning and education experience. There is a reason why a few of the Ivy League schools rank near the top of all universities when it comes to the number of varsity athletes.

>that college-level sports is hugely abusive and exploitative to the players which actually play it.

You need to be specific here. Big revenue college sports (basically only Div I basketball and Div I-A football) are definitely exploitative, but most college athletes participate in sports that generate little revenue and it would be hard to argue they are being exploited.

The NCAA.

Ironically, it also has the same bullshit lofty wording around why this is ok. I think this combination of research + vocational school + sport is going to have this kind of problem.

I think you misunderstood my point. Sports was my introduction to the school. That does not mean sports is the only thing I know about the school. I learned about their academic reputation because of sports.

I didn't mean that - I mean people applying for I don't know engineering or whatever having to compete by showing how good their extra-curriculars were.

You can actually immediately see this with the constant busts of universities breaking NCAA rules on player compensation. If these athletes truly did not bring value, then there would be no reason to break these compensation rules to provide value back to them.

Your wording is false. Florida is a state and the state never did this. The reporting is already on the form, but is optional. Some private industries wanted to make it mandatory, but the gov has no control over this.

https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-desantis-florida-sport...

Not under the current NCAA rules, no.

http://www.ncaa.org/about/frequently-asked-questions-about-n...

For 95+% of colleges athletes, their experience with college sports has absolutely nothing in common with professional sports. The pro-football edge case should probably be addressed somehow, but not in a way that ruins amateur sports for everyone else.

Because there are semi-pro teams and university teams, and the two things are not the same thing.

> If, as adults, they choose not to pursue academic studies, and instead choose to focus all of their energy on sports, then they should be allowed to do that without putting their sports career at risk.

Sure, and if they choose to do that, they should do it somewhere other than an academic institution.

This isn't going to happen in the current environment. There is literally billions of dollars of profit at stake.

And sadly, even if they succeed on this track into the world of professional sports, the joke academics and lack of financial training (if you had a financial education you would never play college sports anyway...) mean that they're set up to go broke and fail in life as soon as the injuries add up or their athletic ability is no longer exceptional to their peer group.

The example I always use is when a college coach tells an athlete they've been accepted to a college before the admissions committee formerly approves them, and they actually get rejected. This happens dozens of times per year, and the reason you never see any lawsuits about it is that the colleges just let them in to avoid the bad publicity.

There are probably some who wouldn't be accepted to their school on academic merit alone.

Aside from that, I'm very opposed to college football (and soccer) as it's played now because of what we know know about brain injuries. I wouldn't be surprised to see a class action lawsuit in the future from current players that shuts down the programs at a lot of smaller schools.

Any coach working today knows that the way they are asking the kids to play will injure them.

No one is forced to do anything here, as if children from low income families somehow have less agency than others.

You can complain about a system where children from low income families make a rational calculation to skirt the rules to better their position.

No one is talking about regulating endorsements. The law simply says you can’t keep a player off a team for being paid.

What? The NCAA has nothing to do with it. The US federal government independently created regulations that make payment of student athletes undesirable regardless of whether the NCAA even exists. Title XI requires that all collegiate athletes receive identical opportunities and benefits, which clearly doesn't make sense for sports that aren't profit centers if cash compensation is added to the mix.

>the feds should simply extend the ban to the rest of society and make pro sports illegal.

Why? This clearly doesn't solve a gambling issue, as you can already place bets on NCAA events. And further, it doesn't really make sense given the economic structure and social mores of the contemporary United States. Aside from the fact that a ban on pro sports would fly in the face of centuries of case law prohibiting arbitrary government interference with private enterprises, I'm fairly certain that any representative sample of the contemporary US population would find your proposition both strange and unnecessary.

Especially since someone else with none of the talent and assuming none of the risk, is making wheelbarrows full of money.