[81alum]

Pressuring someone to take a medical scholarship may be dishonest and unethical, but it does not rise to the same level of sleaze that I had in mind. 

I also have no problems with taking someone off a team if they are not performing well, provided that some alternative resources are available to allow them to complete their academic degree.

What I abhor is the idea that some universities could be discarding students when they don't live up to football expectations.  Given that the primary mission of a university is providing students with an education,  I think a university has an obligation to see that any student it admits has a reasonable opportunity to complete a degree.  A University is not a corporation, after all, and football players are not employees that should be fired for poor performance.

So a football player removed from a football scholarship does not trouble me so much as the possibility that such a player might be abandoned and forced to drop out of school.  I guess that should have been my question--whether that kind of exploitation was happening.

There are many other kinds of issues, though, in removing a player from a team.  At the university where I teach our athletes get all kinds of academic advantages--special counseling, constant monitoring of their academic performance, etc. in an effort to improve the school's lousy APR.  If a student is removed from the team all of that academic support vanishes and they would be far more likely to fail academically.

For all these reasons I think that requiring scholarships to be awarded for four years (subject to adequate academic progress)  would be the ethical and academically sound thing to do, or at a minimum requiring that players who lose their athletic scholarships receive comparable financial aid packages.

[81alum]

Pressuring someone to take a medical scholarship may be dishonest and unethical, but it does not rise to the same level of sleaze that I had in mind. 

I also have no problems with taking someone off a team if they are not performing well, provided that some alternative resources are available to allow them to complete their academic degree.

What I abhor is the idea that some universities could be discarding students when they don't live up to football expectations.  Given that the primary mission of a university is providing students with an education,  I think a university has an obligation to see that any student it admits has a reasonable opportunity to complete a degree.  A University is not a corporation, after all, and football players are not employees that should be fired for poor performance.

So a football player removed from a football scholarship does not trouble me so much as the possibility that such a player might be abandoned and forced to drop out of school.  I guess that should have been my question--whether that kind of exploitation was happening.

There are many other kinds of issues, though, in removing a player from a team.  At the university where I teach our athletes get all kinds of academic advantages--special counseling, constant monitoring of their academic performance, etc. in an effort to improve the school's lousy APR.  If a student is removed from the team all of that academic support vanishes and they would be far more likely to fail academically.

For all these reasons I think that requiring scholarships to be awarded for four years (subject to adequate academic progress)  would be the ethical and academically sound thing to do, or at a minimum requiring that players who lose their athletic scholarships receive comparable financial aid packages.