Based on data from those requests and dozens of interviews, a CNN investigation revealed that most schools have between 7% and 18% of revenue sport athletes who are reading at an elementary school level. Some had even higher percentages of below-threshold athletes.According to those academic experts, the threshold for being college-literate is a score of 400 on the SAT critical reading or writing test. On the ACT, that threshold is 16.Many student-athletes scored in the 200s and 300s on the SAT critical reading test -- a threshold that experts told us was an elementary reading level and too low for college classes. The lowest score possible on that part of the SAT is 200, and the national average is 500.On the ACT, we found some students scoring in the single digits, when the highest possible score is 36 and the national average is 20. In most cases, the team average ACT reading score was in the high teens."It is in many ways immoral for the university to even admit that student," said Dr. Richard M. Southall, director of the College Sport Research Institute and a professor at the University of South Carolina.
Former and current academic advisers, tutors and professors say it's nearly impossible to jump from an elementary to a college reading level while juggling a hectic schedule as an NCAA athlete. They say the NCAA graduation rates are flawed because they don't reflect when a student is being helped too much by academic support."They're pushing them through," said Billy Hawkins, an associate professor and athlete mentor at the University of Georgia."They're graduating them. UGA is graduating No. 2 in the SEC, so they're able to graduate athletes, but have they learned anything? Are they productive citizens now? That's a thing I worry about. To get a degree is one thing, to be functional with that degree is totally different."
“The belief that college sports are a financial boon to colleges and universities is generally misguided," the [Delta Cost Project] report states. "Although some big-time college sports athletic departments are self-supporting – and some sports may be profitable enough to help support other campus sports programs – more often than not, the colleges and universities are subsidizing athletics, not the other way around.”
Texas which generates on average almost $50 million a year, has seen incredible sustained growth. In 2003, their profit margin was $34.6 million. In the year 2009? $68.8 million!
Amazingly the state of Alabama is at the top for college football revenue, though the state remains generally poor in GDP/GSP related measures.
In fact 40 teams averaged a loss in money through football over the 7-year period. It's no wonder that some schools are willing to travel into SEC country year in and year out for a hefty payday even though its [sic] another guaranteed loss.
Women's sports lose money and only men's basketball/football are profitable.
I admit it, this bloke Usborne's op-ed is pushing all the right buttons with me: too much money spent on Iraq and U.S. political campaigns, not enough on health care and vital infrastructure; and Americans' silly and expensive obsession with sports and sports stadiums. (I hope it's as good for you as it was for me!….)
Our Man In New York: Baseball and bombs get the cash - bridges are just dull
By David Usborne
06 August 2007 | The Independent Online
It may be the wealthiest nation in the world but the US sure has odd priorities when it comes to spending all that cash. Bridges and roads at home are allowed to crumble until the worst happens, while wars and weapons are never too expensive.
Budget analysts in Congress last week reckoned the $500bn (£250bn) of taxpayers money allocated so far on wrecking and then rebuilding Iraq will double before it's all over to $1 trillion. The war now accounts for 10 per cent of everything the government spends.
It is even more depressing when you consider the things that should have public funding lavished on them. It would be nice to see universal health care introduced, but that is too expensive and sounds like socialism. More money for the arts, education and the poor would be good too. And how about choking the torrents (albeit partly from private sources) spent on electing presidents?
No one could help but be astounded by last week's images of the bridge collapse in Minneapolis. The miracle, given the timing in the middle of rush hour, was that more people did not perish. That it happened is not such a surprise, however. We now learn there are tens of thousands of bridges across the US considered "structurally deficient" and in need of repair.
You don't have to visit this country for long to see how its transport infrastructure has deteriorated since the interstate system was built by Eisenhower in the Fifties.
Never taken that pot-holed ride from JFK to Manhattan? Fasten your seatbelts for more turbulence. Or covered your ears in the screeching tunnels of the city's antiquated subways? As for a cross-country ride on Amtrak, good luck.
Money here tends to flow towards items that make the pulse race. That would be elections, wars and that other national passion, sports. If there was a World Cup for baseball - rather than the so-called World Series in October which involves only the US and Canada - then finding decent venues would barely be a problem. Name a big city that doesn't have a brand new, state of the art stadium it wants to show off.
Actually, that would be New York. But that is about to change. Its two major baseball teams, the Yankees and the Mets, are in deadly competition right now and not just to land places in the World Series play-off games this autumn. It's about which of them can get their spanking new stadium finished first.
That's right, while the Brooklyn Bridge gathers rust (yes, it is on the critical care list), somehow this city is building not one but two baseball stadiums barely six miles from each other, one in the Bronx, the other in Queens. It doesn't matter that the teams have perfectly good places to play for their fans already. They are not flashy enough. The new ones are both meant to be finished in time for the 2009 season.
Budgeted to cost $1.2bn, the Yankee field will be the most expensive sports facility in US history. Innovations will include 67 luxury suites for those high-flying corporate fans, compared with a measly 19 today. And Citifield, the name of the new home of the Mets, will be the second most expensive. The teams are paying for some of the construction costs, but city contributions (my money) amount to hundreds of millions of dollars.
Sports excite Americans. Roads and bridges generally do not, save when one gives out and makes for spectacular news coverage.
