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Call me crazy if you like, but I for one see absolutely no reason for sports and entertainment to count for anything in the context of a college, both for the purposes of getting in or staying in it.
In the vast majority of the world, India included, the very idea that a college should have a semi-professional sports team is met with sheer disbelief. You're letting athletes in? Why on Earth would you do that? What does the ability to dunk a ball through a hoop have to do with academics?
It's one of the most utterly bizarre things in the US, for all that it's so normalized that you guys take it for granted.
Call me old-fashioned or the very opposite, but I think an ideal college is filled with smart and hard working students studying diligently, with enough free time to have fun and fuck around with their interests. It shouldn't have any reason to be a sports club.
I'm aware that it's a money making opportunity, but a college shouldn't be involved with every single possible thing that is a net income.
I have interacted with black people in the UK, and I like them more than their American counterparts. Most of them were hard working and quiet people who came to a new country solely to improve their lot in life, and they share my jaundiced assessment of many of their second or third gen British counterparts, or god forbid, African Americans who aren't straight off the boat.
Edit: The closest equivalent in India is national or state scholarships for extremely talented athletes. It's meant for of a way to soften the opportunity costs of going all-in on athletics, and they're in it to study as well, since they need to have a career after their body fails them. Even then, they're few and far between. The college gets nothing but some of the scholarship money, and doesn't get to pimp them out.
Sports as team building exercise are invaluable. I suspect this kernel of usefulness, having school sports teams that are taken serious by the students, grew naturally into recruiting for them in particular for prestige with students that no longer directly participate in them. I 100% endorse colleges have intermural leagues for their students and taking them somewhat seriously. I also support being a good team member/leader as a qualification worth mentioning and rewarding on college applications. But these things have definitely mutated paste their use.
I have no issue with amateur sports, or students who have been admitted for other reasons then being encouraged to engage in whatever sports they enjoy or are talented at.
Since your proposition is strictly superior to current norms, while I don't entirely agree with it, I won't grumble too hard.
They were always supposed to be amateur, which was the basis for them not being paid. But with serious competition comes pride, with pride comes spectators and people putting your school higher on their list because of the team and with spectators(money) and an edge on recruitment you quickly get what we see today. That and they're just fun, it would be better if they were more amateur but people enjoy the rivalries and school spirit.
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u missed the point. everyone admitted to hypsm meets some min bar of intel. what im saying is that they don’t have what the zoomers call ‘the rizz’
also, it’s very typical of ghee drinkers to downplay the importance of physical fitness. but it’s important u know
I can't tell if you're being intentionally redditor or just lazy, but along with the crack about "ghee drinkers," this just looks like low effort antagonism. Don't post like this.
I could hardly understand what he meant in the first place, leaving aside the mild insult about ghee. After all, Indians do tend to value physical fitness less than Westerners, even if I wouldn't phrase it that way.
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To quote Heinlein:
"The United States had become a place where entertainers and professional athletes were mistaken for people of importance."
Trust me. There are similar reactions I've seen with students in the US. Not in athletics. But I've seen it quite a bit with computer science undergraduates, needing to take 'Anthropology' over something like studying for the A+ certification.
I think it probably owes more to incidental, historical path dependencies rather than a dedicated decision someone made, to see it intentionally end up that way. I could be wrong though.
Your sports club shouldn't come at the 'expense' of your college education. But it's ironic to see people say on the one hand that school didn't leave them prepared for what laid ahead after graduating, while treating the extracurriculars as unimportant. The latter is what I think is intended to supplement that more practical function that's needed. I personally hate extracurriculars as a program 'requirement'. That's putting the cart before the horse. But I can see a rationale for why it's there.
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