- An athletic program earns money for the college.
- An athletic program is entertaining and attracts students to the college.
- An athletic program provides good public relations for the college.
- An athletic program gives students, faculty, and staff a sense of identity with the college.
- An athletic program keeps alumni interested in the college and thus ensures a major source of ongoing contributions to the college.
- An athletic program provides a kind of learning experience that can't be found in the classroom.
It is not enough just to know that your school's administration supports the athletic program. You should also understand what it expects of your coach, since the expectations that your coach labors under will be felt in one way or another by you, the athlete. The school administration is responsible for setting campus rules for the conduct of athletics and for seeing that coaches and athletes adhere to their conference and national association regulations. Yet it is often the school's administration that demands winning teams and thus inadvertently sets the ball rolling toward cheating on rules and exploitation of athletes. In situations where administrators, boosters, and coaches are all "committed to winning" (a favorite phrase), an even greater commitment is expected of the athletes themselves. As a result, student-athletes may have even great difficulty finding enough time and energy to take care of their own educational and career needs.
The issue boils down to expectations and pressure. The greater the expectations and pressure to win placed upon your coach by the college administration, the greater will be the expectations and pressure placed on you by your coach. Wanting and expecting success is a healthy approach to sports competition and can yield greater success than you might otherwise achieve. But when an expectation becomes a demand for success, people often feel pressured to change their attitudes and behaviors to support that demand, at the expense of other needs. A coach who initially seemed friendly and relaxed may become distant and tense because of the pressure to win. A coach who had always seemed concerned for your welfare may ask you to play when you are injured. Under pressure from the school administration to win, a coach who previously seemed concerned about your future might suggest you take a light or easy class load if difficult courses are diverting your attention from the team. Athletes who find themselves caught in that trap must have the courage to resist pressure from coaches to let their academic efforts and goals slide.
THE ATHLETE AND THE FACULTY
College professors are like coaches in one important way: their job is to help you grow and achieve. A great difference between professors and coaches, however, is that a coach's job often depends on how well his or her team performs; a professor's job, in contrast, seldom depends on the performance of students. A professor can fail over half of a class without being considered "a loser" and jeopardizing his or her job (although the professor's standards and ability as a teacher would likely be questioned). In contrast to professors, coaches who lose more than half of their contests may soon be out of a job. One reason for the difference is that coaches recruit their own athletes; professors, on the other hand, don't have the "luxury" of choosing whom they will teach and so are less directly responsible for students' performance.
On any campus, some professors have a reputation for being pro-athletics, while others are known as anti-jock. You cannot tell if a professor is pro or anti-athletics by whether or not they were athletes during their high school and college days. Some former athletes are extremely anti-athletics, particularly regarding the way sports are conducted in colleges. Conversely, many professors who were not athletes themselves are among the strongest backers of athletics.
Whether or not a professor likes sports or approves of college athletics may be completely unrelated to his or her attitude about student-athletes. If a professor has an anti-athletics reputation but treats athletes the same as any other students, you might be missing a good thing by avoiding his or her classes. One of the great benefits of a college education is the opportunity to interact with people who have very different opinions from your own. They may open your eyes to things you hadn't seen, or confirm, after a thorough discussion, your own previous beliefs.
Nearly every college, however, has a few professors who dislike athletics so much that they are unfair to athletes. They group athletes into one or two categories, usually labeled "Dumb" and "Pampered." These professors are biased and their minds are usually closed to any contrary evidence about athletes. Why make college life any harder than it has to be? Avoid taking classes from these anti-athletics professors wherever possible, unless you have a large margin for error in your GPA and feel like being a crusader for athletes' rights. If you can't avoid them, keep a low profile concerning your athletic involvement. Try not to ask for favors (alternative test dates, delayed assignments, etc.) because of team commitments, avoid responding to questions or commenting on assignments in terms of your athletic experience, and certainly don't wear your practice jersey to class.
Some simple techniques can be followed that will help you get along with faculty members no matter what their attitudes toward athletes are. Not surprisingly, these techniques are not just to impress; they will make you a better student. One of the most obvious is to pay attention in class. You'd be surprised how easily professors can identify students who are paying attention. When professors ask a question in class, they usually would like a response from the students rather than having to answer the question themselves. Don't worry about giving the wrong answer. An erroneous yet thoughtful response that indicates you have been paying attention is almost as good as the correct answer. In some cases a thoughtful wrong answer is better than the right answer, because it allows the professor to then explain his or her intention for asking the question in the first place.
Establish your credibility as a student by being on time to classes and meetings and demonstrating the other qualities that professors associate with good students. Specifically,
- Turn in assignments on time or even early.
- Prepare early for tests. Most professors can tell when a student has waited until the last evening to study, and they are not likely to be sympathetic to the excuses of a procrastinator.
- Ask to take tests early when you know there will be a schedule conflict because of your sport. Your best bet is to talk about this the first week of the term by bringing the team schedule to your professors to discuss the conflicts with them. They will appreciate your foresight and concern. Few things gripe a professor more than to have an athlete (or anyone) come to them after missing a test and ask for a make-up.
- Meet with professors early in the term (or even before the term starts) and ask their advice about what is needed to do well in the course. Professors are used to athletes asking for special favors to get around course requirements, so you will be well received if, instead, you ask how to do well in the class.
Getting Along with Non-athletes
Just as with professors, non-athletes come in three varieties: those who are pro-athletics, those who are anti-athletics, and those who couldn't care less about athletics. The main difference you are likely to find among non-athletes in college as compared to high school is that in college, the extremes of either loving or hating athletics are further apart. College students who love athletics are more likely to be in awe of athletes (this tendency is greater in college than in high school possibly because athletic skill is presumably greater at the college level). On the other hand, college students who dislike athletics are likely to be more active and vocal in their feelings. This may affect you in social situations and in classes. An anti-athletic feeling may even hurt your team financially on campuses where athletic funding comes at least in part from student government.
Many non-athletes have their own expectations of what athletes are like and how they are supposed to act. Those who think that athletes are dumb, or aggressive, or not serious about school may cause a problem for you. Sociologists call this problem role conflict, and describe it as stress or tension that results when a person is expected to act two different ways at the same time. For example, student-athletes may feel tension when they are expected to be smart, as a college student, yet dumb, as a jock. Role conflict has burdened many athletes from the early history of college sports. (As noted earlier, the dumb jock image has been well-earned by some athletes; as a result, that stereotype has had to be battled by most other athletes.) Much of the conflict in living the twin roles of student and athlete comes from the perceived need to "live down" to someone else's poor opinion of student-athletes in general. You don't have to match anyone else's opinion of you, especially if it isn't accurate.
Don't fall into the trap of trying hard to make others like and respect you by adopting the attitudes and image you assume they expect. Forget about the preconceived notions of others and follow a piece of age-old advice: simply be yourself. And if that isn't enough for some people, it's their loss not to know you.
Getting Along with Other Athletes
Other athletes share an important experience and identity with you, even athletes from other sports. A few of the many things you have in common with all athletes are how to get along with coaches, anxiety over competition and the chance of injuries, balancing sport and school, keeping your scholarship or position on the team, and how to face defeat. Among your own teammates an even closer bond results from your competing against them during practice and with them against other teams. Other athletes probably understand your problems better than anyone else, and they can appreciate both your successes and your failures better than anyone else. You've all been through it, either separately or together.
But don't let the special bond that exists among athletes become a shackle on your social interactions and cause you to associate only with other athletes. To this point in your life, you may have been most comfortable in the company of other athletes, but after you graduate, no longer will there be a distinction between athletes and non-athletes. If you haven't already done so, now is the time to become comfortable with non-athletes and build relationships on other interests.
Some athletes you know, especially those who are unsure of themselves, may try to put you down for associating with non-athletes. Such a response reflects their weakness, not yours. The more you hang around only with other athletes, the more likely you are to think of college (and maybe even life) primarily in athletic terms.
